Driving America Forward with Joel Sitak
“Zum is innovating by taking technology–some of the most advanced in the country–and applying it to our most valuable resources. Our kids”
Joel Sitak
CEO
Foley
Joel is CEO of Foley. He began his career at Tab, a document management software company based in Palo Alto, before becoming CEO Bird Dog—a supply chain and package shipping optimization company—where he worked for fourteen years. As CEO of Foley, Joel works with companies to optimize their driver and transportation employee recruitment, training, onboarding, and monitoring. In his free time, he is an avid hockey player.
How is Foley driving innovation forward?
Foley is truly modernizing how companies recruit, screen, and monitor their drivers.
One of the first big ways we do this is in recruiting. It’s tough recruiting any new employee, especially a commercial driver. There’s fierce competition, and if you don’t move fast enough, you’ll lose a candidate. That’s where Foley comes in—bringing a variety of things that help companies recruit better and faster. Commercial driving is a regulated job, with a long and arduous job application. As a result, there’s tremendous dropoff over the course of that application. Foley allows recruits to submit an application simply by taking a picture of their commercial driver’s license with their phone. It’s a really small example, but even small incremental innovations like that can add up.
A second primary way we’re innovating is through screening—background checks, etc. Today, many companies work with a handful of different vendors in order to screen their employees—but Foley has all of those services under one platform, making the screening process much more effective and cost efficient.
By constantly bringing new ideas, even small ones, Foley stays ahead of the industry.
From your perspective, how is Zum driving America innovation forward?
Zum is innovating by taking technology—some of the most advanced in the country—and applying it to our most valuable resources. Our kids. I look at Foley, for instance, and yes, we have a ton of complicated moving parts that all have to move in sync in order to serve clients—but our first order clients are all other businesses. Zum’s end client is children—and that’s just unusual. Kids don’t typically see the incredible innovation behind the scenes—but they feel it when they get on the bus.
To centralize that kind of safety and efficiency—that’s innovation.
When you think of the future, what role do children/the next generation play, and how can we set them up for success?
I’ll double click on my previous answer. Technology is only as good as the people it serves—and when Zum uses its top-of-the-line tech to serve our children, those children feel it. They understand the value that Zum provides by giving parents updates on their location. They experience shorter, more efficient rides. They’re inspired. A Zum bus is an advertisement for innovation on wheels—so let’s get more kids riding them.