Breastfeed the baby, solve a server crisis? Enter, PowerToFLy

NEW YORK – Katharine Zaleski was a take-no-prisoners working woman, leading new-media positions with the Washington Post and the Huffington Post while still in her 20s.

For her, children were a speed bump. Then she had one. And got depressed.

"Being a mom was great, but I was a 12-hour-a-day office person in a system that worked for me until I got pregnant," says Zaleski, 34. "So the idea was to create a technological solution so women who had kids didn't have to disappear from the job market for years."

That solution is PowerToFly, a website that connects women from around the world with U.S. employers. About 85% of hires live outside the U.S. Since its founding in early 2014, the platform has helped stay-at-home women—some 50,000 have created profiles on the site—collect $2.5 million in pay.

On Tuesday, the company is expected to announce it has locked up $6.5 million in Series A funding led by Crosslink Capital with participation from Hearst Ventures and Lerer Hippeau Ventures. Much of that will go toward building out the team and making improvements to the site.

Zaleski's startup partner is Milena Berry, 38, a Bulgarian-born computer expert who had successfully found a way to juggle three children and a passion for tech.

"I'd be breastfeeding while solving a server crisis," jokes Berry, who spent seven years working largely from home as chief technology officer for global activist site Avaaz.org. "I kept meeting with mothers who were jealous, so I knew there was something there."

Although PowerToFly is a business anchored to adding a small percentage to each job fee, it has consciously activist overtones.

"We want to empower women," says Zaleski.

Asked if men might not need their own PowerToFly site, she laughs.

"Not really, and that's because the day after my daughter was born, my husband went right back to work," she says. "But who knows. Maybe we'll do a men's site."

Chromosomes aside, Zaleski and Berry say the time is ripe for employers to elevate remote results over time clocked at an office thanks to unprecedented technological advances that can potentially make the virtual office more productive than a real one.

"When I was at the Washington Post, we couldn't fill a lot of tech jobs because they required people to come into the office," says Zaleski. "We need to get away from the culture of fear that says employees need to be watched."

Berry adds that the current war for high-tech talent – one which often finds companies complaining they can't find skilled candidates, especially women and people of color – is getting so heated that "it's time companies withdraw one of the requirements, that being living in the same city" as headquarters.

FROM COLOMBIA TO THE U.S., VIRTUALLY

For Stella Miranda, her dream of working for an American company was realized through PowerToFly. Miranda, 27, is a software engineer based in Bogota, Colombia, and when her job at an Uber-like startup there lost steam, she felt her career was about to stall.

"In my country, it's strange to see women in a high role, so when I said I was a CTO, most people assumed I meant human resources," says Miranda. "On top of that, getting a visa to work in the U.S. is difficult. But now I work there, in a way."

Miranda's PowerToFly profile and resume caught the attention of Theo Burry, vice president of digital studios at publishing giant Hearst, who hired her to work on GoodHousekeeping.tv. That project's entire six-person team now consists of PowerToFly-sourced women.

"I actually worry less with a virtual team, as compared to trying to get people together daily in an office and making that cultural fit work," says Burry, who adds that he and his team not only communicate regularly using Slack and other connectivity tools but also manage to keep their operation running 24 hours a day thanks to the team's global locations that include Russia and India.

"What appealed to me was the quality of the (worker) profiles on the PowerToFly site, which got beyond the raw tech skills and helped me understand who the person was and if I could work well with them," he says.

While Miranda wouldn't say what she was being paid by Hearst, she allows that "while it's not a U.S. salary I'm sure, it is higher than what I would get normally by Colombian standards."

Berry says that helping women such as Miranda could lead to social gains.

"In places like the Middle East, you have talented, educated women who often then pull out of the workforce once they become mothers," she says. "If you can keep them involved and in the middle class, think of the societal progress you could make."

And, adds Zaleski, "there's a trickle down. A woman is hired by a company like Hearst, and then she hires a nanny to help her out, and you're starting a circle of employment."

Speaking of employees, PowerToFly has 35, and the new round of funding will quickly see that number expand. So, how many of them come in to an office?

"Zero," says former office-rat Zaleski with a grin. "And we don't see that number changing."