Marco Labs Episode 6: Ritualizing the Process with Jenn Cornelius

In the sixth episode of Marco Labs, we’re chatting with Jenn Cornelius, Chief People Officer at direct-to-consumer brand Ritual—all about her background as a people leader, culture and growth at Ritual, and the future of work.

The modern workplace at Ritual: Employee choice

As a growing company with shifting processes, the Ritual team is staying fluid and adopting a mindset of continual growth— observing, listening to feedback,  and making changes along the way. The team has found that many employees are happy to continue doing much of their work at home, and coming back into the office when they’re looking to socialize and collaborate in-person.

Key takeaways

As Chief People Officer, the way that the Ritual team works is always top-of-mind for Jenn, and she’s shared some learnings and takeaways with Marco

1. People bring their whole selves to work.

Whether or not this is something that management wants to acknowledge, people’s lives will inherently impact the way that they work.

“It’s really important to me that organizations value the people that they are, and allow humans to be humans. And that we find ways to create a safe space, ideally, a brave space if I'm quoting Brené Brown, that tells those people to show up and be their whole self.”

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2. Best-in-class should permeate everything that you do.

We so often think of a company as being best-in-class because of a company's revenue, but companies should strive to be the best in every way they can.

“It’s in everything you do, you’re seeking to continuously improve and be incredible in your space.”

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3. Culture is everyone's job.

As Chief People Officer, Jenn believes that culture should be something that’s on every employee’s mind, since everyone contributes to it, together.

“I think everybody in an organization has a responsibility to contribute to the culture in some way. They're actively engaging with each other day to day and it can be a positive force for change and for outcomes with every decision that we make. Culture is, in my mind, going to be the thing that makes or breaks a company.”

Jenn's Pro Hybrid Tip

People are complex, unpredictable, and always changing — so it makes sense that culture will, too. For Jenn at Ritual, a way to approach this challenge has been through active experimentation, continually checking-in on culture, and monitoring sentiment, and above all knowing that it’s something that can always be strengthened and improved.

Read the Full Case Study

Find Jenn's full case study (and half a dozen more) in our recently published Future of Workplace Culture Ebook. Grad your copy here! 

Take it on the go

Listen to Episode 6 on Spotify:

Rather read than listen? 

We’ve included a transcript of this episode below.

Suman:

Hi everyone. My name is Suman. I am the CEO and co-founder of Marco, which is an experiences platform that helps companies and teams find best-in-class experiences. As part of that, we've started a podcast called Marco Labs, in which basically we interview the creators that are part of our platform to tell the stories about why they're passionate about what they do.

To tell their stories about the companies they've worked with, the experience that I've had, especially as the future of work shifts. And so,, super excited for this particular episode, because we have Jenn Cornelius, who is not only a really accomplished people leader, but also an advisor for Marco. So we know each other pretty well.

Sometimes these conversations are more introductory and we're getting to know each other, but Jenn and I talk pretty frequently. So this should be super. And with that, we always start off just kind of by introductions. And so I know about your background, of course, Jenn, but we'd love to kind of hear about your career, what kind of the different places you've worked while you're passionate about the people's space, and just, you know, allow us to get to know you.

Jenn:

Perfect Suman, thank you so much for having me. And as he mentioned, we do know each other well, so I'll try to make sure I'm digging into details, because I know he knows some of them, but the goal is to share with you. And, yeah, I feel really grateful to have this conversation.

So, a little bit about me. So I actually started my early career in operations and I think it's important because it sort of helps How I think about the world and the work today. Um, my very first job was as a sales associate at a clothing store and I loved customer service. And I still now have, you know, have really thought through how do I make choices that allow me to interact with people and to serve customers and, um, and to do work that allows me to be close to the customer.

So started out early career in operations at one point, you know, moved into training and then that sort of transitioned into HR, and worked with brands early on like Starbucks, where I learned about a really incredible employee experience and how to really deeply connect with people. I also worked with Apple for many years as an HR professional at Apple, I did lots of different things in the HR realm, but I really developed a passion that has sort of served me the last 10 to 15 years now. And that is around kind of the org development and org effectiveness space. And so, you know, Apple's a really interesting company, right? Cause it's big, it's complex, you know, it's organized by verticals. There's a lot of people, so there's a lot of fun people work that exists within the organization.

And I think having an operational lens as an HR person is useful because you can look at the business and understand that people are an asset, not a commodity I'm in the business, and really think about how you maximize their skills and gifts. And so I got to do a lot of that at Apple, and then my life changed.

And, at Apple, I had all my life events. I got married. I had all three of my children. My girls, one of my daughters was diagnosed with cancer and also that same daughter passed away in 2017. And that was a really important life moment because even though Apple was really incredible in supporting me and forever grateful for the experiences I had, because of the nature of the work I had and the kind of travel and the scope in a big company, it just for me became more than, than what I was willing to kind of give up. And so, I took a turn far right and left this really incredible big job and decided to do something really different.

And I went to a small, fast casual startup called Sweetgreen. Had never done food before. I've never been a Chief People Officer before. So I was able to kind of really, you know, start something different and learn about what it meant to build infrastructure and scale, and also be home and putting my kids to bed every night, which was really the reason I made the decision.

Since then, that was just a few years ago. I was with Sweetgreen. I then, took a turn again when the pandemic hit as a working mom. Decided to be at home, and help my kindergartener learn how to distance learn. And so I took some time off and then I started a consulting company. And I'm getting to the end of the story I promise.

But I ended up, you know, starting to work with some really incredible CEOs. And, this is actually how I met Suman through the process actually was when I had Simple Collective, my consulting company and had gotten a chance to kind of dig in with different businesses and really understand, you know, deeply the startup space and what I love about this space of kind of smaller to mid-size companies.

From an HR standpoint is, you know, you really get to build from the ground floor. And, my gift to the world is maximizing other people's gifts. And so what's what I've learned I'm great at. And so I get to do that, you know, all day, every day, both in some of the work I do still as an advisor, but also as the chief people officer, at the place I am now, which is Ritual, an LA-based startup.

And that's my story. Hopefully not too long, but that's how I ended up here. 

Suman:

No, no, certainly not too long. And a lot to react to. The first thing I would react to is thank you for sharing some of the personal aspects of kind of how you, your, your life as well as like how you thought about decision-making and prioritizing things that are not only work, as well as life.

And, you know, we've talked about this before with other folks that we interact with that Marco that are also people leaders in this concept of like bringing. Kind of whole self to work, and being authentic and kind of like not hiding that part. So, I'd love to, you know, first of all, to react and saying, this is a moment where I feel like that's the case and you've always been that way, which is, which is super refreshing.

But how do you, I guess, how do you think about that? Just generally, perhaps that original, but you know, the shift towards that being comfortable, kind of talking about things that are perhaps viewed more personally.

Jenn:

Yeah, thank you for asking that. I mean, I I've been really lucky because I have gotten to work for a series of leaders in the last, honestly, almost 15 years who, who held that same belief.

And so there's an incredible leader who is still a mentor to me. Now, her name is Stephanie. She's a CHR in another big company and she hired me at Apple. And actually that was, she was one of the first leaders I ever had. That it was like the most unconventional interview because she didn't ask me a lot about my experience.

I mean, she could see all of that on paper, but when we got together in a room, she was really curious about who I was as a person. And so, you know, I remember my life at that time was pretty different than now, but I have lots of hobbies. You know, I've always liked to read. And we, you know, the first conversation was really about like, getting to know me and it, as it as, as became the case, working with Stephanie and then working with other people in that organization, that was the culture she created, you know, it was like, you, you got to bring your whole self.

And I, back then, I didn't know that maximizing my, you know, other people's gifts was my skill, but I think Stephanie, as a mentor really helped me understand the value of that. And she was always really keen to sort of match someone's passion, both outside of work.

But if we had something at work that could translate like. Make that happen, you know, so I can't take the credit. I think I've refined that skill over time. And as I think about leading teams myself, and even about leading organizations, you know, I think my values very much guide the kind of work I take on.

And so whether it's a new client or even working for an organization full time, it's really, really important to me that, the organizations value the people that they are. Right. And they allow humans to be humans. And that we find ways to create a safe space, ideally, a brave space if I'm quoting Brene Brown, but, tell those people to show up and be their whole self.

And so even when I talk to my team every day, like I'm always really interested in what's going on with them outside of work, because those things clearly have an impact on how they're showing up. You know, I don't know how you could, like until robots are running the world, like we're dealing with humans that you almost can't ignore that.

That is what you've got in front of you. Like whether you want to acknowledge it or not is up to you. But, you know, that's the beauty of having humans, you know, making the decisions. 

Suman:

Yeah. I mean, I think there's two things that I'd react to there. One is even just when we first started talking, we were connected.

I think I cold emailed you and you reacted. And you're like, Hey, and I was excited to chat with you, given your, your kind of really impressive background. But you were just refreshing to talk to you. It very authentic. And I think that I was like, I remember. Can we do this again, and then we chatted again and you like, maybe we just do this every week.

And so that was kind of the natural progression in terms of our relationship, you know, mentorship and advice. I also think it's interesting just lead, you know, leading by example. And so the fact that you make that safe space for people to. Invites others to feel comfortable doing that. So that's amazing.

I would love to, you mentioned a bunch of different organizations. How, how is it coming from? I mean, you mentioned Starbucks, you mentioned Apple, Sweetgreen, which is not so small of a startup now. And then recently you've worked with 70 different size organizations. How does that influence and kind of shape the, the job? Does the job differ substantially? 

Jenn:

Yeah. It's, you know, the one thing that all of those brands have in common, um, and, and I was intentional about those choices is, you know, they're aiming to be best in class. Right. And, and in many cases are best in class. And I think, you know, for me, best in class, isn't just the revenue that you deliver, the market cap or any of that, but it is, it's like in everything that you do, you're seeking to continuously improve and be incredible in your space. And so, you know, that for me is really important because again, it kind of aligns with my own personal values. 

I very much for myself and even for my kids, like focus on growth mindset and think about continuous improvement. And so I think aligning the way I spend my time, I really try to spend it in places where I know that people want to continuously improve. They want to be open, you know, I'm really naturally curious.

So I like to be around other people that are equally curious and want to learn from each other. 

Suman:

Yeah, that's amazing. I would love to hear a bit about how that looks at Ritual and I've heard a lot about Ritual and it's a great company, but what is Ritual for those folks who don't know?

And how big is it and what is your kind of role look like? When building out the people team of fast-growing company. 

Jenn:

Yeah, I'm excited and happy to talk about Ritual. So, as I mentioned, I joined Ritual in June and the story started interesting because as I mentioned I was consulting up until pretty recently.

And, I got a phone call from Kat. Who's the CEO and founder at Ritual. And I knew about the company a little bit, cause I was a co I'm a customer. So it's a D to C brand we're best known for our vitamins, specifically our multivitamin. And we focus in on the pre and postnatal audience. That was really a kind of our core business for the last several years.

And then recently we've expanded and will continue to expand our product categories and we've launched a protein and, and really what makes Ritual special is in my opinion, kind of two key things. One is Kat and her founder story, which was really that, you know, she was pregnant and she couldn't find she's somebody who really cares about what she puts into her body and always has and eats well and takes care of herself.

And she couldn't find a vitamin, a prenatal that she felt like she could trust. She was like, every time I looked at a label, I didn't understand any of the ingredients. And so she decided to make a vitamin herself. And so, you know, part of Kat's vision was around was instill, is around transparency of our ingredients and our products.

And then also traceability, which is, which is kind of new and different in this space. You know? I mean, when you think about vitamins and you think about how ingredients are put together in a vitamin. You know, there's not a lot that you can understand about like where they came from, where you know, how they were sourced, et cetera.

But with Ritual products, you can, like, you can actually see exactly where things are made and where ingredients come from and all of that. Back to the Kat, reaching out over the phone. You know, I knew a little bit about the brand and I actually was a customer myself. So I've been a ritual subscriber for the last three years.

And, didn't know that we were LA based, but as it happened we are. And, you know, Kat now as a mom of three, and me as a mom of three, had that in common, but also, you know, have in common, the fact that we both cared deeply about people, about their health and their wellbeing and their well.

We care about family. And you know, when she talks to me about the brand that she's built, you know, we just crossed the threshold of 110 employees. We've grown dramatically. We hired 65 people this year. So it's been pretty rapid growth, in the last year. And you know, we're going to continue to grow.

And so to be able to come in at a time where the brand is really going to catapult, you know, as we launch more products and we go into more categories and we hire more people, I think part of the appeal for Kat was both kind of my values and, some of the brands that I've worked for. But also, you know, my experience in scale.

Right. And so I think, you know, I've taken small businesses to large businesses and, we're at this kind of tipping point where, you know, building out the infrastructure for scale. You know, the systems, the processes, the people, the talent development, you know, all of the things that are kind of necessary in order to take you from a hundred to 500 and then 500 to a thousand.

It was a really compelling proposition for me, and, and I think I had realized too, as much as I love doing the work. Advising and getting a chance to interact with other businesses. And I think that really keeps me sharp. I also really love being a part of a community. And there's something really special about, you know, being in community with people who share your values and you've got a shared goal and a mission, and you're really working towards something together.

So kind of all those things together were the perfect kind of recipe, if you will, for me to join the Ritual team. And, and it's been a really incredible, you know, several months before. 

Suman:

Well, that's great. And congrats on Ritual's success as was your own personal success. I'm sure you're very helpful in scaling that team and continue to see.

I guess one question for you is what, so we talk a lot about culture, obviously. That's kind of what we hope companies build or try to at Marco. And I guess, what does the word culture mean to you? That could just be generally yourself as well as in the context of ritual and how do they think about culture?

Jenn:

Because, it's a lot of things to a lot of people, you know, for me, when I think about it in an organization, I mean, it's, it's how you show up. It's how you behave. You know? I mean, I think that you can walk into an office and even though you can't walk into them very much now, so it's very different kind of science experiment, but you know, generally speaking, you can walk into whether it's a dinner party or a bunch of friends, or it's a bunch of colleagues and see how people are interacting, treating each other, the look on their face.

You know, the body language and like that tells you a lot about culture, you know? And, and so, it's fun to, to be a contributor to that in an organization. And I say it that way specifically, because I think very often people think it's like the chief people officer's job to drive culture, you know?

And in part, I think, you know, our focus because we care deeply about people and we're thinking about strategies with people. That helped my business results. You know, you're certainly, you know, I care deeply about making sure that we're creating the space for all of those things to be positive in an organization.

So we might have initiatives and schedule activities and events and, and behave certain ways in order to make sure that the culture and that sentiment and feeling is really positive. But where I kind of disagree, I think. You know, with some of my peer set is like, I don't think it's just my job. And I actually have a really strong opinion about never having it in my title either, because I think it's everyone's job.

You know, I think everybody in an organization has a responsibility to contribute to the culture in some way. And that's what they're actively engaging with each other day to day, and it can be a positive force for change and for outcomes, um, with every decision that we make, you know, so I think culture, I mean, culture is, in my mind is going to be the thing that makes or breaks a company.

I know there's the old saying about like culture eats strategy for breakfast, and I believe that that's true. And I think it's like, it's hard, you know, cause because humans are inherently, like we talked about. They're bringing everything to work. Right? Whatever happened before they showed up that day, like that's coming.

And so it can be unpredictable and it can be really like fluid. And so I think, you know, the constant focus on checking in on how people are feeling and getting their feedback and staying close to monitoring the overall sentiment and the level of connections. Really really important. And you know, I do spend a lot of time thinking about that and how to solve for that with the clients I work with and within my own organization.

Suman:

I am certainly, we are a small team and just building a culture from scratch has been both extremely challenging and rewarding. But I guess one question I have in terms of the challenges of that mark. Culture is a lot of things, right? As you mentioned, it's the behaviors, it's the people, of course, it's the mission.

The vision part of that was unified around place. And you made a comment around. People are coming to the office every day. We believe that Marco, that place is going to be in many cases emphasized. So we think experiences are important. How do you, in order to facilitate. Most of the behavior, kind of a lot of people to meet each other.

How are y'all thinking about that at Ritual? You know, how you think about the place and you know, now moving forward and how you create that unified culture. 

Jenn:

Yeah. It's a great question. And I think we're still learning, when I started at Ritual, we were just dabbling and what our point of view would be.

And I think that was actually part of the reason that I was, you know, it was a good time for me to join the organization to kind of really think through the strategy, but we sort of sat down together first and said, you know, what do we know about who we are as a brand? And that is, you know, we're built on traceability, transparency, trust health.

And so, you know, how do we take those same assets? And really make sure that those are alive and well, you know, from a people perspective too, within the team and within the brand. And so, very early on, we agreed that it was important to us to maintain all of those things we just talked about and specifically around sort of the trust and transparency that it would be important for our team members to get to what made sense for them. And so, I spent the last year and a half running my consulting company, working with companies, trying to figure out a hybrid model and like how many days a week do people need to come in? And what does that look like and how do you operationalize it?

And, there's nothing wrong with, with all of those strategies and tactics. I think, you know, for us at Ritual, again, it was about sort of choice. And so the choice part is harder, honestly, because what it's meant for us is that we've had to get really thoughtful. And again, we're still learning about how do we create transparency to the way that we're operating, in a meaningful way to enable people to choose.

So for example, you know, in Los Angeles, the requirements around COVID, because of where our county is, you know, our office is. I still have to wear a mask. If you come into work, you know, we made the decision to allow, because our teams frankly, have worked really productively for the last year and a half remotely.

Like we weren't in any hurry to say that anybody even needed to come into the office, even if they want to do. But we sort of said like, Hey, if you're vaccinated and you want to come in, you can. And, so we've had our office open since June, and I've kind of slowly just been testing and seeing, like watching the volume of what people, what people want, why they come in when they come in.

And we've been listening and, you know, they're starting to tell us, like, actually we want to do the deep work at home and we want to come in and socialize and have lunch and hang out. And so we're starting to, you know, create programming that fosters connection in the office. And that has, you know, we've, we've upgraded our technology and some of our conference spaces to make sure that we can facilitate these larger hybrid meetings.

And so we're testing and trying that, but along with the technology and the space is like the how to facilitate an effective, inclusive hybrid meetings. So there's some manager education that needs to happen. And so, like I said, we're experimenting with a few different areas that still hold us true to the idea that we want our team members to choose what makes sense for them based on the way they like to work.

But also that we're, creating the space for connection and culture, because we've also heard from our team. We created a three different kind of personas for roles. And so in there, they're likely what you would guess. Like some people that want to be in the office or they have a need for the office, like our R and D team blending gummies, like they're actually physically creating product. And so like, they need the space for that in the office. And then we have some people who just want to socialize and, occasionally get together for cross-functional meeting and then people that are remote. And so we allowed them to choose the persona just so we could kind of get a sense of where people are at.

And then we're trying to create programming. Now that supports. You know, those personas in a way that's meaningful for, for how they'd like to work going forward. So, like I said, definitely don't have it all figured out yet, but I do feel like we're making really positive progress and, um, you know, we're continuing to evolve the way we work.

It feels like almost every week, like we've learned something new and we're sharing it. And, we've created a culture around experimentation and retros and that's, that's made a big difference in continuing the feedback loop. 

Suman:

So it's so interesting because a lot of what you say this notion of experimentation, right?

And I'd love to hear about the people function. And we've talked about this a bunch, but while the people thought function has always been strategic, it's now just almost a toddler rasa. And there's a lot of experimentation. It's quite strategic. So how do you think it used to be the title of CHR and now it's chief people officer, right.

And just this whole function has changed. So how do you think about just this potentially kind of new age of experimentation. Figuring out the unknown in the role of people.

Jenn:

Yeah, I love that. And you know, and I want to comment on what you just said about sort of the change from the CHR role to the CPO title.

And part of what I love about that evolution is that it really does think much broader about strategies and ideas and solutions and process that's like outside of the HR, traditional HR discipline realm, which I think is so needed. Right. I think that's why you're seeing, you know, really effective chief people, officers have broad range experience.

I mean, I know I have several colleagues who never worked in HR and now are chief people officers. Right. And so they're pulling from agile methodology or they're pulling from, you know, other aspects. Like I think about how much I pull from my operations background and understanding what it means to own and drive a P and L and drive business results.

And how do you enable that through people? So I think it's really cool to see that evolution because it allows certainly somebody like me, but I think about, you know, all of my peers. So I learned from every day. It allows us to play in all these different spaces, you know, and I think gone are the days of just showing up as like a department head of HR, you know?

And now it's like, we're sitting, I think about how, you know, what it looks like for me at Ritual. It's like we sit together as an executive team of five and we're running the business together. And we're thinking about all the aspects of the organization and, you know, people's one of the biggest ones, right?

Because if our people aren't happy or if the way we're organized structurally or through our design, isn't helping us deliver business outcomes or, you know, I mean, there's a hundred different people implications that you can identify within an organization, that can get solved in a variety of different ways.

You know? So like, I love that it's expanded the scope of the kind of work, that we can. 

Suman:

Yeah. And where do you see, how do you see that evolving over the next couple of years? I mean, it's funny, even we work with people leaders like yourself and everyone from, you know, administrative professionals to office managers to now new titles,, employee experience professionals.

Right. Which my friend is, that's actually a somewhat new title, but how do you think about how that looks over the next couple years as folks begin? Hopefully we emerge from COVID and begin to figure out, can actually grow in this new normal.

Jenn:

Yeah, it's a great question. And I'm not sure that I've fully flushed the thought. But I think one thing that I'm seeing that I'm curious about, and I think could point to something is even just, you know, some of the basics around, you know, in the past, when you had proximity with people, it was, you know, managers relied on the ability to see and hear their employees to manage their performance.

And I think, COVID has forced us to take a big step back and have to find different ways to understand. You know how people are performing, how engaged they are, what kind of outcomes they're delivering. It's really forcing this different kind of thinking around, like, how do you drive effective output in an organization when you can't physically see and hear people?

And I actually think, you know, where I first saw the conversation a year, a half ago, and some of the CPO forums was like, we have to make sure we've done goal setting and that it's in a system and we can like have the OKR and we can see it. But I actually think it's going to be even bigger than that because it isn't just about.

The goals and the engagement survey, but it's like, how, if you're trying to plan. For growth in the next two years. And you know, you have to hire people and you have to onboard, and there's like all this complexity of like bringing people in, immersing them, making sure they have what they need, helping them be optimized for performance.

Like it's just much more complex. And so I'm excited to see what kind of new tech, what kind of new process. If there's new behavioral or leadership models, um, that will evolve from this. You know, if there's more, again, we can pull from other realms of the business. I think about some of the incredible CTOs I've worked with and kind of how they're thinking about process and methodology that we can continue to bring into the space.

In addition to the cool stuff, that's just happening in general, around automation and, you know, AI and AR. So like, I feel like for us, the world will be our oyster. There's going to be all these different implications that will say like, because those impact people, we can, we can talk about that and we should really figure out how do we, how do we bring new ideas to the table, to solve for the complexity, new world we're living in.

So that was a complicated answer perhaps, but I'm excited. I love it changing. Like I love the change part of it. It keeps me so energized. 

Suman:

Cool. Well, I think a great place to end the conversation is one of excitement, looking ahead, cause it's been kind of a year and a half, two years of uncertainty.

And again, shifts of where we're at,as we kind of hopefully emerged, like I said, but I'd love to maybe end off on some lighthearted questions. So, what is your favorite salad from sweet green, as well as perhaps your favorite, a vitamin product from ritual? 

Jenn:

My favorite salad from Sweetgreen is the Buffalo chicken. Okay. Always try it on your things, but like that that's definitely my go-to it's so good. I love the blend of the sweet and the spicy 

Suman:

I'm a taco salad guy myself, but I'll take it. 

Jenn:

Okay. It's a good one. It's a good one. And then my favorite vitamin product. It's tricky. Cause I'm on such a, I have such a ritual now with our products, right.

So, I mean, I've been taking my multi for a while. But we're actually, we have some new products in the pipeline and we do studies and clinical trials and things like that. So there's some cool stuff that I've gotten a chance to take recently, in the immune space, let's say that I am really excited about. And so, I'll leave it. 

Suman:

Amazing. My sister recently had a kid. And so maybe I might ping you to see cool stuff you should be. 

Jenn:

I would love to make sure that she has her vitamins and yours too. You know, we make a men's multi. 

Suman:

I didn't even know that. Yes. 

Jenn:

And our protein is like incredible. I mean the protein with some coconut water is fire. 

Suman:

I have to connect offline on that.

Jenn:

Yeah, I'll make sure you get some of that.

Suman:

And perhaps the most fun thing about being a people leader and the weirdest thing you've had to do as a people leader.

Jenn:

That's a good question. I mean the fun part, gosh, there's a million fun parts.I feel like I have the best job on the planet. I was actually just telling one of my team members today that, you know, I made it a mission when I started at Ritual, a part of my, I've never worked in a company. That's a hundred people before. Like I've always worked in big companies. And so I set out to make sure that I get to know every single person.

And so, I have been on a journey over the last four months to get to know every single person. And one of my favorite parts of the job is taking the time to have a conversation and hear about people's experience and knowing that I can do something about that. And so, you know, I had four coffee chats this week, where I did just that.

And I love spending time building those deep connections with our people. And then, gosh, I mean the weirdest part. I'm trying to think. I mean, you know, honestly like people do weird shit, like not a principal, but like I could, I could tell you some stories at a cocktail party of some of the, just the weird stuff that people do.

And so I wish I could give you a really good example.

Suman:

Maybe part of it is, Hey, it's weird, but you're such a great people leader that you can't even share it. Right. 

Jenn:

Well, you know what, honestly, there's not a lot that surprises me anymore. And in some ways, like that's good, cause I'm kind of prepared for anything and desensitized to the weird stuff as well.

Suman:

Jen always great chatting and I'm sure we'll be talking soon, which I always look forward to. So with that, we can end it, but have a great rest of the week. And thanks for hopping on. 

Jenn:

Thank you for having me. Cheers.