Rachel Gabato: Building Long-Lasting Trust and Confidence in Food Supply Chains

Ripe.io is building long-lasting trust and confidence in the food supply chain through a platform where everyone can access transparent and reliable information on the origin, journey and quality of their food. Ripe.io develops, deploys and operates a blockchain–based network (SaaS) serving B2B clients in the US$150 billion global food logistics and supply chain industry segment. Ripe.io serves customer segments providing track and trace (for recalls and food safety), captures elements of quality (freshness, sustainability and flavor) and insures tracking the integrity of premium payments connected to data sharing and transparency. It is a team comprising of supply chain experts, food scientists, blockchain developers, technology executives, farmers sustainability specialists united by a compassion for transparency and truth in the food system. Ripe.io was formed in 2017 and received US$2.4 million in seed funding by Maersk Ventures and Relish Works in August 2018. It has been named by Forbes as one of the "25 Most Innovative Ag Tech Startups". 

A Multi-Disciplined and Experienced Leader

Rachel Gabato is the COO at Ripe.io. She holds a business management and marketing degree with a minor in communications from Cornell University. She has a knack for understanding the role technology playing in many different industries. The first technology company she worked for was a global sourcing and supply chain software company located outside of Boston, MA. It was a startup and Rachel was the 7th employee. She played different roles, but realized she was quite good at understanding business processes and challenges then translating those business needs into product and software requirements. That was her first foray into the field of product management. Since then, 20+ years ago, she has been in technology in product management leadership and advisory roles, primarily retail technology focused, and those skills have allowed Rachel to grow her career and become the COO of ripe.io. 

For Rachel, accepting the role of COO was both exciting and scary at the same time. While in her product management roles, she was the "CEO" of her product or suite of products, subsequently she had to translate those skillsets into running a company. As a startup, she had to wear different hats and have her hands in all aspects of the company. She is engaged in the sales cycles, business development opportunities and partnership growth, and is directly responsible for managing, executing and delivering against customer implementations and deliverables. She also has the responsibility over product management and marketing and collaborates with the UI/UX design and technology teams.  Finally, she also manages the financials, HR and administrative functions. All in all, Rachel considers it has been a fantastic experience, where she learnt a lot from the team members and also provided guidance and support to the team. Though being a small and agile company, the goal is to work as a team and single unit focused on mission, goals and providing value to the customers. 

Learning to Adopt a Corporate Persona 

Rachel is neither an extrovert nor naturally a public speaker but learning to find her voice and making herself heard is imperative to be a successful woman leader.  She also thinks that pushing into uncomfortable spots and doing tasks which aren't necessarily one's strength are imperative to one's growth personally and professionally.   

Rachel had the opportunity to work for two very different CEOs early in her career. One was the CEO of a large financial market data provider and the other was the CEO of a small startup. They both had different styles and provided different experiences. In the large company, she had to 'adopt' a corporate persona.  She was the executive assistant to the CEO and was engaged with senior level executives, involved in executive meetings, wrote monthly corporate summary reports, etc. The CEO mentored Rachel by exposing her to all facets of the business. His goal was to only keep a resource in the position for a couple of years and then move on to focus in a specific functional area of the company. The other experience was with a small startup where Rachel was performing sales presentations to senior leadership, running software implementation projects and managing customers. This opportunity also allowed her to live in Hong Kong and London as the company and the business grew.   

Both experiences were very different and both roles were ones where Rachel didn't have a formal training.  She had different experiences but they both taught her to be resilient, to be fearless, to have both confidence and humility.    

Entering the World of StartUps 

As Rachel thinks about her life journey, she didn't have a defined career path growing up other than knowing she wanted to go to college and get her degree. Rachel graduated with a degree in Business Management and Marketing and started looking for a job. Initially she was in a financial services sales role, which she quickly realized was not for her. Rachel's first role of significance was becoming the Executive Assistant for the CEO for a financial market data provider. Of course, she performed all the administrative tasks, but she was also involved in senior management meetings, writing executive summaries, interacting with the executive team. It was an incredible learning experience to be working closely with a CEO.   

After this stint, Rachel entered the world of startups.  She was the 7th person at her first startup located in Boston, MA. Her defined role was that of a customer support manager, but being small, she wore many hats.  As the business grew, Rachel started managing projects, defining product requirements, testing the software and training customers. She was thoroughly enjoying these activities and interaction with the customers.  She now realizes that she was operating in a product management function without really knowing it. From there, she focused on product management roles, moving into management and finally leadership roles.  With each move, there were aspects she was very comfortable and aspects where she was not and needed to learn. Rachel, of course, made mistakes in how she handled situations but that's exactly how one needs to think about it, she made a mistake, and didn't handle this well but this is what Rachel learned and how she can be better.   

Rachel's primal challenge was overcoming her fear of not succeeding in different roles. She had to overcome those fears and accept in herself that she may not know everything, she may not always be right and she may not always manage situations and people properly. However, accepting that in herself and understanding that allowed her to understand her strengths and weaknesses which helped her to better understand herself and how she can be better as an individual contributor and as a leader. 

Constantly Learning to Evolve as a Leader 

To be a transformation and effective leader, Rachel believes that one has to possess both emotional intelligence and cognitive intelligence and recognize in which they excel. Leaders, she thinks, have to be able to have exceptional listening skills, have empathy, patience and recognize intent of the discussion and help to organize concepts, ideas and thoughts that define goals and actions.   

Communication and accepting responsibility for one's communications is also critical. Rachel often lost patience when she was trying to relay a message to a team member but she reminded herself as a leader that she needed to communicate in a manner in which her team members could understand.  It's her responsibility to communicate in a way in which they will understand whether it's saying the message in three different ways or drawing a picture or changing the environment- as a leader, it's Rachel's responsibility to communicate effectively. 

Finally, Rachel thinks it's important that leaders also invest in themselves and are continuously learning and educating themselves.  Education doesn't mean, just focused on leadership skills or enhancing one's business acumen, but also educating oneself on worldwide events, cultures, and things which are unfamiliar.  She believes, constantly learning allows to evolve not only as a person but supports oneself in becoming a transformational and effective leader.

Engaging in Technology to Drive Innovation 

Consumers want to become more and more educated about their food, and the business is seeing a shift in consumers need, even they demand, to understand from where their food came, how was it grown, who handled it. They want to understand the food journey. Consumers are also associating themselves and purchasing products from retailers/manufacturers that align with their beliefs and values.  

Ripe.io works extremely closely with its customer base and engages with a number of technology partners.  The company holds continuous engagement activities to not only understand the challenges what customers are are asking but also ensuring the company is bringing value and supporting its customers in their quest to answer their questions about the food they are purchasing.  

Becoming Transparent to Support the Future Transformation 

Rachel believes blockchain isn't a new technology but it's still relatively nascent in its deployment in the food supply chain.  Businesses are starting to see interest growing in engagements to run pilots and finally move into production deployments.   

Brands will and are starting to transform their internal systems allowing them to answer these questions.  They are also publishing sustainability goals, quality metrics, environmental friendliness, etc.  Brands will become more and more transparent in sharing their supply chains by collecting the necessary data.  

The blockchain technology alone will not support this transformation, it will be a convergence of IoT, ML/AI, and other technologies supporting these initiatives. And, just like blockchain alone is not the solution, a willingness by all supply chain partners to participate in sharing of data will help the industry. 

Sharing Thoughts and Opinions to Emerging Leaders  

Rachel's advice to emerging leaders would be to be patient with themselves and find their path for which they have a passion and immerse themselves. It took Rachel a bit to figure out that technology and developing products with technology was her passion. She loves seeing the output of collective teams which are deployed in the field and see it come to life.   

As Rachel grew in her career, speaking her thoughts and opinions wasn't always a comfortable place, but he advises that women leaders must not be shy. She realized as the more she shared her thoughts/ideas, some good, some bad, it's ok because one is always learning when they share. Sometimes people agree with one's thoughts and sometimes not. Rachel has also believes there are times where she can influence outcomes where she is the decision maker and also recognizes when she can do neither influence or decide on the outcome but she needs to absorb the outcome and how it impacts her and her team. 

She says that emerging women leaders shouldn't take it personally and instead take it as a learning point to hear a different thought and idea. Sharing and ideating creates better outcomes. They must use their voice! Finally, she says women leaders should reach out to other professional women in their space and find a mentor with whom they can connect. Rachel herself has mentored individuals and hopes that she is making a difference in their careers and their life journey. That's the legacy she hopes to leave in this lifetime.