Laurie Cieciuch is Hurricane’s Partnerships Director with responsibility for representing the company across North America, where she is based.
Before joining Hurricane in summer 2023, Laurie had gained over 15 years’ experience within the eCommerce and logistics space, working for organisations including the United States Postal Service, IBC and SEKO in a range of senior roles.
It was initially while working for USPS, with eCommerce growing but still in its infancy, that Laurie started to see how important cross-border delivery was going to become.
After almost three years as a Global Account Manager within USPS’s Global Business team, Laurie was offered the role of Director of eCommerce Parcel Services at IBC, the US-based global provider of customised delivery and transportation solutions.
Laurie said: “This was a great opportunity to work across the cross-border landscape, working with e-tailers and brands looking to grow their businesses. We had year on year growth for nine years and an important part of my role was helping IBC’s customers to source the right technical solutions to enable them to scale in international eCommerce.”
Following a successful decade at IBC, Laurie moved to a new challenge as VP within global logistics provider SEKO’s Global Ecommerce business unit, a key element of SEKO’s drive to be seen as an end-to-end supply chain partner to its customers.
Finally, just over six months ago, we were delighted to welcome Laurie to the Hurricane team, bringing her vast experience of the logistics and eCommerce sectors and the North America market.
Laurie said: “I had met with Hurricane co-founders Martyn Noble and David Spottiswood at a couple of shows in the US so got to hear about the cool things they were doing creating true AI tech to power the customs flow for customers, one of whom was already SEKO.
“I really liked the way Hurricane takes the time to listen to its customers and work in true partnership to deliver the solutions that are going to be most effective.
“Providing complete, accurate and compliant data in customs declarations has never been more critical than today. It can literally make or break the customer experience with poor or missing data resulting in shipments being held or delayed and the imposition of additional charges and penalties.
“Our customers are seeking to achieve scalability in cross-border eCommerce and the only way to achieve this is by adopting AI tech that addresses the issues at lightning quick speeds and accuracy rates of over 99%. Automation of data provision also enables businesses to redeploy personnel on to higher value tasks within their organisation.”
Hurricane has entered 2024 on the back of sustained growth in the last 12 months.
Having firmly established our position as the global leader in the provision of AI-driven tech to customers in the carrier and postal sector, including over 25 national postal operators around the world, the company is well underway with diversification into multiple other sectors, among them customs brokers, freight forwarders, airlines, retailers, marketplaces, as well as professional and financial services.
Hurricane’s true AI systems have been almost eight years in the making and the breadth and depth of our tech’s capability continues to evolve. There will be new releases of Hurricane products this year and we are already working on product innovations for the next 3-5 years.
In recent months we have started to roll out our game-changing all-in-one Kona product, the first product of its kind in the world giving our customers the ability to access product classification, duty and tax calculation, prohibited and restricted goods screening and denied parties screening in one API call.
Laurie added: “We have built a fantastic in-house team of tech talent who are continually pushing boundaries in terms of what is possible and, alongside this, we listen to our customers and work with them to shape our products to meet their specific challenges and opportunities. This is collaborative working at its very best.”
Laurie represents Hurricane’s membership with the International Mail Advisory Group (IMAG), chaired by Kate Muth, and will also be attending the upcoming Manifest event in Las Vegas (Feb 5-7) and World Mail & Express (WMX) Americas Conference in Miami (Feb 18-20).
Please contact her directly if you are also due to be at either of these events and would like to arrange a meeting/call – laurie.cieciuch@hurricanecommerce.com
