Marissa Alden is the founder and CEO of Sawyer, a platform for parents and providers in the childhood extracurricular education space. Founded in 2015, Sawyer is the leading SaaS and marketplace company in the industry, transforming the way extracurricular education is booked. Sawyer has helped thousands of small businesses navigate their day to day operations and millions of families find and book classes via their priority registration software system.
Prior to starting Sawyer, Marissa founded the consumer fashion application Go Try It On. Go Try It On was acquired in 2013 by Rent the Runway where Marissa joined to lead the growth team. She holds a BS in Human Development from Cornell University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Marissa lives outside Philadelphia with her husband and three children.
Stephanie Choi COO & Co-Founder
Stephanie Choi is a veteran operations executive with a background in retail inventory planning and management. She currently serves as COO and Co-Founder of Sawyer, where she is responsible for all operational and financial management across the organization.
Prior to starting Sawyer, Stephanie spent 7 years as an inventory planner at Bloomingdales, before joining Rent the Runway in 2011 to build out the inventory and merchandising teams. After four years at Rent the Runway, her own experience as a young parent served as inspiration for co-founding Sawyer in 2015. Stephanie holds a BS in Business from the University of Oregon. She now lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their two children.
Dana Browne VP of Provider Experience
Dana Browne has spent over a decade in the early childhood industry coaching business owners as well as developing service and training standards across operational teams. As the Vice President of Provider Experience, she leads our customer and account teams and works as a cross-functional leader to improve the overall provider experience, share industry knowledge and trends, and foster strategic partnerships to further expand brand awareness.
Prior to joining the Sawyer team, she worked as VP of Development and Franchising at Kidville, a global early childhood brand. She is passionate about connecting providers with the tools needed to deliver remarkable service experiences and believes that a streamlined user experience is essential to the childhood education and entertainment industry. She holds a BFA in Drama from New York University Tisch School of the Arts and lives in New York City.
Mollie Devine Senior Director of Customer Success
Mollie Devine is an experienced operational and client relationship leader who earned her stripes in asset management. She currently leads the customer success team at Sawyer, where she’s responsible for client retention, relationship management, and support for customers across the country. Prior to Sawyer, Mollie spent twelve years as the Director of Operations at Resource America, an alternative asset management company with more than $20 billion under management. While there, Mollie was the primary liaison between private funds, investment banks, and hundreds of clients globally. She holds B.A.’s in English, Art History, and French from Trinity College. She now lives in Brooklyn with her husband Jamie and their two children, Edie and James.
Elise Johnson Senior Director of Sales
Elise Johnson brings over a decade of experience in building and developing high performing sales teams in SaaS organizations. She currently leads the sales team at Sawyer as the Senior Director of Sales, where she's responsible for revenue growth and developing the overall sales strategy.
Prior to joining Sawyer in 2021, Elise held a variety of leadership roles at Huntington Learning Center, Booker Software and Mindbody. At Mindbody, she led the North America commercial sales and account management teams for the salon and spa business unit. She holds a BS in Business Management and Economics from Stony Brook University. She currently lives in New Jersey with her husband David and their two children, Piper and Levi.
We’re on a mission to give every child the opportunity to discover their own love of learning.
Sawyer, a DaySmart company, emerged from the simple idea that technology can transform how we prepare the next generation.
Our software ecosystem fosters relationships between parents, children, and providers of everything from soccer to robotics. We empower businesses and parents alike by building our products in partnership with them to create powerful technology solutions to their day-to-day challenges.
What we value
At Sawyer, our values are the verbal expressions of how we collectively approach our work – and our success is dependent on fostering a community that shares our values.
Lean into curiosity
Our business, brand and people are living entities – to thrive, we must adapt and evolve. We passionately follow our personal and collective curiosities because they are key to our evolution.
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Solve for tomorrow
We all have a responsibility to work toward a better future – for ourselves, our communities, and our children. Everything we build, do and say is aligned with our mission and the firm belief in the importance of our work.
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Seek simplicity
We strive to delight our customers through simple, frictionless experiences every time they interact with us. This drives us to think outside the box, to bring order to chaos, and to always look for a better way.
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Build relationships to build great things
We treat everyone we engage with as our neighbors, because we can accomplish more as a community than we ever could alone. We believe meaningful work requires deep collaboration between ourselves and our partners.
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Celebrate and foster individuality
Our mission is stronger when we celebrate different perspectives and embrace every person’s uniqueness to create an equitable environment and product for all.
Authenticity, trust, and kindness are at the forefront of how we work together as a team to foster safety, inclusiveness, and diversity.
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Embrace yes — always
Endless problems offer endless opportunities for solutions – and the hardest problems to solve are some of the most important. We approach every problem with the mindset that it can be solved, and that by doing so, we will grow as a collective.
Female Founded. Mission Driven. Flexible PTO. Full Benefits + 401(k).
Female Founded. Mission Driven. Unlimited PTO. Full Benefits + 401k.
Thank you for your interest in joining the Sawyer team! While we don’t have any current openings, we are always on the lookout for top talent across every skill set. If you dream of being a part of the Sawyer team one day, shoot us an email with your resume attached at careers@hisawyer.com