VISIONARIES & FOUNDERS

Elle Rustique: Restoring Dignity and Fair Pay with Smart Technology Founder, TipBrightly📍 United States | LinkedIn

Owning Her Mission

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Elle Rustique first made an impression in a pitch competition in 2018 when she won by telling her mother’s story. Her mother immigrated from the Philippines and worked as a hotel housekeeper in a time when tips made a real difference for families. Those small earnings enabled joyful moments like family trips to McDonald’s. Elle saw that many women still face low wages, often earning the federal minimum of $7.25 per hour, while the shift to cashless transactions makes traditional tipping harder than ever.

Determined to solve this challenge, Elle built TipBrightly. The platform uses in‑room QR codes to make cashless tipping easy, and it now operates in 160 locations around the world. The impact has been meaningful. Nine out of ten women working in those locations earn additional income through tips, with average tips ranging from five dollars in typical hotels to fifteen dollars in luxury properties. Elle has taken her mother’s struggle and turned it into a solution that restores dignity and fair compensation to thousands of working women.

Elle’s persistence has defined her journey. Before the pandemic, investors and hotel leaders were skeptical because QR codes were not yet widely adopted and because the problem she addressed affected low‑income workers. She continued to tell the story and refine the solution, connecting with mentors, joining top accelerators, and earning support from leading venture firms. When COVID‑19 made QR codes mainstream, the world was finally ready for what Elle had seen all along.

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