I'm obsessed with helping distributed teams create healthy, engaging, and empowering cultures to support the human beings behind the logo.
Fractional People Ops
Contract / August 2020 - Present
As the VP of People is out on maternity leave, I am supporting Torch as a fractional People Operations consultant.
● Created, managed, analyzed, and presented bi-quarterly employee engagement survey to executive team distilling it into patterns, opportunities, and next steps.
● Introduced first company diversity and inclusion survey, with 100% completion.
● Consulted on internal communications around DEI and politics at work.
● Introduced career progression framework and compensation model for a distributed team.
Fractional People Ops
Contract / March 2020 - Present
As a quickly growing team, Shift needed a fractional People Ops lead to support their transition to remote.
● Created a learning and development program for Shift's Customer Success team to understand and then train others on structured interviewing.
● Developed an authentic employer brand strategy to tell more veteran stories.
● Served as an advisor for integrating DEI into people processes and programs.
● Defined strategy and goals for People Ops initiatives informed by 1:1s with team members.
People Ops Advisor
Contract / September 2019 - October 2020
Teal's Chief of Staff was knew to People Ops and I served as an advisor and consultant to her and the rest of the team.
● Built company-wide career progression framework to reinforce core behaviors and advised leadership team on internal communications for rolling it out.
● Introduced team's first employee engagement survey to benchmark People programs.
● Supported team's decision and transition to commit to being fully remote for the future.
● Developed 3-month People Operations Roadmap rooted in qualitative and quantitative employee feedback.
Head of People Ops
July 2017 - August 2019
As the second team member at Tuff, I established founding HR policies and developed employer brand.
• Coached CEO on organizational design, performance management structure, and employee recognition.
• Created employer brand content strategy and ghost-wrote entire 'creating a great place to work' playlist.
• Developed prospective employee packet of essential reads and FAQs for candidates.
• Designed and implemented career progression framework for distributed team.
Head of Customer Experience
September 2016 - July 2017
In this role, I turned my engagement lens outwards and started with the customer. I did this by focusing on internal employee experience.
• Facilitated 3-month process to define values as a team and incorporate into company behaviors.
• Served as team lead, coaching and mentoring the customer experience team through weekly 1:1s and OKRs.
• Advocated for and supported team to transition from in-person to hybrid distributed.
• Brought distributed team together for a 3-day company camping retreat, planning and project managing the internal event.
People Ops Lead
October 2015 - July 2016
As our fully remote team was growing quickly, I founded the People team setting quarterly goals and supporting strategy.
• Hired and developed People team responsible for creating a great working experience.
• Managed internal events from All Hands to international company retreats.
• Created first company-wide internal newsletter sharing wins and upcoming plans for each department.
• Developed onboarding program to help new employees understand and practice team's core values.
Senior Happiness Hero
November 2013 - November 2015
• Served as culture onboarding buddy for new hires.
• Provided feedback and coaching to support and community team members.
I work as a People Ops consultant and fractional team member for organizations looking to build a strong and intentional culture on a distributed team.
I serve as an instructor at Startup Recruiting Bootcamp, specializing in employer brand and content creation. I also help create the curriculum for adult learners.
Since the beginning of COVID, a People Ops partner and I have been facilitating career coaching with individuals to uncover motivations and develop a career narrative.
I have experience stepping into the shoes of a new role and am comfortable with the ambiguity that comes with those new kicks.
I also believe leadership and management are a privilege and a continuous practice, one I work on through my experience with NOLS, New Ventures West, leading teams, and advising people new to People Ops.
Language matters.
And when it comes to making structural and systemic changes to an organization in service of DEI, inclusive language matters.
As Webflow works to empower everyone to create for the web and to support employees in leading fulfilling, impactful lives, the responsibility of reflecting these dual missions in internal communications, employer brand, internal events is important. I see the weight of that responsibility communicated in the job description and would be humbled to serve the Webflow team in this work.
During my time at Buffer, I had the opportunity to create our internal communication strategy. As a remote team that considered our core values in every decision we made, there was a large opportunity to reinforce these behaviors throughout the employee lifecycle - from recruiting to offboarding.
My mind is reeling with ideas for inclusive events to reinforce Webflow's core behaviors. In my roles at Buffer and Hipcamp, I developed experience project managing global events.
With the uncertain context of our larger world right now, more and more people are craving structure and consistency at work. I think there is an opportunity to provide this for people through events.
For example, an annual calendar might look like:
Too often employer brand is viewed as a way to:
1. attract new customers
2. attract new employees
3. communicate internally
However, creating a genuine and authentic employer brand comes from reversing that order.
I am excited to see Internal communications and employer branding together in this role. When creating content for an internal audience, you will naturally include more details and specifics that are unique to your organization. This is the same level of content prospective employees want but - too often - are missing.
I've had the opportunity to practice this during my time at Buffer, Tuff, Startup Recruiting Bootcamp, and consulting with Shift and Torch.
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"Mary is talented, smart, thoughtful, articulate, and has that uncanny sense of knowing what the most high impact thing is to do next—this skill of discernment is so critical at any company, but especially early stage. If you have the chance to work with Mary, do it!!"
"Mary helped build content and training materials and trained our team on structured interviews. We immediately incorporated our new content and we're confident in training others using these tools. Mary is responsive, detail-oriented, and dependable.
Mary has a way with words that draws attention and gets people to engage. She is thoughtful in her approach and strategic in her practice. Mary was a pleasure to work with and always proactive, thinking ahead as to the ways to make improvements. She is a great addition to any team.
