Remote work has transformed how entrepreneurs operate their businesses, offering new opportunities for growth, collaboration, and innovation. Recent research from Gusto found half of small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs) identified themselves as hybrid, while 33% said they’re fully remote. That’s why Gusto has been building features designed to make remote and hybrid work easy for entrepreneurs and their teams – while also helping them stay compliant with international regulations.
From productivity tips to communication strategies, we’ve put together a list of 27 must-follow remote work experts to help you better understand how to manage remote and hybrid teams. We’re always looking for more voices to follow. Did we miss a key leader in remote and hybrid work? If so, let us know at @GustoHQ on Twitter or email us at [email protected].
Lona Alia
Lona is the Head of Revenue at SafetyWing, an entrepreneur, and a remote work advocate. Lona is an expert in building remote teams, and she herself has been a digital nomad in over 80 countries. If you’re a founder, follow Lona for advice on how to build your own fully remote team.
Anne Bibb
Y’all go peep this article and let me know what you think! #forbesauthor https://t.co/4HRsW3y17e
— Anne Bibb (@annebibb) May 17, 2023
Anne Bibb, Founder & CEO of Remote Evolution™, is a trailblazer in global human-centered growth, focusing on merger and acquisition, remote/hybrid work, employee experience, and customer experience strategies. We recommend listening to her on the Unexpected Journey podcast, where she has conversations with leaders about their own unique journeys.
Tammy Bjelland, CPTD
Tammy is the founder and CEO of Workplaceless, the world’s leading training provider on remote, virtual, and digital work skills. Her newsletter, Workplaceless, shares weekly microlessons to help you thrive in the age of workplace flexibility. It’s a great read for anyone wanting to learn more about working remotely.
Nick Bloom
Nick is a Professor of Economics at Stanford University, where he’s been researching working from home for almost twenty years. He’s given countless interviews about remote work and even gave a 2017 TedX talk on working from home. Follow him to stay up to date on the latest research in remote work, such as this interesting piece of research showing labor force participation is rising fastest in countries with higher rates of working from home.
Darcy Marie Boles
Darcy is a future of work thought leader, culture architect, consultant, and remote-first work experience designer. She’s consulted numerous businesses and organizations on how to support the future of work through remote work. If you want to develop a strong remote culture, we suggest keeping up with her for her extensive knowledge on how to increase engagement, happiness, and ultimately profits.
Kaleem Clarkson
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Kaleem is the Chief Operating Officer of Blend Me, Inc, a fractional people operations consultancy that helps startups and small businesses transform into high-functioning remote or hybrid-remote workplaces. He is passionate about people operations solutions that increase productivity and engagement for both internal and external stakeholders. Keep up with Kaleem to strengthen your remote and hybrid people operations team.
Sacha Connor
Sacha is a remote work expert, trainer, and keynote speaker. She is the founder and CEO of Virtual Work Insider, where she prepares people leaders and individual contributors to lead, communicate, collaborate, and drive culture in hybrid and remote teams. Before founding Virtual Work, Sacha was one of the first marketers to work remotely full-time for over 12 years. We love this podcast episode where Sacha discusses her own journey as a business owner, creating a positive employee experience within long-term hybrid and remote-first work.
Cheryl Cran
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Cheryl is a consultant, coach, author, and keynote speaker focused on ensuring organizations are future-ready. She’s also the founder of NextMapping, regularly contributes to Fast Company, hosts the NextNow podcast, and has been named the #1 Future of Work expert by Onalytica. We recommend reading her insightful articles on Fast Company, such as this article on how to keep up with industry changes in tech.
Lauren Pasquarella Daley, PhD
Lauren is a future of work leader, advocate for women at work, remote and hybrid work empathy expert, career coach, and educator. She is the Vice President, Women and the Future of Work, and Head, Product Partnership & Innovation at Catalyst. Any business employing remote workers must focus on inclusivity. Lauren is an excellent voice to follow to learn how to make your workplace more human, equitable, and flexible.
Jason Fried
Jason is the founder and CEO of 37signals – the business behind Basecamp. For more than 20 years, he’s been leading 37signals, while regularly sharing his thoughts on collaboration, productivity, and the nature of work – and how we need to rethink it.
As one of the authors of the book Remote, which came out a decade ago, he’s been at the forefront of showing how employers and employees can work together from wherever they are, at any time. Follow him for his advice for founders on building great businesses for the long term.
Stella Garber
On my remote team at Trello, we had a tradition of picking out a bday gift for each teammate.
— startupstella (@startupstella) September 27, 2022
Receiving a personalized gift from your team was so fun…regardless of where ppl are, you felt seen to get something you’d enjoy that was just for you.
Great example of remote culture.
Stella is a serial entrepreneur, marketing executive, and angel investor. She is currently the co-founder and CEO of Hoop and is a passionate proponent of remote work, asynchronous work, and a four-day workweek. She is a valuable voice to follow, with personal experience building and managing remote teams!
Adam Grant
The #1 upside of working from home is not flexibility. It’s avoiding the hassle of schlepping to work.
— Adam Grant (@AdamMGrant) August 31, 2022
The spike in remote & hybrid work is eliminating ~200 million weekly commuting hours in the U.S. alone.
Time is our scarcest resource. Saving time is our most valued benefit. pic.twitter.com/CCvkSABUR5
Adam is a Professor at The Wharton School of Business and has been recognized as one of the world’s ten most influential management thinkers and Fortune’s 40 Under 40. He is also a #1 New York Times bestselling author, professional speaker, and host of WorkLife with Adam Grant, a TED original podcast. To gain insights and data on remote work to help your business, we recommend connecting with Adam.
Ali Greene
Ali is a consultant, author, speaker, and entrepreneur focused on educating and inspiring teams on how to do their best work regardless of where they are. She is the co-founder of Remote Works, an organizational design and consulting firm; if you’re looking for advice on empowering your employees to do their best work anytime, anywhere, follow Ali.
Monica H. Kang
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Monica is the founder and CEO of InnovatorsBox, where she guides organizations and empowers leaders through engaging, thought-provoking programs that redefine creativity in the workplace and make Innovation accessible for all, including remote work. She’s also the host of the podcast Dear Workplace, Curious Monica, where she has candid conversations with innovators, which we suggest you tune in to!
Jared Lindzon
A new study suggests that more people are trying out self-employment, including more women and people of color.
— Jared Lindzon (@JLindzon) May 8, 2023
More in my latest for @FastCompany/@FastCoWorkLife: https://t.co/svHJwPEL0e
Jared is a public speaker, freelance writer, and journalist primarily focused on the future of work, which he has been reporting on for over a decade. He’s a regular contributor to The Globe and Mail and Fast Company’s WorkLife section, where he writes about entrepreneurship and the future of work and talent as it relates to technological innovation. We recommend following and keeping up with his coverage, such as this article showing how U.S. entrepreneurship is increasing and getting more diverse.
Kate Lister
Kate is the President of Global Workplace Analytics, where she has been helping employers develop, deploy, and measure the results of remote and hybrid workplace strategies for nearly two decades. She is also a highly regarded speaker and writer and co-authored five business books, numerous white papers, and scores of articles for major media outlets on the future of work. Check out her writing to learn how to successfully develop a hybrid and remote strategy for your workplace!
Darren Murph
Darren leads workplace strategy & operations as Andela‘s VP of Workplace Design and Remote Experience. He’s been named an “oracle of remote work” by CNBC, having built and scaled remote teams at companies including GitLab, where he was the Head of Remote.
While in his role at GitLab, he authored The Remote Playbook, a comprehensive guide for founders and leaders on managing an all-remote company. He’s also the author of Living the Remote Dream – A Guide to Seeing the World, Setting Records, and Advancing Your Career, which provides remote workers the information they need to prepare to leave the office behind and pivot to a remote role. On top of all of this – he holds a Guinness World Record in publishing. Entrepreneurs interested in designing a remote organization can learn a lot from Darren!
Tsedal Neeley
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Tsedal Neeley is an award-winning Harvard Business School professor and author of books, including Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding from Anywhere. Her work focuses on how leaders can scale their organizations by developing and implementing global and digital strategies, which makes her an excellent expert to follow.
Liberty Kikerpill Planck, MBA
Liberty is Head of Remote at Gusto, where she ensures Gusto’s remote workforce has an equitable experience by overseeing workstreams around how Gusto works as a hybrid and distributed company. She infuses design thinking into not just how remote Gusto employees work but broadly how all employees work together by ensuring they have the right mix of tooling to be most effective at their roles. It’s safe to say she brings a fresh perspective to driving the future of hybrid and remote work.
Gustavo Razzetti
Gustavo is a workplace culture consultant, author, and speaker who facilitates courageous conversations to drive cultural transformation and design better cultures. He is also the best-selling author of Remote Not Distant: Design a Company Culture That Will Help You Thrive in a Hybrid Workplace, where he shares advice on how to build a successful workplace. He is a great voice to follow to ensure your team is agile, engaged, and has a strong remote culture.
Tamara Sanderson
Tamara is the cofounder of Remote Works and the co-author of Remote Works: Managing for Freedom, Flexibility, and Focus, where she and Ali Greene offer managers an insider glimpse at how to lead remotely with hands-on exercises, reflection questions, and expert stories from the field. We recommend following her to learn more about her insights on how remote work can change the opportunity equation for people when they are able to fully embrace one another’s autonomy, dignity, and ingenuity.
Sid Sijbrandij
Concerned about digital presenteeism? The better question is, are you tracking hours worked or results? Check out this simple framework in @Fast Company to empower #remote employees https://t.co/288XhOhSIi
— Sid Sijbrandij (@sytses) November 18, 2022
Sid is the co-founder and CEO of GitLab, one of the world’s largest all-remote companies. Named by Forbes as one of the top business minds of the pandemic for his approach to remote work, he is a must-follow for anyone looking to learn tips on how to build and manage a remote workforce. Sid has successfully led his company to grow to over 2,100 team members in more than 65 countries, and openly shares guidance and thoughts on how to scale remote work as a company grows.
Check out his conversation with Prof. Raj Choudhury of Harvard Business School on how he believes all-remote scales even better for large organizations. He also shared tons of learnings on the Gitlab blog on how he and his team took GitLab public – and did it all remotely.
Iwo Szapar
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Iwo Szapar is a Remote Work Advocate & co-founder of Remote-how, the world’s leading platform for remote professionals powered by and for the community of 25,000+ people from 128 countries. He also co-founded Remote-first.Institute, a not-for-profit organization where he helps build knowledge about the remote-work first approach and writes interesting articles about remote work. For the latest information and insights on remote work trends, follow Iwo.
Dr. Gleb Tsipursky
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Gleb is an author, public speaker, and CEO of Disaster Avoidance Experts. He teaches organizations how to improve retention and productivity while cutting costs by building a hybrid-first culture. He also writes the Wise Decision Maker Guide, a weekly LinkedIn newsletter on the future of work that is great for entrepreneurs to prepare their businesses for the future.
Job van der Voort
Job is Co-founder and CEO of Remote, the company making global employment accessible for businesses of all sizes. He’s held interesting roles, including working as a neuroscientist and the VP of Product at Gitlab, the world’s largest all-remote company, where he hired talent from 67 countries. Job’s wealth of knowledge and expertise will help you deepen your understanding of remote work.
Chase Warrington
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Chase is the Head of Remote at Doist, the company behind the apps Todoist and Twist – two top-ranked apps for productivity and collaboration. He’s passionate about the movement towards distributed teams and its positive impact on income equality, the environment, work-life balance, and emerging markets. In his role at Doist, Chase is focused on maintaining and improving the company’s remote work infrastructure and best practices, including documentation, asynchronous communication, and implementing emerging technologies for distributed teams.
As a leader with more than 15 years of experience leading distributed teams from around the world, he’s been recognized as a top voice in remote work by LinkedIn. Chase also hosts the About Abroad Podcast, a podcast dedicated to exploring all elements of life beyond your borders. We recommend keeping up with Chase for access to valuable insights and trends in remote work.
Liz Wilke, PhD
Liz is the Principal Economist, Head of Labor Markets and Modern Work Research at Gusto, where she researches the labor market and the workplace to help people and companies prepare for and meet the opportunities and challenges of tomorrow. She is passionate about preparing the workforce, promoting fairness, fostering innovation, and ensuring that technology serves people, not vice versa.
