SAN FRANCISCO — A group of five female tech engineers from Duetto recently won first place in the Women Hack the Crisis Global All-Women Virtual Hackathon event with their Hotel Haven concept.
Hotel Haven is designed to help provide a temporary home away from home for those in need due to COVID-19 with a platform enabling companies and donors to “Gift a Room” to those most in need. Hotels can sign up to have their availability shown on the site, individuals can sign up if they need support, and donors can “gift” rooms to individuals in their geographical area.
“Inspired by our customers, Hotel Haven helps connect hotels who currently have a lot of availability to individuals who might be in need of a safe haven, such as essential workers who have an at-risk family member at home and therefore need to distance, women in an abusive home, or others needing to find a place to stay,” explained Sabrina Jackson, director, product management, Duetto. “It was truly a team effort and everyone worked super hard putting in plenty of extra hours. It was a great opportunity to promote our engineering team and celebrate our creativity. The gears are already turning on what we will do next with our idea.”
The virtual hackathon event aimed to provide solutions to COVID-19-related challenges. Ten teams took part from around the globe, with Duetto’s being the only one to provide a live demo to the judges.
The team was organized by Uma Parakala, senior software engineer, and included Sabrina Jackson, director, product management; Emily Jesse, lead partner manager; Jessica Clayton, senior product manager; and Laura Slepetis, engineering manager.
“I have immense pride in the talent that we have here at Duetto and the fact that we are putting that talent to use to help people in need during this crisis. Hotel Haven is a great representation of Duetto and the team we have,” said David Woolenberg, CEO, Duetto.
Team Duetto will now go on to present Hotel Haven at the Empowered: Women’s Leadership (Virtual) Conference on May 27th.
