ThredUp

**LIVE from the Transform Conference in Las Vegas**

In this episode of Culture Uncovered, Jena Dunay sits down with Natalie Breece, Chief People Officer at ThredUp, to unpack what it actually looks like to grow a career inside a company that prioritizes learning, mobility, and trust.

Natalie shares how she went from building the recruiting function to becoming CPO, why saying yes to roles you’re not fully ready for can accelerate your career, and how ThredUp has maintained its culture through massive growth and going public.

They also get into how curiosity drives success at ThredUp, what “think big” looks like in real business decisions, and why initiatives like a four-day work week and internal career mobility aren’t just perks, they’re core to how the company operates.

What you’ll learn:

• What ThredUp actually does and how it became one of the largest online consignment platforms
• How Natalie Breece grew from recruiter to Chief People Officer internally
• Why saying yes to uncomfortable opportunities leads to the biggest career growth
• How ThredUp maintained its culture while transitioning from private to public
• What “think big” looks like in practice (not just as a value)
• What makes someone successful at ThredUp (and what doesn’t)

ThredUp Highlights:

• Founded: 2009
• Team Size: ~2,500 employees
• Headquarters: Oakland, California
• Other Locations: Scottsdale, Arizona + 4 U.S. distribution centers
• Workforce: ~80% distribution center employees
• Industry: Online resale (women’s and kids apparel)
• Culture: Learning-driven, collaborative, curious, growth-focused

Unique Perks & Programs:

• Four-day work week (company-wide, in place for several years)
• Strong internal mobility (many leaders have held 4+ roles internally)
• Career Compass (clear career pathing framework)
• Impact Leadership Institute (internal leadership development)
• BizUp program (cross-functional business learning experience)
• Emphasis on continuous learning, curiosity, and career growth

To learn more about ThredUp:

Careers Page (They’re hiring!)
LinkedIn Page
Natalie's LinkedIn

Transcript

Jena Dunay: Hello friends and welcome back to another episode of Culture Uncovered where we go behind the scenes of cool companies to work for and I am really, really excited to be talking to Natalie Breece, the chief people of ThredUp. So Natalie, thank you for joining us here at the Transform Conference. If you hear some background noise, that's probably what you're hearing, but it's been really fun to get to meet people in person. I'm so excited to meet you.

Natalie Breece: Jena, thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to have the conversation.

Jena Dunay: Yeah, awesome. So we're talking about culture today and we're talking about it in relationship to job seekers and as well as people leaders. But I'm most concerned about the job seekers right now. So for those that don't know, tell us a little bit about what ThredUp even does.

Natalie Breece: Yeah, so ThredUP is actually one of the world's largest online consignment shops for women and kids apparel.

Jena Dunay: Okay, I've used ThredUp guiltily. Oh yeah, great! Not guiltily, I guess you could say.

Natalie Breece: Have you sold with us or have you shopped with us?

Jena Dunay: I have shopped, I've not sold. I'm probably not that logistically forward thinking. Like, I gotta get somebody else to handle that for me.

Natalie Breece: Well, it's the easiest place to clean out your closet online. And I bet you got some amazing deals.

Jena Dunay: I did get amazing deals. So tell me a little bit about how many employees you have, walk us through where you guys are located, some of those basics.

Natalie Breece: Yeah, so ThredUp has about 2,500 employees. Now we have a large hourly workforce in our distribution centers that makes up about 80 percent of the workforce. We're headquartered in Oakland. We also have an office in Scottsdale, Arizona, and then we have four distribution centers across the country, as well as a pretty healthy distributed workforce, both internationally and domestically.

Jena Dunay: Okay, so tell me what you feel like makes the culture unique at ThredUp.

Natalie Breece: ThredUp is an incredible place to work. I'll start by saying I've been at ThredUp

Jena Dunay: That's a great sign. Honestly, whenever I'm talking to a people leader or CHRO, whatever, am always like, if you have tenure at a company and you've rose through the ranks, which I know that you have, like that says a lot about the organization. So please keep going though.

Natalie Breece: I've stayed because it's been an organization where I feel like I've been able to grow the entire time. The challenge has continued to exist. I feel like I've been given opportunity to try new things. And that's really indicative of the culture at large. At the director level and above, most people have held four plus roles in their time with us. So you feel like you can actually develop as a professional within the organization in a lot of different ways, both depth and breadth of experience.

And also it's just a strong learning culture where we are invested in the whole person. We focus on not just teaching you how to be the best professional you can be, but also be the best person you can be, most well-rounded person you can be. And I think that's why people stay.

Jena Dunay: So start from the very beginning of how did you come across ThredUp in the first place, like a decade ago? I didn't even know, honestly, didn't even know when were you guys founded?

Natalie Breece: So ThredUp was founded in 2009. It's actually a product of the Great Recession. Yeah, so our founders both went to Harvard Business School. Around the time of the recession, our CEO actually had some items that he wanted to sell, went to a thrift store, they looked at them and they didn't take them. And he was like, wow, these are like great suits. I don't understand why this isn't an easier process and why there's no interest.

And from there, he actually developed a clothing swap business and it was men's clothing. And then over time it evolved that it became a kids clothing swap. And then it evolved into what it is today, which is both women and kids consignment.

Jena Dunay: Okay, okay. So that's a little bit about that, but tell me, how did you come across the organization?

Natalie Breece: Yeah, so I came to ThredUp, I was at a prior organization and I was ready to move on and I had heard about actually the former CPO of ThredUp through my network. And somebody introduced us, I met her and I was like, this woman's incredible. I want to work with her. And then I interviewed with the rest of the leadership team and was like, every single person here is smarter than me, has incredible experience. And I was like, this is a place I really feel like I can learn.

And also a company where the mission really aligns with my personal values. I feel like we're doing good for the planet. I'm a shopper. You know, it's all of those things, like all aspects of what matters to me in life existed at ThredUp. That's why I joined and that's why I've stayed too.

Jena Dunay: Yeah. How many employees were there when you started?

Natalie Breece: There was about 500 employees total and that was including the distribution center. So we've grown quite a bit.

Jena Dunay: Wow. Okay. And you started out as a recruiter, I did, in recruiting side of things. So tell me your trajectory. And the reason I'm asking these questions from the job seeker’s perspective, because I think it shows how your organization appreciates great talent, promotes great talent, and looks for great talent internally. And so tell me a little bit about that story on how you kind of got to where you got to today.

Natalie Breece: Yeah, so when I joined ThredUp, there was no existing talent acquisition function. So I joined essentially to build that out for the organization. And it was so much fun. I came in and I was like able to teach leaders what it's like to have recruiting support. And they were just like, they were so happy and excited to work together.

And so I started out doing that on the corporate side. Then I took on the operations side, which is a totally different thing. I had never worked in distribution center environments, didn't even know where to begin, didn't understand the metrics. I had so much to learn. But I was able to take that on and grow that out.

And then the organization was like, okay, I feel like you can do big things. The CPO at the time was like, I want to teach you more. Do you eventually want to be a head of talent acquisition at a large organization or do you want to be a CPO? And I said, I want to be a CPO. And she said, that's what I was hoping you'd say. Buckle up. I'm ready to teach you.

So then she just started giving me more and more to let me get exposure to what it was like on more of like the talent management side. And it's been the most incredible

Jena Dunay: What a great mentor. What a great leader. And I think you make a point that I try to tell job seekers all the time is like go for the company culture, but even more so go for the leader that you're going to work with because the leader, even if let's say the culture changes and all that, but if you really love your leader, they can be a great advocate for you and your career.

Natalie Breece: Absolutely. And people leave managers, they don't leave companies. So it's really important that you find somebody that aligns sort of with what you're looking for. Like, I think same values and morals and all that, super important.

Jena Dunay: When you look up to, like do they model, do I want to be them when I grow up?

Natalie Breece: Exactly. And on top of that, I would say as you're growing in your career, say yes to things, even if they scare you.

Jena Dunay: Talk about that a little bit. I love that. Tell me more about that.

Natalie Breece: Yeah, so that's something I say to anybody that's early in their career is the moments where you're the most uncomfortable are the moments you're going to have the greatest growth and you need to get comfortable being uncomfortable. Because every time I've said yes to something that I felt I was slightly under qualified for, it's been the best moment in terms of my career trajectory and my growth as a whole person.

Every time I think back, like I was terrified to take on the distribution center work because I was like, I don't even know what I'm doing. Right. I'm going to fake it till I make it. And I learned so much. And I think if I hadn't done that, I would not be in the role that I'm in now.

Jena Dunay: Wow, I think that's really helpful for people to hear that you almost like you do, you say yes to the thing before you know you can do it 100 percent. Like you have to trust yourself too. I think there's like a confidence level of like I know I have the support around me, the team around me to help me. I trust that I'll be able to figure it out, but it's okay if I don't know every single step of how this is going to play out. And I still trust myself to get it done.

Natalie Breece: I think every role I've enjoyed the most has been the role that I was slightly under qualified for.

Jena Dunay: That's like a quote of “I'm going to take that out and snap that.” That's awesome. Okay, so tell me how the culture has changed since when you started about, you know, 10 years ago to what it looks like now. Has it changed? Has it evolved? What's that look like?

Natalie Breece: To be honest with you, I'm really proud of our ability to maintain what was really important to us in the culture all along. So ThredUp when I joined was a private company, VC backed organization. We are now a public company. And one of the things that I, CEO and I were so aligned on going through that was we need to make sure we don't become a company that says we're public now, so we can't do XYZ or we're going to introduce XYZ policy because we're public.

We wanted to make sure that we as an organization kept what got us to that point needed to sustain in the organization. And that is agility, it is innovation, it is first principles thinking, it is challenging not thinking about what the world is as it is, but thinking about the world as it

Jena Dunay: Could be. Yeah. How does that play into now at ThredUp? When you say the world that it could be, like how are you thinking about the world that could be as it relates to the workforce for the future? Again, helpful for job seekers to be thinking about these things.

Natalie Breece: So for ThredUp in particular, the business has had an incredible journey because when I joined, thrift was still a little bit of like, it was a little taboo.

Jena Dunay: Yeah, we say a little taboo.

Natalie Breece: Yeah, like you don't want to tell people you got your clothes in a thrift store. Now it's like the in

Jena Dunay: I actually just bought a pair of pants that I wore to this conference from a thrift store.

Natalie Breece: A lot of my clothes are coming from either ThredUp or other thrift stores. So it is now a really cool thing and people are excited about that. And so I think we've had to change our strategy from being like

Jena Dunay: Yeah, let me educate you about why this is cool. Now it's like, it is cool.

Natalie Breece: Exactly. And we initially had a business strategy that was like, we're just like brand new. And now we're not doing that anymore. Now it's more of like we're really proud to be a sustainable organization and to be a thrift organization. So that's been really big.

And I'd say for employees, it is that constant curiosity. Like the people that are the most successful at ThredUp are the people that are intellectually curious. They're like one of our values is called think big so you're constantly thinking about like what could exist and then also like seeking the truth. So if you think something feels wrong, like are you doing what it takes to validate that that's actually wrong or that it's actually right?

And so it's that level of it's like real like intellectual curiosity frankly and courage that makes people successful.

Jena Dunay: Yeah, tell me some other traits that make people successful from a cultural standpoint. Obviously, functionally, every role is going to be a little bit different. Culturally, who is somebody who would be successful at your organization? And maybe who would be somebody that's not? I think it's helpful also for people to hear that.

Natalie Breece: Yeah, I think that's a great question. I think the people that are the most successful at ThredUp tend to be individuals that are really humble, want to learn, want to be around other smart people and are not afraid to not be the smartest in the room. And also ThredUp is not a political organization. So those that have struggled have been those that have come in super protective of their lanes, like don't really want other people playing in their sandbox.

Jena Dunay: Here's my space and do not touch it.

Natalie Breece: Exactly. And there's a lot of organizations that run that way and it works for their organization. At ThredUp, we are not protective of our domains. And when there's a challenge, everybody jumps in and that can be very intimidating for some people that aren't used to that sort of culture. You're proud of the work you do, but don't have so much pride that you're not willing to ask for help from others.

Jena Dunay: Yeah, that's really good. And I think that's important for people to like almost self evaluate for themselves. Am I somebody who likes my things the way that I like my things and do I not like to play nice with others? Like do I? Yeah. So I think that there's people out there that very much would resonate with what you're saying in terms of the culture. I want to be around really smart people. I am curious. Do I have ownership over things? I want to think big. I want to talk about that one in particular on the think big part. Like can you give me examples of ways that that like plays out on a daily basis? Because here's my personal opinion about values.

Jena Dunay: I think values are so wonderful. Every company should have them. And every company should be able to say how that actually applies on a day to day basis. Because sometimes it can just be words. So how does that play out at ThredUp?

Natalie Breece: Yeah, I totally agree with you. I think a lot of times it's a poster on the wall. But you want it, how do you live and breathe those things? So an example of think big at ThredUp is that we actually launched a peer to peer site.

Jena Dunay: Okay, what's that?

Natalie Breece: Which is ThredUp has always been a managed marketplace. What that means is that you send your items into us. We take them, we process them, we photograph them, we put them on the site, and we pay you out. And we recognize that that's incredibly convenient.

Jena Dunay: Hey, you're right, I do need to do it myself. I don't think I realized how convenient it was.

Natalie Breece: It's the easiest way to get rid of things and to send them somewhere you know it's not going to end up in a landfill. But we recognize that there are consumers who don't want that. They want a little bit of a higher payout or they have items that they think are more valuable, they're luxury items, and they actually want to manage that process.

And so we were like, look, we might be leaving an opportunity on the table by not offering that to customers. And so for the longest time being the easiest resale space was really a source of pride and something that was a moat for our business. But we were like, we're going to think big. We're going to try to service a different customer. And we launched a peer to peer option.

Jena Dunay: Okay, okay. And I'm assuming that's been successful too in the way that you guys have. Okay, that makes sense though. It makes, I would imagine that for people that, for the more luxury items, I'm not just going to send this in. I maybe want to manage a little bit more of that. I want a little bit more of a payout.

Natalie Breece: If you want an example on the people side, I can share also that in 2021, ThredUp launched a four day work week.

Jena Dunay: Okay, what was the decision making behind that? Why did we not lead with that? That is going to be my hook for the entire episode.

Natalie Breece: So that was post pandemic. We were coming back to work in the office and we were starting to think about like, what are the things that we really actually appreciated about the pandemic? The fact that we had dinners at home with our family, the fact that you felt like you had a little bit more time to invest in the things that matter to you.

And when we came back into the office, we were like, how do we preserve some of those things, but also have the connection and the water cooler conversation, all of that that you want? And so from that, CEO and I were like, hey, what would it look like if we actually tested a four day work week where Fridays were an additional day off?

You really focus your work on Monday through Thursday. You give people a little bit more time back to do things that matter to them and invest in their passions. How does that then flow through their work when they feel like they're able to enrich their lives in other ways?

Jena Dunay: So as I'm taking, it's gone well.

Natalie Breece: It's gone well. We're four years in, five years in actually at this point.

Jena Dunay: That's very novel. And I feel like what advice would you give to maybe a people leader, one, I just love that for job seekers and for your people. How have you seen that positively impact your organization and what encouragement would you give to like another people leader who's trying to champion that with their senior leadership to do something like that?

Natalie Breece: I would say the biggest win in the whole thing is it really is a way of showing your people that you trust them. You really mean it when you say you're going to give them autonomy.

Jena Dunay: Some people say they don't actually mean it.

Natalie Breece: It seems like the easiest concept in the world. Treat people like adults.

Jena Dunay: Yes, they like children. They'll act like children.

Natalie Breece: Right, exactly. And when you invest in people, aside from just the work they do for your organization, they will invest back. And that's been a really big learning for us. It's not without challenges. Of course, we have a business to run. We are a public company. We have shareholders.

Jena Dunay: I was even thinking about that from the public aspect of like does that, what did people feel about that?

Natalie Breece: As long as the business results are there, I don't think there's a lot of concern. But I will say that in the moments where we feel like we have to amp up the business, we talk about this and we're like, hey, what has to give? Do we need to rethink about a change to the schedule?

But the team always rises in those moments and they're like, this is such a special part of our culture. We will put in the work in other ways to make sure we deliver. It's similar to somebody that has a five day work week and you might have a deadline. You might do a little work on Friday or on Sunday. Same thing for ThredUp.

Jena Dunay: Yeah. So the other thing about the four day work week that I love is that it kind of forces people to be more productive, right? And so if you have that, they know that they are going to have that three day weekend every single weekend. It allows people to really put the time in and you're not having this wasted space almost often is very common in corporate America.

Natalie Breece: No, I hear exactly what you're saying because what it does is it forces you to be more disciplined about how you use your time. So if you know that you have this shortened week, but you still have to get the same amount of work done, then there's a little bit less of the kind of space.

And you know, there's been so many studies that Fridays in organizations are sort of like, they're wasted. So give people time to go do something that matters to them then. And then they really focus on being deliberate in the time that they're working.

Jena Dunay: I love that. Okay, so that's obviously a massive perk for your organization. What are some other benefits and perks that are interesting maybe to job seekers that make them attracted to your organization?

Natalie Breece: Yeah, as I talked about earlier, the career progression is a big thing at ThredUp, but also because it is such a strong learning culture. I think why people stay, and our average tenure at ThredUp is almost five years, it's unbelievable, is because they feel like they're constantly learning.

And we do that through things like we have a career compass, which is our version of a career ladder to give transparency around what's next for you in your career. We have our impact leadership institute, which is a homegrown framework and a set of principles to help leaders become the best versions of themselves, but also people that want to become leaders know what it takes at ThredUp to be successful as a leader.

We have a program called BizUp, which is basically an accelerated HBS level program where you can learn about things totally outside of your domain. So people feel like they're able to scratch the itch of learning other things within the organization.

Jena Dunay: Curiosity, right? So a curious person is going to want to not just progress maybe upwards, but laterally as well in terms of their breadth of the skills that they're learning. So that totally makes sense. How do you see AI impacting, because I'm getting this question actually a lot from job seekers or even just other people leaders, how do you see AI impacting the way that you do work and the way that that might be interesting or not interesting to job seekers?

Natalie Breece: Yeah. I think there's a lot of excitement around AI. There's also a lot of fear. And I understand that because there's a lot of conversation around what is this going to do to eliminate jobs, how does headcount shift. I actually am really excited about this because I see it as an opportunity for everybody to increase the quality of the work they're doing and doing a little bit less of sort of what feels like rudimentary work and indexing more on the high impact activities.

So I think about my own team and all the admin work that they have to do that nobody really wants to do, but it's just part of keeping the trains running on time. And then being able to outsource some of that to AI agents and then being able to focus on the connection with people. I also think that it's going to be something that's going to enable people to learn faster too, which is really exciting.

Jena Dunay: Tell me, we talked about a lot of things that obviously make your company unique and special and awesome. No company is perfect. So what are some of the things that you guys see as opportunities or ways that you have failed or things that you would want to work on for the future?

Natalie Breece: Yeah, you're right. No company is perfect. And there's always opportunity for us to learn and grow. I think for us and a lot of other companies, there was a period in time a couple of years ago where we looked at the leadership team and there was a ton of battlefield promotions and we were like, man, I think we didn't do enough to set these leaders up for success.

A lot of them were really successful individual contributors. They're now leading teams. We need to go back and teach them some of the fundamental leadership skills.

Jena Dunay: Which is, by the way, I feel like happens all the time at every company. I talk to people all the time and this is like the number one thing that they always feel like they can do a better job on. So you're not alone.

Natalie Breece: I'm glad to hear that we're not alone. But it's certainly something that it was a good learning for us. I also think as you go from private to public, there's a lot of learning around transparency. There are certain things you just can't share because it's material non public information. But you still want to be transparent for the organization.

And so it's constantly this balancing act of we pride ourselves on being transparent, but we have to be careful about what we share and make sure the team feels like we're also bringing them along for everything. And that's also been an opportunity for us to learn along the way.

Jena Dunay: Yeah, so if you were listening to this and they're thinking to themselves this looks like a really cool place to work, are you guys growing, which ways are you growing, what roles are you going to be hiring for that you feel comfortable sharing and where can people learn more about your organization?

Natalie Breece: Yeah, if you're interested, come talk to us. We are hiring. You can check out all of our job postings at thredup.com slash careers. You can reach out to us on LinkedIn. And the majority of our needs right now are in our distribution centers.

However, we also have engineering needs, we have roles on marketing, and ultimately we're always opportunistically looking for strong talent. So if you have a skill set, you're passionate about resale, you want to join an organization that's really changing how people shop, let us know.

Jena Dunay: Yeah, that's really good. I'm actually thinking of somebody right now I need to send your way.

Natalie Breece: Send her to me.

Jena Dunay: Yeah, send her to you. And then final question is how does somebody make sure that they get their resume seen. That's always like the million dollar question. I feel like I send things off and it just goes into the abyss. What recommendations would you have for them to strategically make sure that they're differentiated?

Natalie Breece: I would say I love AI, be careful using AI too much. Make sure you tailor your resume to the company. I also think it's really impressive when people reach out directly. I am never bothered when somebody sends me a note and they're like hey, I've applied for it.

It does. It does. I mean do it in a thoughtful way. Of course. Tell me why you're interested in ThredUp.

Jena Dunay: That's key. Exactly. Don't just send them.

Natalie Breece: We can tell when it's a blanket message. Make it really personal to why you want to join us. Because I think I recognize that it is a tough job market and people want to get their resume viewed. And so we owe it to them to give them that opportunity.

Jena Dunay: Yeah, I love it. I think it's great advice. I loved chatting with you today. I loved learning more about your organization, what you guys are doing. I love the four day work week. And so I'm excited to share more with our listeners about your organization and just thank you again for all the work that you've

Natalie Breece: You guys are doing. Thanks Jena. It was really fun chatting with you. Thanks for having me.

Jena Dunay: Awesome. Thank you. 

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