Jason Berry

Principal & Co-Founder

The spark. The glow. That twinkle in the eye. It's what topLingo co-founder Jason Berry looks for when screening new hires. It's part of his unique approach to recruitment. "When I interview applicants, I don't let them talk about themselves," he explains. "I already know their skills, their history. Instead I tell them about topLingo, and I look for the spark."

It was that very spark that spurred Berry to co-found topLingo with associate Mike Glezos in the Spring of 2001. The future partners met through freelance assignments over the course of a decade in web development. Berry, the programming prodigy, former mathematics major at U.C. San Diego, needed a creative front-end designer. Glezos, the visual guru, art school graduate, needed a quick-thinking developer.

What Berry recognized in Glezos was more than a complementary skill set. It was a shared set of values. Too often, Berry laments, "People separate business from personal ethics. I define myself by my business practices." Perhaps it's fitting, then, that topLingo’s momentous growth spurred Berry to migrate from programming into business development. No one makes a more effective salesman than the owner of the company, Berry believes, "Because nobody believes in what you can produce better than the owner."

Though topLingo continues expanding at a steady clip, Berry is adamant that his company not decay into another "cubicle farm," churning out uninspired work and grinding up employee morale. He insists on providing his employees with room for lives outside of the office. At the same time, "You won't see a foosball table in here," Berry says of topLingo's decidedly Gen-X digs in Irvine, California. "There's important work to be done."

With half a decade in software development under his belt, Berry has some sympathy for the Corporate America mindset. Nonetheless, he considers topLingo's dynamic small-business culture ideal for producing innovation. By emphasizing people skills over production, Berry notes, "We retain and nurture talent, as opposed to people clocking their year and moving on." Indeed, topLingo's culture of empowerment does more than keep turnover rates among the lowest in the industry. According to Berry, it also promotes a sense of pride in the work. As he freely acknowledges, "A lot of times I'll say to our guys, Here's the project, and they'll tell me what the right tools and technology are for the job."

For Berry, the sense of accomplishment is mutual. "I am infinitely more proud of what we've done here at topLingo than any of my prior work," he admits.