We proudly welcome Gavin Crynes to the Pavilion team as our Business Operations Manager. Gavin's impressive background spans from founding the innovative workplace catering company, Just Fare, to making significant contributions to Pronto—a startup committed to advancing restroom accessibility for mobile workers. Delve into Gavin's story to uncover the motivations behind joining Pavilion, his diverse outdoor hobbies, and more!
Why Pavilion?
First and foremost, I’m inspired by Pavillion’s vision to improve lives at scale by making government purchasing work better. Before Pavilion, I co-founded an office catering company. During the pandemic, with 95% of our revenue wiped out overnight, we scrambled to find a way to keep the lights on and eventually got a 15 month contract with the County of Alameda to do emergency food distribution to local communities. This government contract saved our business and allowed us to support many people in need, but also showed me the power of government contracts to transform a business. I am excited about the opportunity at Pavilion to make government contracts more accessible to small businesses across the country.
What do you like to do when you’re not working?
I like to get outside near mountains and water. A perfect weekend for me is camping in a fairly hard-to-get-to place - whether that is backpacking or kayak camping. One of my favorite places is a special reservoir up near Bear Valley that we go to every year with a group of friends. You paddle out with all of your gear and set up wherever you find a spot that you like - no permits, no reservations. My wife, Molly, and I got engaged at that reservoir and hope to bring our future kids there for years to come :)
What’s something someone who didn’t know you wouldn’t expect about you?
I’ve moved six times and went to nine different schools before the end of high school. I lived in Connecticut, SF Bay Area (2x), Paris, New Jersey, Sydney and Seattle. To pre-empt your questions…
Was one of your parents in the military? No, my dad was in IT.
What was your favorite place you lived? Seattle, it was my formative high school years and the city is awesome.
Was it hard making new friends so many times? Not really and I didn’t always have to because I'm actually an identical twin, so I always had at least 1 friend every place we moved.
Words to live by?
“Attack THIS day with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind.” - Jack Harbaugh
Jack Harbaugh is former football player/coach and, more famously, the father of two football coaches Jim Harbaugh (currently Univ of Michigan, former SF 49ers and Stanford) and John Harbaugh (Baltimore Ravens). Highly recommend you taking 2min to hear about the origin of the quote.
The quote sticks with me because it reminds me 1) to be thankful for the life I have and 2) how much your mental attitude can impact how you show up in the world.
