Charting a New Direction for the New Year

Like many, the early stages of 2024 have given me and my colleagues the opportunity to reflect and share hard-won insights from the previous year, then focus on building the strengths needed to overcome the challenges that await us in the next 12 months.

Perhaps most importantly from my vantage point, it’s given me the chance look out beyond the “four walls” of our business with the goal of continuing to build on our organization’s legacy of creating tangible value for our customers and their collaboration experiences, both in and outside the boardroom.

Which leads me to an important announcement and a new direction for our leadership team:

I’m pleased to announce the arrival of the newest member of our executive team with Tim Taylor joining the organization as Chief Financial Officer. Tim will oversee financial leadership and operations of OnBoard, its sister company, eScribe, and their parent organization, Passageways. He brings 25 years of executive financial leadership experience at multi-billion-dollar companies, including key roles at Arthur Andersen, Deloitte, Eagle Global Logistics, Paradigm, PAS, and FM:Systems.

Tim specializes in developing and scaling companies, and he brings a strong track record of financial acumen and excellence with a special focus on software firms within private equity portfolios. As you may know, SaaS-growth specialty JMI Equity invested more than $100M in Passageways in 2021.

His arrival couldn’t come at a more pivotal time for our growing family of companies. With his deep leadership experience in financial operations for SaaS-oriented businesses, Tim has been a decisive factor in enabling companies to expand in their markets, achieve operational excellence, and reach cost-effective, scalable growth.

Make no mistake, he has big shoes to fill: 2023 marked one of the most successful in the history of our companies. We’re thrilled to have welcomed 1,000 new customers while also fostering deeper, more effective relationships with thousands of existing customers across a broad range of industries including non-profits, banks, credit unions, professional associations, higher education, healthcare, local government, and private and publicly held firms. We now serve more than 5,000 customers in more than 60 countries.

Most importantly of all, we succeeded at growing the business with customer experience and value as our North Star, as evidenced by strong satisfaction scores, continued leadership position in the board management category, and consistently strong and positive product feedback from our hundreds of thousands of users.

This year marks my twenty-first as the co-founder and CEO of Passageways. As I’ve paused to reflect on this fact and welcome Tim to our team, I see two distinct character qualities in him that I’m confident align with our strongly held values and culture – our Pathfinder culture.

First, it takes stamina: Perseverance and endurance are absolutely necessary to weather the challenges it takes to succeed in two decades of any business or leadership role. Headwinds abound and new, unknown challenges are a constant companion in any growth story. Not only has Tim proven himself as an expert financial leader through a string of successful roles in companies that have achieved their growth goals (some benefiting from more than a decade of his tenure), but he also spent years competing as an avid triathlete and distance runner. Neither endeavor, professional or personal, is possible without a surplus of grit and determination.

Second, Tim embodies a strong sense of competitiveness and the strive to win. We believe OnBoard, eScribe, and the wider Passageways team have thrived over the last 20 years because we’ve built a culture that rewards excellence and winning, whatever that “win” is.

By continually refining and optimizing our business processes, strategies, and operational values, we’ve delivered wins for our customers through better, more effective collaboration in the boardroom and beyond. Tim reflects this value and strives to win not only in his professional life but also in his competitive nature overall (look at all that hardware in Tim’s video!).

So, please help me welcome a new executive leader who I steadfastly believe is a proven winner joining a winning team. Tim, welcome; I’m confident your skills and leadership will carry us and our customers to even more success in 2024 and beyond.

Here’s to many more years of growth and success–in life, in the boardroom, and in business!