I have lived in the Reno-Tahoe area my whole life. My home is here, my heart is here and now my passion. But that wasn’t always the case. Growing up, I never knew how lucky I was to live in such a beautiful place. I complained about camping out with the bears, or pulling onto a random dirt road to ‘explore.’ Adventure didn’t come natural, but I consider myself extremely lucky to have had it drilled into me. I learned to love the beauty in what adventure was to me: stepping out of my comfort zone.
After college, I began working in the hedge fund world; however, it was not the typical environment you think of when you hear ‘hedge fund world.’ It was a team of five running three very successful hedge funds. And I’m not even sure I knew what a hedge fund was at the time. Needless to say, I learned a lot – I had to learn a lot. In a team of five, you wear multiple hats. And I refused to sound like an idiot when a hat was tossed my way, so I said “yes” a lot. And then I sprinted back to my computer and learned just how much I could learn from googling. I forbid myself of saying no, and was extremely fortunate to have some great mentors to help support me in that. In return, I got exposure to almost every side of a business. So much so that when that business moved to California, I was equipped to open my own hedge fund administration business. In addition to this, I also did some accounting/bookkeeping contract work for several start-up tech companies in Silicon Valley. Because, hey, why not?
In 2014 I began discussions with Bristlecone Holdings, a local fintech start-up experiencing rapid growth. I began doing what I had always known and become good at: a little bit of everything. That is essential in a start-up. At that stage, you don’t necessarily need, or have the means to hire, a full time person dedicated to each facet of the business. So you get a generalist that can do a little legal work, the HR, the administration, maybe some product development, and project management. And that’s exactly what I did. But there was something distinctly different about this opportunity – there was concrete plan to grow this thing much, much larger. And with growth comes a demand to specify roles. Consequently; we defined roles very early, and I became the Director of People & Culture.
This adventure did start out very similar to my first professional adventure in that I had never done this before. It was out of my comfort zone, yet saying “yes” was one of my favorite decisions to date. Saying yes meant embarking on a new journey, learning and understanding what company culture meant and trying navigate how to implement and maintain a culture that fit us best. At Bristlecone Holdings, I set out on my most profound adventure yet: my adventure with Company Culture. Typical companies would call what I am doing HR, but with this opportunity, I was given the freedom to create my own HR approach and philosophy. I got a chance to humanize human resources, and place focus on company culture and employee engagement in order to minimize some of the dreaded issues you may associate with HR. I was given a chance to change the stigma around HR. I won’t lie, I have made some mistakes along the way, but I have also had some great wins. And they are all too good not to share. As Director of People and Culture, I have found my passion.
Unpaved Venture 