Combining Security and User Experience: How Elizabeth Windram Is Leading CLEAR’s Platform Expansion

When Elizabeth Windram is about to board a flight, she steps up to a CLEAR kiosk, scans her boarding pass and her eyes, then scoots to the front of the security line. 

“As a longtime CLEAR member, I had admired and loved CLEAR’s experience — it has saved me many times from missing a flight,” said Windram. 

CLEAR is a secure identity company that started with identity verification at airport checkpoints but is quickly expanding into other industries like sporting events, healthcare and financial services. Windram joined the company in 2023 to help grow the business and elevate the brand to new heights. Since starting, she’s overseen the rollout of CLEAR’s newest identity standard, NextGen Identity+. Windram’s role leading marketing and communications is to showcase how CLEAR’s technology can make daily activities — from navigating airport security to checking in at the rental car facility, from accessing your health records to ordering a beer at the sports stadium — safer and easier. 

“Security doesn’t have to come at the expense of a seamless experience, and that’s what we are striving to prove and create,” she noted. 

NextGen Identity+ is intended to create a faster and more streamlined experience for CLEAR users. Built In spoke with Windram about the new technology and what it’s been like to join the team at CLEAR. 

How does CLEAR compare to other companies in how it builds and launches new products?

Elizabeth Windram

EVP of Marketing and Communications • CLEAR

CLEAR sets itself apart with its obsession with the customer experience. At CLEAR, we all report directly to the customer, and the process of building and launching new products here starts with anticipating and addressing the evolving needs of our members. There is a relentless pursuit of excellence at CLEAR that ensures we offer our customers value. We aim to surprise and delight, building trust in our brand with every experience. 

When did you know you made the right choice in joining CLEAR?

From the moment I met our CEO, Caryn Seidman-Becker, I knew I wanted to be a part of CLEAR. The magical piece for me, as a comms and marketing leader, is that CLEAR’s strong brand DNA guides our business actions and creates the customer experience.  That commitment has been there since the beginning, and it’s not every founder and CEO that recognizes how critical this is for success. 

“The magical piece for me, as a comms and marketing leader, is that CLEAR’s strong brand DNA guides our business actions and creates the customer experience.” 

It was getting to know the team here and working alongside the leaders at CLEAR that reaffirmed I was absolutely in the right place. 

How have you hit the ground running since you joined, and what are you most excited to accomplish next?

Since joining the marketing and communications team, what we affectionately call the MarCom team, I dove head first into understanding the wants and needs of our customers and into our work delivering a new set of seamless, friction-free experiences. 

We’re especially thrilled that NextGen Identity+ just launched — the highest-fidelity digital identity, which will unlock physical and digital experiences for our members in the airport and beyond. NextGen Identity+ builds on our advanced identity verification technology and multifactor authentication enrollment process, and validates identity documents back to the issuing source for the first time at scale. 

This new standard will create an even faster, more predictable airport experience for our members by allowing them to keep moving through the CLEAR Lane and lay the groundwork for the CLEAR Lane of the Future. Stay tuned in 2024 for the roll out of the new CLEAR Lane experience.

Why did CLEAR build NextGen Identity+? 

Whether you find yourself at the airport, at the doctor’s office or connecting with people on LinkedIn, identity is foundational to how we live and work. CLEAR started in travel, but the vision has always been to build a secure identity company obsessed with the customer experience — and to go beyond travel so that you could use CLEAR in all the things that you do in your everyday life. 

With NextGen Identity+, CLEAR members will have access to the most advanced digital identification standard. NextGen Identity+ is integral as we create the most predictable, friction-free experiences in travel and beyond for our nearly 19 million members. 

What is the employee value proposition for those thinking about joining CLEAR? What impact does working there have on someone’s career?

As a member of the CLEAR team, you truly contribute to groundbreaking solutions that redefine how people live, work and travel. This year alone, the team has brought CLEAR’s technology and experience working in highly regulated industries far beyond the airport to healthcare, financial services and LinkedIn to create a more frictionless world. 

We launched free, verified identity badges to LinkedIn’s 248 million members in the United States, Canada and Mexico to provide consumers and businesses with additional comfort that the people they encounter on LinkedIn are real and represented authentically. 

We entered the financial services industry by launching one of the only reusable “Know Your Customer” solutions that simultaneously minimizes user friction and mitigates the risk of fraud. 

We launched partnerships with a handful of leading health institutions to “replace the clipboard” and allow patients to seamlessly access and control their health information — our technology prevents patients from filling out tedious paperwork, saves providers time having to manually process that paperwork and empowers healthcare heroes to spend more time providing care. 
 

CLEAR team members are indefatigable problem-solvers who embrace change and turn big ideas into bold decisions. They enjoy endless opportunities to dream up revolutionary solutions with real-life, tangible applications. We’re always looking for new ways to power friction-free living — and more doers to help us get there.
 

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