Simone Okafor-Lafleur
Program Director, Non-Profit Education · 11-50
1 review written · 5.0 average
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Reviews by Simone Okafor-Lafleur
★★★★★
Running a small education non-profit means I'm rarely at a desk. Most of my work happens on a tablet at a coffee shop, on my phone between transit stops, or on a laptop borrowed from whoever's around. That's the context in which Toptal has genuinely impressed me. Every single step of the process, from filling out the talent brief to reviewing candidate profiles to messaging back and forth with my matched developer, worked without friction on mobile. I wasn't expecting that. Most staffing platforms treat mobile as an afterthought, and I've learned to just wait until I'm back at a desktop. Here, I didn't have to wait once.
We're only about six weeks in, and my small programs team has already onboarded one part-time UX designer and one developer for an accessibility project tied to our learning platform. The 48-hour match turnaround is real, not marketing copy. Both matches came back on time, and the candidates were exactly appropriate for an organization with limited budget and very specific needs around inclusive design. The no-risk two-week trial period was the thing that pushed me over the edge to try this. For a non-profit that has to justify every dollar to a board, that guarantee matters enormously.
The one area I'd flag is cost. Toptal is not cheap, and if you're a small education org with thin margins, you'll need to budget carefully and make the case internally. That said, the quality of talent and the speed of placement have made it worth the stretch for us. Customer service has been attentive and genuinely responsive to questions I had about how contracts work across provinces. Solid experience, especially for anyone managing a distributed team from wherever life puts them that day.
