Successfully lead org and leadership development of Roblox and the evolution of it culture through a growth trajectory from ~600 to ~2200 employeesI was the senior exec and crisis manager responsible for guiding Roblox through the 2020 pandemic. Effectively transitioned a company that traditionally had an almost pure in-the-office culture to a fully remote environment while staying productive, innovative and taking care of our employees. Responsible for the People side of getting Roblox ready for Roblox’ IPO. Originally planned as a traditional IPO late 2020 we transitioned successfully to a Direct Listing on short notice in March 2021.Other projects: Roll out a new performance management system with an absolute rating scale, upskill people leaders (upward feedback survey, community of practice, training, etc.).

SmartThings was acquired by Samsung in 2014. It retained its independence growing to about 300 people. As Head of People I’m responsible for evolving SmartThings’ leadership, culture and organization to retain the advantages of a startup, making them available to the Samsung businesses while letting SmartThings take advantage of Samsung’s scale and experience.Selected AccomplishmentsImproved leadership effectiveness from front line leaders to executive teams.Realizing the impact people leaders have on the performance of their teams, we defined clear, aspirational expectations and rolled out a comprehensive training & coaching program to equip people leaders to make their teams more impactful and capable. Rebuilt and simplified executive team to focus limited bandwidth on most impactful topics, have necessary candid conversation and make data driven decisions at a good speed. Evolved culture of SmartThings: Shift locus of success from small start up in its own market to using Samsung’s scale and experience. Create mutual understanding of cultural differences between US startup and Korean enterprise while retaining advantages of an autonomous unit (speed, innovativeness, risk taking, data-driven decision making)Revamped Performance Management and Compensation philosophy: Simplification to set the right incentives for leaders, differentiate comp outcomes and ensure that that the most impactful team members are rewarded, recognized and retained.Rebuilt the Talent Acquisition Team: Improve quality of hire/selection process, engage and involve hiring managers, introduce metrics for performance and quality. HR BP Team: Upskilled HR BPs with a focus on leadership effectiveness, organizational design and performance/comp systems. This allows each HR BP to partner well with their clients, confidently influence leaders and stand their ground to hold them accountable for building and evolving high-performing teams and organizations.

My team at MZ guides overall People and Talent Acquisition (TA) Strategy, runs all People Operations services, as well as drives Technology and BI/Analytics for the people space. My primary objective is to develop the people team at MZ into an organization that is among the best in terms of focus on business impact, quantitative thinking and analytical decision making. To do so, we have to walk a fine line implementing just enough structure/process to allow MZ to scale well while retaining a good amount of flexibility and willingness to take risks so MZ can change and innovate at a fast pace across it different lines of business. All while delivering a great employee experience.Selected Projects:Built people strategy process to ensure alignment of people priorities and business strategy. Resulted in a clear focus and priorities for People team.Designed and rolled out structured bi-annual Org and Workforce Planning program enabling leadership decision making to flexibly reallocate people and change org structure as business priorities change.Designed and implement comprehensive reporting/analytics solution across MZ’s people space. Trained leadership and whole people team on tools/analytical thinking. “Show me the numbers.” is now common parlance.Revamped TA strategy/roadmap with a focus on quality of hire (correlating candidate characteristics to performance outcomes after hire) and recruiter productivity. Revamped leadership development programs to focus on a well defined leadership model, accountability of leaders and making outcomes measurable.

Transformational project working directly with Google’s global head of People Operations (POps) Laszlo Bock. Since its inception, POps has had dramatic influence on shaping Google’s people practices and culture, contributing to Google’s business success while leading and redefining the HR industry. My team’s objective was to reposition the HRBP org to deal even better with Google’s ongoing growth trajectory and increasingly diverse set of business ventures. We wanted to significantly improve the capabilities and quality of leadership the people organization was providing to its clients (business leaders across Google) supporting them with their org-level needs and challenges, setting a new standard for how HR can most impactfully support business strategy. At the same time, we wanted to focus on making support for Googlers and managers even more scalable while retaining a high quality of service.My team drove the project from inception through case for change, to analysis and design handing over to future leadership while implementing. During design the project consisted of 8 work streams with 40+ people across 10+ teams collaborating effectively.

Across most of its businesses Google’s extended workforce plays a key role in delivering services and achieving business objectives. This project was formed to better coordinate and align Google’s activities in this space, balancing short-term business needs with long-term strategic considerations across Google. This included optimizing spend, streamlining vendor portfolios, developing vendor capabilities, consolidated location strategy, simplifying processes, etc. As Project Director, I worked with leadership across Google People Operations, Finance, Procurement, Strategy and business teams with large contingent workforce populations to get buy-in for the transformation. We built a case for change, designed a future-state operating model and a consolidated organization with clear accountabilities and objectives for the extended workforce space. Starting implementation in late 2015 the new structure and services successfully went live in early 2016 meeting an ambitious savings target in its first year of operations.

My team is responsible for Google’s overall HR operations and related technology/BI globally. We provide HR related services to Googlers and other internal user groups (e.g. HR BPs) and design related policies and programs. Our scope includes “LifeCycle” (traditionally called HRIS), Internal Mobility, Onboarding, Benefits, Compensation Ops, L&D Ops and Contingent Labor.We find a thoughtful balance between the need to do things efficiently at scale while allowing for flexibility and customization. Our culture allows us to react to changing needs very quickly and do so with an excellent user experience, approaching our users with a supportive, can-do attitude.Over the course of 7 years I guided our growth from 10+ people to a globally integrated organization with 150+ people in three global hubs with 24/5 follow-the-sun coverage. We built a strong leadership bench that allows us to deal with the growth in volume and complexity effectively. Customer satisfaction (with high client expectations) is above 95% satisfied. We have delivered 10%+ productivity improvement year over year.Here are a few project highlights:**Rolled out contingent labor management program with one VMS and one MSP globally. Significantly improved user experience, time-to-hire as well as visibility/analytical capabilities.**Replaced Google’s internally built Core HR system with Workday HCM. Global “big bang” cutover with virtually no business interruption (we onboarded 200+ people the Monday of go-live without a hiccup). Improvement in HR productivity, in particular leave administration and regional needs.**Implemented a comprehensive Information Security Program for PeopleOps (Google’s HR organization), combining awareness, training, regular self-audits and bi-annual structured process/tools/systems reviews.Other topics I worked on:Compensation planning, accessibility for systems/services, Open Enrollment, SarbOx, internal audit, benefits vendor integration, incident response team.

I joined Siemens’ North American Corporate HR Leadership team, responsible for people and HR strategy across Siemens’ 15+ SBUs. My role was to build and lead the newly created HR strategy, analytics and systems team. Primary focus was to drive the evolution of the HR function within Siemens towards a stronger business and talent focus and a more strategic outlook while strengthening cohesion of people related strategies across the SBUs. Over the course of two+ years we implemented an annual HR/People strategy process to evolve and elevate practices/philosophy around hiring, people development, compensation/rewards as well as HR service delivery, prioritizing initiatives, setting and measuring objectives and metrics. This involved a systematic assessment of the business situation and talent needs of the SBUs in cooperation with their respective HR leadership.The most brilliant strategies will be useless if one doesn’t have reliable and timely data to plan, measure and correct. To support our ability to set strategic objectives and measure the results, we set up a team to design, build and operate an “Analytical HR Data Warehouse”. We consolidated transactional data from 10+ operational systems into a format that could be used by analysts across Siemens to effectively query people/HR related information and plan/manage HR initiatives quantitatively. We developed and successfully rolled out a framework and set of dashboards for “people management” data (e.g. succession planning, recruiting effectiveness) and HR operational data (cost, transaction speed) that was used by 100+ HR managers and analysts across Siemens.Major Learning: To run a corporate function across a diverse set of BU clients as an enabler to the business (not as a burden) requires a lot of flexibility and thoughtfulness, but mostly a deep understanding of the specific objectives and strategies of each business and the ability to listen and communicate well with their leadership.

I joined the Siemens’ “Shared Services” unit as its first CIO/Head of IT. With 400+ employees in 5 locations the unit supported 15+ Siemens BUs across NA. It provided ~30 service lines across Finance (AP, AR, T&E), HR (Payroll, HR Services, Relo, Immigration), Procurement (incl. Travel & Supply Chain).Primary objectives: (1) Setup application management team and strategy to support Siemens’ landscape of ERP-type applications in Finance, HR and Procurement (SAP, PeopleSoft). (2) Compliance/controls framework to meet standards of client SBUs (SarbOx, COBIT, InfoSec, Business Continuity). (3) Provide reliable, effective IT infrastructure. A few highlights:**Consolidated HR/Payroll system from 10+ island solutions to one central PeopleSoft System, providing services for 70k Siemens employees in the US, saving $M2.5, allowing for meaningful HR reporting.**Implemented central AP solution across Siemens. With direct vendor integration scanning/OCR, we reduced manual effort by 40% while improving accuracy and speed.**Rolled out innovative customs clearing process/system for imports, reducing time held in customs from ~10 days to 3 days.**Implemented T&E processing service line based on an internally developed, innovative T&E reporting system, one of the early T&E systems that imported/interpreted credit card data improving user experience.**Used COBIT governance framework to establish IT controls. Successfully completed three rounds of SarbOx reviews.**Opened Bangalore location for app management team to increase capacity and allow for quicker turnaround. 60% of development work was successfully delivered from there, saving $K800 per year.**Comprehensive InfoSec program combining technical measures with broad training/awareness. Program was later used as a template for US-wide information security campaign.Major learning: The difference in impact between average teams and great teams is not measured in incremental percentages but in orders of magnitude.

As my first job after school, I joined Siemens’ “Corporate Procurement” organization responsible for consolidation of indirect material procurement and supplier relations across NA. As an analyst and later program manager I was responsible for (1) data warehousing initiatives for procurement data as well as (2) driving the technology strategy/roadmap for corporate procurement applications across the Siemens BUs. “e-commerce” was just emerging at that time. I primarily supported the Travel and Fleet department.Some accomplishments:**Designed and implemented the first “Travel Data Warehouse”, consolidating travel and fleet spend data across US BUs. At a travel spend of $M100, having reliable, timely data allowed us to create an additional savings of $M4 annually. This initiative won the “Windows NT Innovators Award” industry recognition in 1998. It was later used as a blueprint for a global “Business Intelligence” program within Siemens, covering $B2 in travel spend.**Rolled out a web-based online travel booking system for Siemens in the US in 1999 to 20K travelers, saving ~$M1 in travel agency cost while making travel booking more convenient and transparent for our travelers. Selecting “e-travel” as our partner, we were an early mover in the industry. **Implemented an automated survey tool to assess traveler satisfaction at scale so we could work with our preferred partners on improving their services and resolve hot spot problems. To make this survey as easy as possible to complete for travelers we used an innovative way to extract the traveler’s actual itinerary from the airline reservation system and then presented it in a user friendly way to allow easy entry. 2000+ survey submissions per month gave us a comprehensive and insightful data set, improving our ability to manage service delivery with our preferred partners.Major Learning: Motivated, innovative people working against an ambitious, compelling vision can quickly get to very impactful results.