Immigrate is thrilled to announce that we have a new Co-Founder, Keli Propp! She is a passionate individual who brings an array of valuable knowledge, skills, and a whole lot of optimism to the table. I interviewed her to get to know her a little better and outline how she plans to propel the company.
To set the stage, I asked her how she would describe herself. She responded with, “awesome, curious, and understanding.” We love the confidence and completely agree with that description of her. Immigrate is thrilled to have such a positive and skilled female co-founder on our team of experts.
To get to know her is to love her. Check out what she has to say below.
1. How did you get started with Immigrate?
I was unofficially working with Immigrate since its conception in December 2017. I would regularly meet with Dirk to brainstorm, offer advice, and help in any way.
I officially joined the team full time in May of 2018 to help with quality control, product development (working on our software), quality assurance, and testing. Mostly, I just broke a lot of things to figure out areas of improvement. Eventually, I quit breaking things and went into a more developmental role, working closely with the development team to ensure our portal is top-tier to give users the best experience.
This excites me most about Immigrate - our fantastic software and the ability to help people in their immigration route. We have digitized and automated the immigration process. This allows us to help everyone, regardless of application type, level of help needed, and previous application history. We remove all the traditional roadblocks to help fulfil individuals, businesses, students, and investors immigration goals. This puts us in an exciting space in the immigration industry - we are on our way to disrupt the entire space. We are aiming to be the ‘Amazon’ of immigration.
2. How does it feel to be a female co-founder in the tech industry, a historically male-dominated arena?
It’s very, very exciting. I genuinely love my job, what I do, and who I work with. There are so many resources to support women and a fantastic community of strong women that are very welcoming and helpful. It’s inspiring to see that you truly can do whatever you want as long as you work hard for it as a woman. People always tell you that, but it’s exciting to see what you deserve to come to fruition, and I am pleased all my hard work has paid off, though it is far from over!
Additionally, I find I don’t have to conform to ‘traditional’ corporate standards that other women have to. I can fully express myself and solve problems in creative ways. The tech industry is such a lovely sector to work in because of the lack of constraints. I find that the harder I work, the more reward I get. There are some industries where you will hit the ceiling and can no longer progress and grow no matter what you do. The tech industry removes many barriers that face women in the workforce (such as the need for over-education and being overlooked for opportunities, etc.). Additionally, the program we are in, Co.Lead is fantastic and provides countless valuable resources for our team. It is a very motivating and exciting space to be in.
3. How do you want people to describe Immigrate?
I want people to hear Immigrate and know we are genuinely excited and happy to work with them. We understand the gravity of immigration and want to honour and respect the fact that people trust us to help make a positive change in their lives. Immigration is exceedingly tricky and full of personal information. We want our clients to know that we are honest and trustworthy, not “thieves looking to take their money or advantage of them” like so many other people out there. There is a lot of fraud, gatekeeping, and misrepresentation in immigration, and we are here to fix that. We want to help you achieve your goals regardless of the level of help you need or your application type accurately and transparently.
4. What value do you feel you bring to Immigrate?
I am motivated by solving problems in a way that is authentic to me. I am very solution-oriented and love putting the puzzle pieces together by creating plans. One of the worst pieces of advice I’ve gotten was to ‘just dive and do it.’ I firmly believe that even if you are inexperienced, a good plan will help you succeed. Moreover, a positive mindset and team environment can make all the difference. I always aim to spread positivity everywhere I go, which in turn trickles down to our clients. The mark I want to believe behind for people is that I was wonderful, helpful, kind, understanding, and just super rad.
5. What do you think people would be most surprised to know about you?
I switched careers mid-life. I used to work in a top 50 managed company in Canada and took a considerable risk moving to Immigrate. I was riddled with self-doubts regarding my abilities, risk levels, security factors. What ultimately led me to make the leap was thinking to myself, “life is too short to be unhappy.” I wanted to be a positive example for my kids to show them that you can achieve anything you set out to do and always choose happiness.
On a lighter note, some off-hand things about me are that I read north of 90 books last year, I enjoy broadway plays, and my favourite type of music is punk and classical. I have a large array of interests, skills and hobbies. I was a big skateboarder as a kid but also completed all the tap-dancing exams by age 17. I have boxed in Vegas, was a cheerleader at one point, and enjoy playing video games.
The entire team at Immigrate is thrilled that Keli is taking on this role. We are excited about all she brings to our team in this new position. Here are some quick thoughts from the team:
“We are super excited to have Keli as our Co-Founder, she is amazing to work with. Keli is very knowledgeable about our products and services. It’s not wrong to say that we wouldn’t have achieved what we have today without Keli” - Imran, Head of Sales and Marketing.
“We are excited that Keli has decided to join us as a Co-Founder of Immigrate. We pride ourselves on being a diverse company. With an equal female to male team ratio from over 10 different countries, having a person with her background to assist in leading our team into the future is exciting for us all. Keli knows our platform better than anyone else and is the perfect fit to scale our company into the future.” - Dirk, CEO.