S 02 | Ep 19 How to Connect Frontline Workers to Strategy and Culture Nicole Alvino is the co - founder and former CEO of FirstUp , the AI - first SaaS platform she built into a company serving over 20 million employees across 100 countries with hundreds of millions in ARR . Her career began at Enron , where two of her recommendation letter writers later went to prison , and that experience set her on a path to only build companies where she could control the culture herself . FirstUp was founded on a simple but overlooked observation : 80 % of the world ' s workforce is on the front line , and virtually no enterprise technology had been built with them in mind . Nicole saw what consumer marketing had mastered , which was personalized , multi - channel communication that meets people where they are , and asked why nothing like it existed for employees . Her answer became the foundation of a platform that now serves companies like Boeing , Tesco , Hilton , and Hyatt . This episode covers how internal communications evolved from a function without its own technology stack into a boardroom priority , and why Nicole believes employee engagement is ultimately a CEO problem . She also shares the unexpected path that led her there , including a spa business she ran after Stanford that gave her a ground - level education in how frontline workers either make or break a customer experience .