Our Story

Founder, president and CEO

Lauren van Loon

Lauren has been a full-time Truckee resident for almost 25 years and is the founder and creator of Worktempl and its mission. She is passionate about work and has worked since the 3rd grade when she had a paper route for the Lansing State Journal in East Lansing, Michigan. She fancied herself as a really young entrepreneur and had a babysitting business with her sister, Karen, and a lawn mowing and snow shoveling business with her brother, Mark. She worked at a bookstore at the mall in high school and then waited tables and bartended during college. Work was a big part of Lauren’s childhood and she enjoyed meeting people and always having money to spend on candy, pop and baseball cards as a young kid, and gas, beer and concert ticket money as a teenager.

Lauren has a 19 year old son and has tried to instill a good work ethic in him beginning at a young age. Lauren is especially passionate about encouraging a strong work ethic in the youth across her community and teaching them that work can be rewarding and fun. You’ll often hear her saying something like “Hey, why don’t you get off your little screen and help someone with something, and make a little money?”.

Lauren started her career in San Francisco in her twenties and worked at a prominent law firm and then got into banking and financial crimes risk management, focusing on terrorist financing after 9/11, anti-bribery and corruption, and anti-money laundering. She has been fortunate to get paid to both research and write, which are her passions. Lauren would like to work more closely with people in her own community and focus her energy and love of work closer to home where she feels she has an impact. She would also like more time in her day to enjoy what she loves most -- hopping on her paddleboard, mountain bike, snowboard or cross country skis, or hiking -- alone or with her son, boyfriend, friends or pup.

Being a homeowner in Truckee since 1999, Lauren has hired dozens and dozens of local workers and contractors to help maintain her home and sanity. From dog sitters, babysitters, realtors, pavers, welders and chiropractors to landscaping, carpentry, electrical and plumbing, Lauren has used a variety of different techniques over the years to find good, reliable workers and contractors. She mostly finds these workers by word of mouth from friends and neighbors, but the housing crisis seems to have made it more difficult to find workers that live in our community, especially individuals for pet sitting and the like. Lauren looked on occasion at some of the larger national websites like Rover.com, Care.com, HomeAdvisor, TaskRabbit and others. While these sites have a handful of local workers connected and using them, they just don’t have that warm, community feel to them. And most of them also charge individual workers and small businesses for leads or even take a cut of their profit!

Never a big advocate of social media, Lauren occasionally viewed the strings or posted a question on Nextdoor and Truckee-Tahoe People Facebook. She quickly realized that, while both are wonderful forums for sharing information, it is very random and difficult to target your search. This gave Lauren the idea to create a website that focuses solely on the Truckee and North Lake Tahoe community and merely CONNECTS local workers and local businesses with local homeowners and local employers. And more importantly, Lauren’s business model would provide a free, basic service to support the workers, and not take a penny of their profits so they can afford to live and work here.

Lauren’s commitment to the local community is reflected through her drive to share a percentage of Worktempl’s net proceeds from membership and sponsorship fees with a variety of local non-profit organizations. She has been on the Board of Directors for Truckee Little League, the Excellence in Education Foundation and the Truckee Noon Rotary Club, serving as their Treasurers and Secretary, respectively. She has seen so much growth within Truckee-Tahoe through the generous financial support of Truckee-Tahoe’s non-profits and wants to continue giving back. She is hoping that this give-back element will provide a level of comfort for our homeowners, residents and businesses to become members of Worktempl and help support not only our local workforce, but our community’s non-profit organizations as well.

Email Lauren

Board of Directors and Advisory Board

advisory board member

Stephanie Bacon

It doesn’t get more local than Stephanie Bacon. Stephanie was born in Truckee, and is raising her two boys in her hometown, where she also teaches at the local elementary school and coaches youth sports. Stephanie loves the outdoors, but she tends toward the less extreme forms of recreation like hiking, biking on wide and easy trails, and taking the chairlift to ski. She loves gathering with friends and has recently discovered the joy and energy of connecting with new people and fresh ideas.

Stephanie is passionate about the value of labor and the role that work plays in creating a sustainable, integrated, and healthy community. She has worked as a union organizer and President with the goal of bringing professional working conditions and salaries to educators. She has been a political activist throughout her career, working with the California State Legislature, labor associations, and political action groups. She believes in the transformative power of education, and is a lifelong learner. Currently, she is pursuing a PhD at the University of Nevada, Reno. The focus of her studies is in literacy as a tool for equity.

advisory board member

Nicole Ryan

Born in Telluride Colorado, then moving to Truckee at age 11, Nicole has always followed the beauty and adventure of the mountains. Raised by two small mountain town loving professionals, Nicole learned from an early age an amazing work ethic and compassion for the community around her. She started working as a busser at Squaw Valley ski resort at age 12 and has worked in everything from food service to retail over the years, finally end up serving her community in healthcare. She began working in the local Truckee hospital in 2000, received her degree in nursing in 2013, and is now working as a home health nurse in the very community she grew up. Nicole is a single mom of 3 amazing teenagers, volunteers for the American Red Cross, Achieve Tahoe, and the RN Response Network.

board member

Anna Ellis

Anna moved to the Tahoe area in 1992 to pursue the mountain lifestyle. She was an avid snow boarder and mountain biker. She continues to enjoy hiking and spending time on and around our local lakes and rivers. To support her lifestyle, Anna worked during the day as a liftie at Homewood then later in the rental shop at Northstar. She always had two jobs, the ski resort in the day and waiting tables at night. She loved this time in her life and balanced her work, which she loved, with lots of play time outdoors.

Anna met her husband, John, at O.B’s in downtown Truckee on New Year’s Eve 1995. She decided it was time to finish her degree in nursing at The University of Nevada at Reno and continued to enjoy the mountain life with her new love. After five years, her daughter was born and two years later her son. She was able to stay home with her children in the early years, but felt the desire to get back to work as an emergency room nurse, which was both exciting and challenging. Always looking to grow, she decided to go back to school to earn her Master’s degree in nursing to become a nurse practitioner. She worked in primary care and women’s health and presently works in dermatology. Anna loves being a nurse practitioner and is happy that she was willing to put in the hard work raising a family and going to school to have such a rewarding career.

Anna has been active in her Truckee community. Her son and daughter are active in sports and music and this has allowed many opportunities to volunteer her time at sports events and musical events. A true animal lover she also spends her time volunteering for the Truckee Humane Society. Anna is passionate about her community and looking forward to growing the Truckee/ North Tahoe Worktempl community supporting the local workforce so they may continue to enjoy the Tahoe area just as she did almost three decades ago, and give back to the local non-profit organizations that support our community.

One of Anna’s favorite quotes about work is by Ralph Waldo Emerson: “The purpose of life is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”

board member

Lisa Petrucci

Lisa has been a resident of the Truckee community for the past twenty two years. She was drawn to the mountains for skiing but decided to call it home given our year round activities and the warmth of our town. She enjoys our community with her husband Keith and their three active teenagers.

Lisa’s passion for community engagement is evident given her contributions as past President of the KidZone Museum, decade long foster care mom for animals through the Humane Society, engagement with the Eddy House for homeless and at risk youth, and co-ownership of truckee love. As a Board Member of Worktempl, Lisa will work to expand our offerings through business partnerships.

board member

Tom Blide

Tom has lived in the Truckee-Tahoe area since 1987 and has been creating alpine landscapes for almost 25 years. He likes to say that he has been playing in the dirt for over 60 years! He started his business with one of his brothers as Blide Brothers Landscape. Tom thought that one day the business might become “Blide and Sons Landscape”, but he had three beautiful daughters who refused to trade in their curling irons and makeup for shovels and dirty fingernails. Needless to say, he is very involved in the Truckee community, and volunteers his time and materials for local trail and school improvements. You will find most of Tom’s design and high-end installation work in Martis Camp, Lahontan, Northstar, and around Truckee and Lake Tahoe.

Tom attributes his success to the hard work provided by his ‘second family’, a core group of five or six men, some of whom have loyally worked with Blide Landscape for over 10 years. Tom knows the value of hard work and he practices what he preaches. His favorite part of the job is being behind the helm of his skid steer or excavator, or on the jobsite planting trees and shrubs, placing pavers or installing irrigation systems. Tom wants to get more involved in his community and is well aware of the acute shortage of laborers and workforce housing in Truckee and surrounding communities today. He supports Worktempl and its mission to help support our local workers with supplemental income so that they may continue to live and work in our community.

board member

Marc A Goddard

Marc was born in San Francisco, California in 1966 and graduated from San Francisco University High School in 1984 and went on to earn a degree in Geography and Economics from the University of Colorado.

Marc started his rafting and kayaking career while in Colorado and deepened his passion over the next 10 years as he worked as a guide and led expeditions in the United States, New Zealand, Costa Rica, Africa, Chile, Turkey, and Siberia. In 1991, Marc was selected to be a member of Team California who won the World Championships of rafting in Costa Rica (‘92), Turkey (‘93) and 4th place in Africa (‘95).

In 1992, after years spent as a guide, trip leader, and manager on rivers around the world, Marc made his dream a reality by founding, with his close friend and business partner Laurence Alvarez-Roos, Bio Bio Expeditions. For 30 years Marc has worked very hard, both in the office and in the field to create a first-rate international adventure travel business. Marc also shared his love for teaching by spending 3 years teaching high school geography. Over the years Marc has seen his business grow to one of the most well-respected adventure travel companies in the industry – selected to provide safety for the 2000 International Whitewater Championships, featured in National Geographic Adventure and Outside Magazines. Marc himself was featured in Paddler Magazine as one of the world’s top 10 most active river guides.

When not working in the office or in the field, Marc can be found backcountry skiing in his home mountains, the Sierra Nevadas, kayaking year-round, mountain biking, or pouring over maps looking for his next great adventure. Marc’s excitement for exploration led Bio Bio to do the first raft descent of the Drangme Chu River in Bhutan in 2009. Marc summited Aconcagua (22.800 ft) in 2001 and Russia’s Mt. Elbrus in 2005. Fondly known as the “Wizard of Whitewater”, he lives in Truckee. CA with his son Quinn, daughter Lilian and two dogs – Shanti and Jeffrey.

Chairman and Treasurer

Lauren Van Loon

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Have general questions or inquiries for our worktempl team? For general information, send an email to info@worktempl.com