Spotlight on Cynthia Beldner: Using Career Learnings to Support Technological Innovation

Cynthia Beldner is Spotnana’s Head of Customer Success. When a new customer or partner signs on with Spotnana, Cynthia and her team ensure the implementation process is quick, easy, and seamless. After implementation, Customer Success is responsible for helping our customers and partners get maximum value from their investment in Spotnana. 

Cynthia’s career journey includes a number of Customer Success roles at B2B Software-as-a-Service startups. Her focus on driving successful implementation and adoption of software products has remained consistent across enterprise social networking, augmented reality for the industrial space, HR technology, and now travel at Spotnana.

Believing in what Spotnana can bring to the industry

Even though Cynthia comes from outside of the travel industry, she was fascinated by the opportunity to modernize its underlying technology through the innovations driven by Spotnana’s engineers.

“When I think of technologies that I want to work with, I always think about something new and innovative that I understand and can relate to,” said Cynthia. “At different stages of our lives, we have all been travelers who have experienced issues around booking leisure or corporate travel.”

Spotnana’s leadership team, which has over 150 years of corporate travel experience, was a significant factor in Cynthia’s decision to join. She was thrilled to work alongside the industry veterans who bring their experience with travel pain points to building an open, cloud-based Travel-as-a-Service platform designed to benefit everyone in the travel industry.

“When I look for startups to join, I always evaluate the leadership team as well as the company’s funding, social media traction, and the strength of current employees,” said Cynthia. “My first interactions with Spotnana Chairman Steve Singh, Founder and CEO Sarosh Waghmar, VP of Sales Bill Tillman, and the rest of the team were fantastic and indicated to me that they truly have the experience, vision, and drive to make this all work.”

Embracing change as key to industry progress

Evaluating how broken elements can be reimagined as a new feature or process is key to Spotnana’s approach to improving travel’s infrastructure. Cynthia embraces our core value of constantly changing, learning, and evolving. 

“In order to avoid obsolescence, you have to be willing to reinvent yourself, innovate, and do the painful work that’s required to modernize,” said Cynthia.

She knows from career experience that when companies embrace innovation, they open the door to providing better experiences to customers.

“Early in my career, I witnessed many Software-as-a-Service companies cling to on-prem software and refuse to migrate to the cloud at their own peril,” said Cynthia. “Embracing a pioneering spirit is crucial to survival. Spotnana celebrates that spirit and is developing partnerships with pioneers across a variety of industries that I think will drive incredible adoption.”

As Head of Customer Success, Cynthia is focused on optimizing the customer’s experience so that they can focus solely on driving improvements within their own companies and for their clients. 

“It’s my job to ensure that our customers don’t have to think about the status quo and the messes in the industry,” said Cynthia. “I want them to be able to focus on running a travel program that truly delivers value to their employees with face-to-face interactions. At Spotnana, we deliver the value of in-person experiences to our customers with their clients, employees, and teams.”

Collaborating with industry veterans to power unparalleled travel experiences

Cynthia enjoys working with her team to address industry challenges and provide our customers and partners with the assistance they need to achieve their goals. She appreciates how her teammates go above and beyond to train others on our technology and offer insight into how we approach future innovation.

“I work with an incredible group of customer success managers, implementation managers, and partner account managers,” said Cynthia. “These folks work tirelessly to provide a modern travel experience for our customers and partners.”

In addition to their skills in project management, change management, training, and technical work, the members of Cynthia’s team bring personal perspectives on travel from their decades of industry experience.

“I’m so appreciative that the team comes with a wide variety of travel industry backgrounds, from hotels to travel agencies and airlines,” said Cynthia. “They have firsthand experience with the complex mechanics of travel. What has stood out to me is how much our customers value that our team members can see the industry from their point of view.”

Above all, Cynthia values how her colleagues have taken the time to augment her understanding of the travel industry. Through them, she has developed a deep familiarity with the needs of our customers and partners as well as her own approach to optimizing their experience using Spotnana’s Travel-as-a-Service Platform.

“Everyone at Spotnana is supportive of new folks who need to learn about travel,” said Cynthia. “One of the highlights of onboarding was a four-hour, in-person one-on-one with VP of Travel Operations Bill Brindle to discuss travel in a way that set me on a wonderful path of learning.”

Thanks to the immediate support from her new colleagues, Cynthia has forged a new career path in travel technology with Spotnana.

“Given the in-house expertise and how generous people are with their time and knowledge in internal trainings and the resources given to us, I’ve felt like I have deeply learned travel and connected with our customers, partners, and industry.”