“This is the future of work. Creating powerful groups of people to work together as a team”

These days, it seems as though the question on everyone’s lips surrounds coworking, and who better to answer than Madison Maidment, COO at Coworker.

Once upon a time, Madison was living in Winnipeg as a recent graduate in finance and marketing. She did a one-month trip travelling through South East Asia when she saw an inspirational quote on the side of a building outlining the importance of work life balance and living the professional dream. Entering the building, Madison was introduced to coworking, and it changed her life forever.

Cut back to reality, where Madison was working her day job in real estate, she just couldn’t get coworking out of her mind. She thought to herself, this is the future of work. Suddenly, it all became clear: With coworking, companies would have the ability to grow teams as needed; they’d have the chance to do market research into a location before completely committing to a space. As someone whose interest always lay in real estate development and marketing management, her mind was made up. Her path lay with coworking; all she needed now was to be a part of it.

Moving to Toronto, Madison continued her journey, looking for a one-stop spot to learn about coworking. Finally, she found it with Coworker, an online market place for finding coworking and flexible office spaces based on your location preferences.

Now the hard part, getting a job there. Madison put herself out there, emailing her ideas and pitches for almost a full year. Whenever something came to mind regarding coworking, she’d tell them first. After some time, her hard work paid off, as Coworker was finally able to offer her a position.

She could only go up from there. Beginning in Partnerships, Madison quickly made a name for herself as she moved into Product Development before landing the role as COO.

Who run the world again? Madison, that’s who.

Coworker is growing as well, with hundreds of spaces on their site, they’ve expanded into over 150 countries and have employees scattered worldwide. But that’s not all, their goal is to set up two head offices soon. One will be in the beautiful Barcelona, while the other will be right here in Toronto, working alongside yours truly, Workhaus.

For Madison, she went halfway across the world to discover her true calling. She took a chance, put herself out there and didn’t take no for an answer. Sometimes, fighting for what you want is the missing ingredient.

Photo Credit by Max Jamali