When it comes to returning to work following maternity leave, many mothers face the challenge of re-entering the workforce while balancing responsibilities at home. For Emily Horton, support provided by her company helped make the transition much easier.
The director of enterprise solutions at LevelUp, Horton eased right back into her role, leading a team of developers, account managers and designers focused on building mobile apps and customer engagement platforms — all while finding moments to step away to handle parent and family responsibilities as needed.
“It’s been challenging but I feel extremely lucky because many moms have to take a step back in their career or deal with the status quo,” Horton said. “It’s hard to find employers who want to help you find that work-life balance.”
At LevelUp, Horton has been supported and empowered to successfully juggle being the mother of young children while managing her career growth — it’s all about balance, she said. And Horton’s role at LevelUp, a Boston-based company building next-gen customer engagement solutions for over 200 brands across the nation, is no small task.
We’re changing how people interact with restaurants."
Basically, when LevelUp finds a client (such as Caffè Nero, Potbelly or sweetgreen), Horton’s team works across departments to build an app customized to that business and ensures the app has access to features her team builds in the future.
These apps allow businesses to track consumer data and launch targeted marketing campaigns while customers are able to do things like pay for their meals and earn loyalty points at their favorite restaurants.
Though Horton has been with LevelUp for five years now, the Wellesley College grad started at the company as an iOS contractor, and was later brought on full-time to build out the agency team.
Outside of personal growth, Horton said her proudest achievement to-date has been watching the startup (and her team) expand each year. When she began working at LevelUp in August 2013, the enterprise solutions team was comprised of eight people. Today, Horton oversees 34 employees.
While wrangling a team of mobile developers and account executives may sound stressful, Horton said the most challenging part of the job is matching restaurants with the right technologies and strategies for their customers.
“We’re changing how people interact with restaurants,” Horton said. “We’re a tech company working with restaurants, who are not typically primarily focused on tech.”
When it comes to the progress her team has made with regards to their platform, Horton is not only proud of what has been accomplished, but for what their track record of success means for the future of LevelUp and their customers.
“We’ve built a platform that is really powerful and can support bigger and bigger clients,” Horton said. “I’m most proud of the growth and success of our team and company as a whole.”
