With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1494678
34 BCBUSINESS.CA MARCH/APRIL 2023 MYTH BUSTER Clio's head of product management, Michelle Dunlea, challenges the idea of linear career paths by showing up as herself M i c h e l l e D u n l e a's family has a hard time wrapping their minds around what she does for a liv- ing. Her parents are confused beyond "I work in tech," and her fiancé tells people that she "builds an app where lawyers speak to their customers." A hefty eye roll over a Zoom call makes it clear that there are only so many times she can explain it. As the senior director of product man- agement at Burnaby-based legaltech firm Clio, Dunlea has been responsible for a number of different products since she joined in 2019. Right now, she looks over the company's flagship product, Clio Man- age, as well as its new payment processing software, Clio Payments, which gives cli- ents and attorneys the flexibility of entering long-term payment plans. For some 15 years now, the cloud-based company has been helping lawyers and law firms manage cases with its legal practice management software. The software offers support with client intake, communica- tions, tracking and billing and digital pay- ments. Clio has some 900 staff spread out around the world, with physical locations in Burnaby, Toronto, Dublin and Australia. When Dunlea joined four years ago, it was a 400-person company with one product. Since then, it's grown rapidly to achieve centaur status (a business that hits $100 million in annual recurring revenue), made a ton of impact on the industry with its software solutions and transitioned to a completely remote work environment. Du n lea remembers bei ng rea l ly impressed on her first day. "I regularly felt like the dumbest person in the room, but they were all very nice about it," she says with a laugh. "And there was incredible alignment across the entire organization, from [ CEO] Jack [Newton] down, and that was really appealing to me." While Dunlea seems to enjoy the clear vision from the organization, she admits that her journey here took a winding, uncer- tain path. Like many others, she grew up aware of linear career options where your HONEST WORK Clio's Michelle Dunlea has navi- gated the com- plicated world of tech by staying true to who she is