Lioness Tile: A Shared History

This story begins with friendship, fortune and a humble desire to do something meaningful.

Nearly six years ago, Manpreet and I joined the same Silicon Valley based cloud consulting firm at nearly the same time. Over the years we developed friendship, respect and admiration. We were remarkably similar and yet were able to share perspectives that came from growing up in very different places.

Lioness started out with a simple idea and questions that began with Is it possible…? What if we…?

Bold and maybe a bit irrational to imagine a couple of ‘tech guys’ transforming a centuries old tradition.

We had been fortunate in our careers and wanted to be sure, that in our second acts, we did something meaningful in the world.

The goals were high:

• Finest Quality in the World: design a handcrafted process that would created the highest quality tile in the world. It wasn’t enough to believe so, we had to have leading university professors test it.
• Impactful Design: We wanted to create designs that illicit desire. We needed options that were modern with clean lines and current. We also wanted to represent timeless designs that will endure for ages.
• Social Good: It wasn’t enough to make the finest tiles in stunning designs, we needed this venture to make an impact on the world at whatever scale it could.

It wouldn’t have been possible without the mission focus. Quickly we brought in Manpreet’s wife, Daminder, who provided the clarity and passion for training women artisans. She now runs Lioness and Manpreet and I support the team.

The passion for the mission allowed our team to expand into a group of people dedicated to answering all open questions and to designing a world class organization that would make our vision for what could be come true.

The power of a purpose built organization is amazing. Manpreet and I only lit the fire. Now we are focused on opening this mission up to more customers, employees and supporters globally.