Jen’s a rebel who enjoys scaling businesses, being intentional about cultural development and is obsessed with developing high performing teams and leaders.
Based in New York, she is currently the Chief of Staff to the CHRO at Zip Co, a high growth ASX-listed fintech (ASX:ZIP), and leads the People & Culture teams across North America and International Markets.
Prior to this, she led and built the People & Culture foundations for a number of Australian tech start-ups, including high growth scale up SafetyCulture and earlier in her career was a Senior Management Consultant in Deloitte's consulting practice.
A better world of work for me is when we don’t even use the word ‘work’. In fact I’d like to break up with the ‘future of work’. How do we create a place and space where there’s care, connection and growth like any other community people choose to join?
Wellness is now a large part of the total compensation package - how are we creating a space where people leave better than when they first joined it; day 1 and day to day?
A better world is where there is choice. Choose your own adventure whether it be your career moves, employment constructs (1:many vs 1:1), when and where you want to work, and reward for your impact.
Those who know me well know I’m not a fan of policies or rules. Why hire smart creative people then tell them what to do!? However, I do love policies that set the tone for the business and lead the way. Zip launched a set of inclusive policies which signal how we care for our people and how Zipsters are empowered to make decisions around their wellbeing. Examples include:
There are a couple of big global unlocks for which we all need to ready ourselves to solve; and quite honestly I’m excited:
It takes time, intentionality and investment. We don’t all have the luxury of this, in fact many don’t have any of these. Some tips for those looking to do more with less:
Start with the customer and work backwards. Best place to start is with your customer, your people. If you’re building a better world for them, it’s worth asking what they want.
If you don’t trust or want to hear from the people you have hired…why did you hire them?
I love the work Jessica Zwaan (née Hayes) is doing at Whereby building a remote first company where their team is located across the globe. She open-sources a lot of her work and I admire anyone who generously invests time in giving back to the broader tech and people ecosystem.