Celebrating the Lucid Ladies
From left to right: Stacey Krug, Nicole Benham, Stefani Gibbs, and Nadia Setzer
As a fast-growing tech company committed to building a diverse, inclusive culture, we wanted to celebrate International Women’s Day 2019 by highlighting the personal stories and tremendous contributions each of our female team members make to Lucid Dream!
Nadia Setzer
Nadia Setzer, our Chief Financial Officer, has been alongside our Co-Founders since Lucid Dream was started. She began by providing CFO services part-time while continuing to focus on her own women’s empowerment business, which she still runs today. As a certified Integrative Health Coach, she helps women learn to honor aspects of themselves that often go overlooked and undiscussed - power, intuition, competitiveness, emotion, sisterhood - through women circles, group workshops, and other holistic retreats she leads. As we’ve continued to grow, so have Nadia’s responsibilities. In addition to typical CFO responsibilities like compliance, payables, receivables, and other financials, she also oversees HR processes and initiatives. With a focus on the people first, technology second, she brings a unique perspective as a member of our senior leadership team and has an important voice in the direction of Lucid Dream. Not to mention, working alongside her husband - our CEO, Joshua Setzer - makes this innovative journey in VR/AR extra special and meaningful.
Stacey krug
In early 2018, we hired Stacey Krug to be our Director of Client Success. Stacey’s goals didn’t always align with being at the forefront of the tech industry. In her college days at The University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill (UNC), she double majored in International Studies and Women’s Studies with the intention of going to law school. With both parents as attorney’s, it was a natural progression, but it wasn’t until a friend recommended her for Apple’s Leader Program that she seriously considered an alternative career path. At Apple, she quickly found an interest in understanding how computers work, how to repair them, and how to serve customers. One of her favorite parts of this opportunity was taking on the angriest customer or one that would request a male technician to prove her ability should be taken as seriously as her male counterparts. This was just the start of her progression in tech and 8 years later, it wasn’t going to be the last time she was one of few females on her team.
Now at Lucid Dream, Stacey is in charge of client partnerships while ensuring projects are developed to launch on time, on target, and on budget. As a Certified Scrum Master, she also works closely with our Creative Services team to continuously refine and improve our agile VR/AR development process - “Real-Time Iteration.” In addition to her hard work at Lucid Dream, Stacey is a Co-Director for the local Women Who Code Chapter, an international non-profit dedicated to creating a world where women are proportionally represented in every level of the tech industry. Every day she reflects upon how she “can be the change she wants to see in the world” and her time connecting with other women in this industry is one way she’s trying to live up to that.
Stefani Gibbs
Next up: Stefani Gibbs, our Office & Logistics Manager. With a degree in Speech Pathology from Hofstra University, you wouldn’t guess she would eventually work for a virtual and augmented reality company. But being two months in, Stefani’s organized nature and attention to detail are shining brightly. She’s basically the Marie Kondo of Lucid Dream. Organizing is something that she’s passionate about and it’s clear she’s very good at it. She has created a stable system for continuous growth around our office (before she arrived - logistics management was beginning to become chaotic around here!). The logistics work she does allows Lucid Dream to more effectively and seamlessly support both the internal needs of our commercial and product staff and the external needs of our clients as they deploy VR and AR experiences around the world. “I like that I’m a part of the planning process for how things should be run to drive our business’s success,” she explains. In addition to logistics, she plays a lead role in team and culture building efforts through a variety of events and activities she organizes including group outings, community services projects, and monthly lunch and learn’s.
Nicole Benham
Shortly after Stefani, Lucid Dream made their fourth female hire - me! As Marketing and Events Manager, I’m responsible for all things marketing, communications, brand, and events. It's intense to wear this many hats, but I’m no stranger to the startup life! Before joining the Lucid Dream team, I worked with two other companies within the American Underground (the Startup Capital of the South), helping build an idea from the ground up! From project management to operations to sales and marketing, I’ve learned to adapt to the needs of growing businesses, but I was always hungry for something more creative. Our Co-Founders trust me enough to feed that hunger and I’ve hit the ground running with projects including a web rebrand, a busy events calendar, and our first promotional video.
With ⅓ of our team being women, we have plenty of work left to do at Lucid Dream, but we are on our way to building a gender-balanced team and embracing this year’s theme of #BalanceforBetter. Our celebrations this year will consist of attending international conferences, hosting empowerment groups, watching Ted Talks from the most influential women in tech, and even participating in VR events on Altspace. How will you celebrate 2019’s International Women’s Day?
Written by Nicole Benham
Marketing and Events Manager, Lucid Dream VR
