Top Pittsburgh CEO talks 28 Years in Business w/ Barbara Vankirk

Barbara VanKirk is the CEO and founder of IQ Inc. She has spent the last 28 years creating company value by providing the vision, leadership, strategy and general management skills necessary to grow IQ Inc into a dominant player in Pittsburgh’s tech ecosystem.

IQ Inc helps their clients expert consulting, staffing, project management and software development services. The serve clients across financial services, transportation, and medical device with Software Design & Development, Software Q/A Testing, Product Development, System Integration, Technical Writing, and Database Design.

In this episode, Barbara and Aaron discuss how she bootstrapped the company, how to hire tech talent, and why her company has stood the test of time.

_____
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
1:35 Beginning of entrepreneurship
3:08 Building off of consulting experience
8:28 Establishing "work life balance"
11:43 Communication and collaboration
14:13 Challenging engineers
16:30 Pioneering work flexibility
18:20 Business development model
25:12 Believing in your product
28:27 Navigating through difficulty
33:30 Facilitating a collaborative culture
35:22 Company core values
38:00 Identifying one's success
38:29 Accessing IQ Inc.
39:10 Actionable Personal Challenges: Seek to improve yourself
42:00 Outro
_____
Edited by Leilani Zhang