Here at Dockshare, we pride ourselves on having a team that is creative, open-minded, and has a passion for diversifying the boating community and expanding access to our waterways. Marketing Specialist, Laura, is no exception to that! Laura joined our team in the spring of 2022, but her vision for Dockshare started long before she even knew Dockshare existed! 

Laura is an avid kayaker. She has paddled hundreds of miles around the flat waters of Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. 

“I have this goal of paddling around the whole Delmarva peninsula,” she says. “It’s about 650 miles and I am slowly chipping away at it in 8-12 mile chunks. But I found that in some areas, there weren’t enough public boat ramps.”

Instead of paddling 30-40 mile stretches, Laura got creative. She started searching for waterfront homes on AirBnB in the areas where there were no public access points. “I’ve done it twice now, and it’s so funny sending these hosts messages and explaining to them what I want to do. Like hey, I don’t want to book your house, but can I pay you to just park my car and launch my kayak?”

In the fall of 2020, Laura came up with the idea of launching an “airbnb for kayak launches” program. “I had no idea how I was going to make it happen, but the idea was there and I couldn’t stop thinking about it.”

Fast forward to early 2022 when Demcy, Dockshare’s social media coordinator, launched the brand ambassador program. Demcy contacted Laura through instagram to see if she would be interested in becoming a brand ambassador.

“When I got Demcy’s initial message and learned about Dockshare,” Laura explains, “I was like ‘holy cow!’ I had the SAME idea for kayak launches!” 

After a few conversations with the rest of the Dockshare team, we quickly realized that Laura shared our same passions for expanding access to waterways. She also happened to have some marketing experience, which is exactly what we were looking for at the time, and well, the rest is history.

With Laura’s help, we are making Dockshare so much more than just a service to help boaters find docks. We are expanding places for paddlers to launch and places for anyone to access the water, whether it’s for fishing, crabbing, or just enjoying a waterfront sunset. Check out our other blogs on paddling and water access.

To learn more about Laura’s personal paddling goal, check out her personal kayaking blog here.