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54 BCBUSINESS NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2021 Anna Sainsbury once learned that an employee at her company's Vancouver head office had been very nervous to meet her. "I was horrified," recalls Sainsbury, co-founder and chair of cybersecurity firm GeoComply Solutions. "I spent 30 minutes interviewing her on what I could have done differently to not have had that reputation." Not the kind of candid admission you'd expect from a tech entrepre- neur. Then again, Sainsbury's career has been anything but typical. The North Shore native studied interior design, marketing and accounting at BCIT, spent a year as an insurance broker and left Vancouver to work internationally for a technical testing company specializing in online gaming. Seeing an opportunity long before virtual private networks ( VPNs) became the app of choice for gamblers, binge watchers and other netizens to hide their location, she launched what's now called GeoComply with CEO David Briggs in 2011. The company, which moved from Las Vegas to Vancouver in 2016, is now a leading provider of geolocation anti-fraud and compliance services. Besides helping gambling websites like FanDuel pinpoint where users are, it now also works with financial services firms and with broadcasting giants such as Amazon Prime Video and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer ( MGM). For GeoComply, the game changer was the 2018 U.S. Supreme Court decision that let states legal- ize sports betting. Business really picked up when casinos embraced online gambling, especially after the pandemic struck, Sainsbury says. "Because of our market share, which is nearing 100 percent, we were sitting in the middle of it and able to be there and support our customers as they expanded." That success wasn't lost on U.S. investors Atairos and Blackstone Growth. GeoComply announced in March that the two were taking a minority stake in the company, pushing its valuation to at least US$1 billion. GeoComply, which had about 375 employees as of September, expects to grow to 400 by the end of the year. With offices in Las Vegas, Ukraine and Vietnam, the company has hired 150 people since COVID began. The 50-percent solution GeoComply has always had many women in leadership roles, Sainsbury says, noting that its goal is to main- tain 50-percent female representation from the board to the executive to middle management. "It starts with spending lots of time on recruitment and having a whole load of targets." The company also offers an MBA program with a current enrolment of 60. "That really helps us scale up our leadership team," Sainsbury explains. Each year, employees can put the equivalent of a month's salary toward education, "so that once you're in the company, you can scale up and go to other divisions and teams." At its other offices, GeoComply is helping to re-educate women and L E A D E R S H I P Game Changer Being a good leader means compassion and account- ability for GeoComply co-founder Anna Sainsbury, who isn't afraid to show her hand Online learning What is Sainsbury's approach to leading the ever- expanding team at GeoComply? "To be open, but to ensure that people know they're on the team because we see their intelligence and the benefits [they bring], and hold people accountable to con- tributing," she says. "It's important to come with compassion but also with a strong focus on us all being accountable to deliver a product or a solution or a team atmosphere that is bigger and better than when we first found it." Of course, the pandemic has meant that people see each other in person less and seldom travel between offices. To stay connected with its glob- ally dispersed staff, GeoComply aims to engage them. Sainsbury compares those efforts to being a good teacher. "It's someone that can reach out to you and meet you where you are," she says. "But there's also this expectation within the com- pany that we need people to want to look for the answers themselves." GeoComply encourages the latter through learn- ing platforms—for example, monthly calls involving different groups within the company and an internal podcast that fills people in on what's happening at other offices. Each month, it also hosts a book club and a Get Inspired chat featuring a guest expert or influencer in an area of importance to the team. GOOD BET Sainsbury has found that women want to work for a female- led organization TANYA GOEHRING