Getting to know Tom Krall: Navy Veteran, Scrum Master, Husband, Father, and our new Community Manager

Workspace’s newest Community Manager brings a wealth of knowledge and people skills to our growing team.

Tom Krall has had a stellar career in business management, coaching, and consulting. He is a Veteran who served in the U.S. Navy for seven years and the Naval Reserve for two. You might also think, as I did, that he’s an avid rugby player given the “Scrum Master” title but boy would you (and I) be wrong.

After leaving his position as VP of Application Development at Fidelity, Tom acquired various certifications for consulting in IT. He then worked on contract-based projects in software agile development, serving as Scrum Master and Product Owner.

scrum.org is “a mission-based organization to help people and teams solve complex problems.” At its most basic, it is a “way to get work done as a team in small pieces at a time, with experimentation and feedback loops along the way.” A Scrum Master is a leader, facilitator, coach, manager, mentor, teacher, impediment remover, and change agent. They must wear different hats depending on the situation or challenge they face. This skillset makes Tom the perfect candidate for the Community Manager role as they are right in line with the responsibilities he will encounter daily at Workspace.

I sat down with Tom to dive deeper into his vast work experience and discover what led him to Workspace.

1. Tell me about your professional background and what led you to pursue a career in the flexible office space industry.

With over 35 years of experience in software development and management, I have been a leader and coach who has worked with some of the leading financial and technology organizations in the world.  I have founded and managed two small IT consulting companies while being a day-to-day consultant.

I am passionate about delivering value to customers, empowering teams, and fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation, and continuous improvement. With that, I was drawn to the opportunity to work with Justin and the Workspace family in a completely different vertical as a second career. I was a satisfied customer at Workspace in the past and am excited to join the team!

2. How do you like spending time when you're not in the office?

I love to spend my free time with family and friends! We enjoy boating and playing golf and keeping healthy!

3. What motivated you to apply for this position and join Workspace?

As I ease into retirement, I have been looking for a different part-time experience that would challenge me outside of IT consulting. As I have been a client of Workspace (Work Station-Cohasset) in the past, I enjoyed the environment and services offered. When I saw that Justin was looking for a Community Manager for the Canton and Braintree locations, I jumped at it!

4. Is there something specific about our company culture or values that resonated with you?

The collaboration, the understanding of the client's needs, the attentiveness to the community within the space, and the daily interactions that I have had.

5. As you start your journey with us, what are some of your short-term and long-term professional goals?

I am looking forward to getting to know the clients at Workspace Braintree and Workspace@45 in Canton, and their needs, and working with them on ways we can improve or augment their experiences.

6. Collaboration is key at Workspace. Can you share an experience from your past roles where you successfully worked as part of a team to achieve a common goal?

From my past experiences, collaboration is critical to successfully delivering software or technical capabilities to an organization. As part of a team focused on delivering value to help an IT organization deliver software more effectively, my team and I received a patent on how to show the client how effective they were (Visual presentation of metrics reflecting lifecycle events of software artifacts -  US 10,310,849 · Issued Jun 6, 2019) and to then implement changes to improve the process.

A Community Manager that holds a patent? I doubt there are many of those around. Tom brings so much to this team. We look forward to getting to know him better and welcome his fresh perspective.

Feel free to reach out and introduce yourselves as Tom settles into this new role. When he's not traveling between our Braintree and Canton locations, Tom lives in Scituate with his wife and has two grown children.