In our latest “Meet The Team” series, Laurent Dhollande, CEO of Pacific Workplaces, was kind enough to do a Q&A with us. Read on to get a glimpse of Laurent’s life experiences, favorite things, and remote working style.
What location(s) do you work at?
I walk the talk and scratched my full-time Palo Alto office to go fully virtual a few years ago. Nowadays I navigate mostly between day offices or meeting rooms in the San Mateo, San Francisco, Pleasant Hill, Walnut Creek, and Sacramento locations.
I moved to Napa from Silicon Valley earlier in 2016. Since then, I have spent more time working out of my home offices, both in Napa and in Lake Tahoe where I spend a lot of time at a second home we built there this year. That said, I experienced for myself that working from home can be liberating in some ways, but it also sucks in other ways. It can be harder to get motivated while working from home. Too tempting to slack off and go play golf on a sunny day. But mostly, when spending too much time at home, I miss my Pac-mates, the stimulating business buzz of the Pac environment, and the opportunity to make new encounters of the third Pac-kind so to speak (= meeting new Pac-mates).
Where did you grow up and how did you get to here?
I grew up in France. My wife and I met in Paris after she and I graduated from college. We lived in Paris for awhile then moved to Africa where I worked for the United Nations in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania. We moved back to Europe in The Netherlands for a couple of years, where my wife, who is from South Lake Tahoe, started to be home sick and missed the California blue skies. So we came back to California and stayed here ever since. That was over 25 years ago.
What is your favorite animal?
My dog Izzy. We got her from the pound 9 years ago. She is a cross-breed between a bear and a skunk. The picture proves she has atail of a skunk and head and fur of a bear.
What are your hobbies?
Golf & Wine.
What is your favorite part of working here?
My Pac-mates who have become close friends, but also the occasional encounters of the Pac-kind I referenced earlier. These are Pac-mates you meet serendipitously in the break room or by the coffee pot from time-to-time and who can have fascinating life stories. We have so many people with interesting lives at Pac!
To hear more, check out CloudVO’s new video series, Commute with our CEO, where Laurent touches on topics related to mobile workers and also talks about general trends in the shared workspace industry while driving!
About Pacific Workplaces
Pacific Workplaces (Pac: for short) are great places to work, with a wide range of part-time and full-time furnished office spaces, including virtual offices, private offices and mini-suites, in a shared infrastructure environment with curated communities that maximize networking opportunities and serendipity. Members have access to meeting rooms, coworking areas, business lounges, VoIP telephony, unified messaging, answering services, IT support, admin support, and an online legal library under a pay-per-need hosted model Pac: refers to as Workplace-as-a-Service™. All Pac: centers are operated by PBC Management LLC.