Over the last 10 days, 4 amazing ladies and I formed a team and participated in the #womenhackthecrisis - A Global Virtual All-Women Hackathon. The goal was to provide solutions to COVID-19 related challenges faced by essential workers, small businesses, and/or women seeking shelter. We pitched our idea last night to an incredible group of judges and an audience of other amazing teams. We are beyond excited to share that our team, named Hotel Haven, won first place!!!

Hotel Haven is a resource that aims to connect individuals, in need of a temporary home, with hotels in their area. In addition, donors can "gift" rooms to those in need and offer them comfort during challenging financial times.

The team worked incredibly hard outside of work and I couldn't be more proud! I'd like to personally give a special mention to each of my team members Jessica Clayton, Emily Jesse, Laura Slepetis, and Uma Parkala for their dedication and commitment to this challenge. You ladies are what it is all about!!

Thank you to Duetto for sponsoring our team and to all of our #duettocustomers for inspiring our idea. It truly brought us all together. Lastly, I'd also like to give a special mention to Nathan Gray from Coast Hotels for providing us with great information during our discovery phase of development! His team is doing amazing things with their Coast Cares rate and it sparked a lot of ideas for us. We hope we can share our idea with more hoteliers and start working on the next steps of Hotel Haven's future. Let's see where this can truly go!