Listen to this article

A business leader from the Garden State is blazing a trail and helping to share her story with other young, aspiring women. Amanda Pietrocola’s career so far has been nothing short of remarkable – starting as an intern at South Amboy startup TelTech Systems, working her up way up the ladder through a number of roles to product manager of the company’s flagship app before a lifechanging moment.

“In 2018, I had the opportunity of a lifetime to actually acquire that product and start Momentum Technology at the age of 27,” Pietrocola recently told NJBIZ. “So, it’s been a very exciting journey going from literally intern to CEO before 30 – building a team. We’re a team of 14 now at Momentum.”

Momentum Technology was founded in New Jersey, has an office at Bell Works in Holmdel and has since expanded – with Pietrocola serving as president and CEO.

“We specialize in the protection of your personal data and helping you also maintain personal privacy by utilizing our mobile apps that let you essentially take your office line anywhere,” she explained. “So, you can call from your cell phone, but show your office line as your caller ID, or maybe a secondary number, a landline, or maybe a second phone that you maybe just don’t want to carry with you. We have had nearly 7 million people utilize our service. And then we also have some B2B services that we are expanding to help the telecom industry mitigate fraud and do better with their risk prevention.”

She said that being a business owner has come with highs and lows, especially, of course, while navigating the pandemic. “2020 definitely threw every business owner a curve ball – just learning how to adapt to that remote work life,” said Pietrocola. “We were really fortunate because we are a tech company, we were used to work-from-home Fridays already. So, it just became work-from-home every day. And now we have a hybrid model which is working great – where we are working two days in the office, three days at home. For us, we’ve actually found everyone’s more productive, happier, better mental health – because they have some downtime at home, not battling traffic every day. Our teams are spread out between New Jersey, Minnesota and Tennessee – Nashville area.”

Earlier this year, Pietrocola was named as a 2023 honoree on JPMorgan Chase’s 100 Women to KNOW in America list. She is also founder of Momentum Impact, the philanthropic branch of her company that is dedicated to giving back. Since 2021, Momentum Impact has given more than $250,000 to charities worldwide.

In addition to those business and philanthropic credentials, Pietrocola has taken part in different leadership discussions and events over the last few months, including one in August that was hosted by Momentum Technology and NextTech Communications, a women-led integrated communications agency – also based at Bell Works – that aims to break barriers and redefine boundaries through technology.

The “Creating a Culture of Greatness” lunch and learn session, held at Bell Works, featured a discussion led by Pietrocola that worked to provide tangible ways to create such an environment within an organization – from those just starting out all the way through to the C-suite.

Pietrocola said that the discussion centered on five points about how to do that: to be a person of your word; be solution-minded, not problem-oriented; be someone who cares about growing your emotional IQ; be a thermostat, not a thermometer because thermostats set the temperature; and to live work-life balance, not just preach it.

The discussion, Pietrocola said, yielded a lot of great questions and productive dialogue. “The practical, key takeaways that I gave – I also included lots of – here’s easy ways to do it and implement it,” she said. “And also kicking it off by having everyone understand that the responsibility of creating this culture starts with every single one of them. It’s not this – oh it’s someone else’s job. It is – all of us together are responsible for creating this culture that we want.”

On the issue of work-life balance, Pietrocola shared a story at the event about going on a family cruise early in her career and missing so many memories because she was logged in to work the whole time. “I look back at that trip and don’t necessarily remember the inside jokes that were made or the ports that we stopped at, or the family memories made,” she said. “What I remember is logging in and working. And how important it is for us to regain that work-life balance that really, I think, has been lost with remote work. People have gotten used to being available 24/7 – always connected.”

She said that the event participants were given a brief tease, which she also shared with NJBIZ, about Call from Work, a new app that her company is launching to combat that very issue. “It will give people the ability to be even more productive at work while also giving them hours back of their time after-hours,” she explained, noting that the participants at the event were given a QR code to be part of the beta pre-release.

“What it does is it allows you to virtually transport any phone number that you own or operate into our app so you can take it with you anywhere you go,” said Pietrocola. “So, within 60 seconds or less, you can verify your desk phone in our app and then be able to use it as your caller ID on your outbound calls from your cell. You can record your phone calls from it. Perfect for journalists, especially, or anyone who is traveling and needs to record phone calls. And then one of the features that we are really excited about – and most people’s eyes lit up when I shared it – is we have a feature called straight to voicemail, which I have not seen in any other apps thus far. Let’s say I have a chatty Cathy that I have to call back and I don’t have an hour to be on the phone. I can enable straight to voicemail. And when I call her – instead of her being able to answer – it will just shoot you right to her voicemail.”

While there is no official launch date yet, more details about the app and how to sign up for the pre-release can be found on the website CallfromWork.com.

“That will be our beta launch. We want to hear feedback. We want to make it something that people really find value in to help with that work-life balance,” she explained.

In April, Pietrocola participated in another leadership event – the inaugural NJ Women in Technology Forum – also held at Bell Works and organized and hosted by NextTech Communications in partnership with TechUnited:NJ and the Bell Works Co-Lab – bringing together more than 60 guests and a panel of female technology leaders that included Pietrocola as well as Jenna Gaudio, COO and co-president of Vydia; Jasmine Ward, vice president of strategy & operations at TechUnited:NJ; and Janine Savarese, founder and CEO of NextTech Communications, who served as moderator.

Pietrocola said she plans to continue organizing and participating in these types of events as well as the general dialogue around these subjects and issues – noting that she loves sharing what she has learned and can hopefully help people in the process.

“I do talk a lot about this – almost on a daily basis on my LinkedIn and just kind of these nuggets of wisdom of what I’ve learned being in leadership, running a business – having been an employee in the past,” Pietrocola explained. “So, I understand both sides of it.”

As the conversation wrapped up, Pietrocola circled back to and stressed her earlier point about how vital work-life balance is, which served as the impetus for her company’s forthcoming Call from Work app.

“People resonate with the fact that it is an issue – being remote and employers thinking that it is progress that their team is always reachable,” said Pietrocola. “And it’s not. That should not be the case. People deserve to have lives outside of work.”