1Password

In this episode of Culture Uncovered, Jena Dunay sits down with Katya Laviolette, Chief People Officer at 1Password, to explore how one of Canada's most successful tech companies scaled from a consumer password manager into a global identity security leader serving both individuals and enterprises.

Katya shares the unique origin story behind 1Password, how the company spent nearly two decades growing before taking institutional funding, and why its founder-led culture continues to shape the employee experience today. She also discusses what it takes to build a high-performance organization in a fully remote environment, how 1Password is approaching AI adoption internally, and why collaboration remains a critical ingredient for success as the company continues to scale.

They also dive into leadership development, employee wellness, remote work realities, and why adaptability—not just expertise—is one of the strongest predictors of success at 1Password.

What you'll learn:

• What 1Password does and how it evolved from a consumer password manager into a global identity security company
• How 1Password grew from roughly 300 employees to more than 1,400 globally
• How founder involvement continues to influence culture more than 20 years later
• How 1Password balances flexibility, accountability, and employee wellbeing
• How the company supports managers through coaching, mentoring, and leadership development

1Password Highlights:

• Headquarters: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
• Founded: Early 2000s (20+ years ago)
• Team Size: 1,400+ employees
• Global Presence: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands
• Industry: Identity Security / Cybersecurity
• Workforce Style: Remote-first
• Company Type: Privately held
• Growth Journey: Expanded from consumer software into enterprise identity security
• Notable Milestone: Completed Canada's largest fundraise at the time in 2022

Unique Perks & Programs:

• Equity grants for all employees
• 25 days of paid time off annually
• Four company-wide wellness days each year
• Flexible remote work environment
• Employee Resource Groups (ERGs)
• Leadership development programs
• Inclusion and belonging initiatives
• Custom management development curriculum
• Executive operational coaching for senior leaders
• Mentoring and reverse mentoring programs
• Global collaboration events and team gatherings
• Wellness-focused recharge days and recognition programs
• Access to Collaboration Centers designed for intentional in-person connection

To learn more about 1Password:

Careers Page (They're hiring!)
LinkedIn Page
Katya'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. Today, I have the honor and privilege of speaking with Katya, the Chief People Officer of 1Password. Katya, thank you so much for joining us today. Tell us a little bit about 1Password.

Katya Laviolette: Thank you, Jena. I'm really pleased to be on your podcast, and I love that you describe us as a cool company. So thank you for that.

1Password is an identity security company that has been around for more than 20 years. We're a privately held company with Canadian roots, and we're fully remote—which we can talk more about. Today, we have more than 1,400 employees across five countries: the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Germany. We've experienced significant growth and scaling over the last several years.

Jena Dunay: Wow. Tell me a little bit about the origin story of the organization for those who may not be familiar with it.

Katya Laviolette: I love that question.

About 20 years ago, our company was founded just outside Toronto by four founders—two couples. They were trying to solve a very common problem at the time: people managing passwords poorly. As our former CEO, who is now the Chair of the Board, likes to joke, everyone was using passwords like "FluffyCat123" or writing them on sticky notes attached to their computers.

That created security risks and opportunities for breaches and hacking. 1Password started as a consumer-facing company focused on solving that problem and gained a lot of traction. Around 2019, we decided to expand into B2B. We received our first round of funding in 2019, followed by Series B and Series C rounds in 2021 and 2022.

We're very proud to say that in January 2022, we completed what was, at the time, the largest fundraise in Canada. It's been an incredible growth story. In 2019, we had roughly 300 employees. Today, we're over 1,400 employees globally.

Our focus has evolved beyond protecting individuals. We now help protect both humans and AI agents from breaches and cyber threats through a broad portfolio of identity security products.

Jena Dunay: What fascinates me is that you had this long consumer history before raising institutional funding. That's not a common story. And having two founder couples is also incredibly unique.

Katya Laviolette: Absolutely. Those founders are still very present in our culture. We still see them during company all-hands meetings, one founder remains on our board, and when I joined in 2022, our CEO had already been with the company for more than a decade. He has since transitioned into the Chair role, and David joined as CEO, but he's been connected to 1Password since 2019.

Long story short, there's a lot of stability at both the founder and executive levels, and that means a great deal for company culture.

Jena Dunay: It absolutely does.

You mentioned you're a global organization with 1,400 employees. Tell us more about the remote aspect. Where do people physically work?

Katya Laviolette: People often find our story fascinating because so many organizations became remote because of COVID and then moved back to the office afterward.

1Password was built on a remote-first foundation long before COVID. We've always had physical locations, but we don't call them offices. Our largest location is in Toronto, and we refer to it as a Collaboration Center because it's designed around bringing people together.

Over the last year and a half, we've learned that even in a remote environment, people still want face-to-face interactions. They want to collaborate, build strategy together, and connect as humans. So we encourage in-person gatherings through company-wide meetings, team meetings, and functional events.

We're also building out additional collaboration spaces in the U.S. and the U.K. For some teams, particularly sales, we encourage employees to spend time in those collaboration centers because there is tremendous value in working together.

I'd say we've evolved from being completely remote to being remote-first with a strong emphasis on human connection and collaboration. It's really the best of both worlds.

Jena Dunay: I love that you call them Collaboration Centers. Internal language often says a lot about a company's culture.

Katya Laviolette: Absolutely. Collaboration is actually one of the core elements of how we think about building a high-performance organization. As you scale, collaboration becomes even more important.

Jena Dunay: Tell us how you came across 1Password in the first place. I think it's helpful for candidates to understand why the leader of the people function chose to join.

Katya Laviolette: I've spent more than 30 years in human resources and have worked across virtually every aspect of the profession. Much of my career was spent in large, publicly traded industrial and manufacturing companies, which might seem very different from technology.

But ultimately, people, culture, and business support are industry-agnostic.

As I entered the later stage of my career, I found myself increasingly drawn to entrepreneurial environments and founder-led companies. I enjoy building things and helping organizations scale.

What attracted me to 1Password was the opportunity to work with founders, help shape a growing company, and have a meaningful impact. It also helped that it was a Canadian company.

The two things that ultimately drove my decision were the opportunity to make an impact and the opportunity to have fun. We genuinely care about people, we're humble, and I really enjoy the people I work with.

Jena Dunay: I love that you mentioned wanting to have fun. That's often overlooked in discussions about work, but it matters.

How did you actually find the opportunity?

Katya Laviolette: Interestingly, someone called me completely out of the blue. I didn't know him, but his wife had worked for an organization where I had previously worked.

At the time, I was actually on maternity leave. I honestly didn't know much about 1Password. Like many consumers, I knew I should probably improve my own security practices.

I started having conversations with the leadership team, the founders, and the investors. The more I learned, the more I realized I could contribute while also learning from a scaling organization.

So my advice is simple: always take those calls. If I hadn't taken that call, I would have missed an incredible opportunity.

Jena Dunay: That's fantastic advice. We always tell people to network because you never know which connection will lead to your next opportunity.

Katya Laviolette: Exactly. Often, the people who help you most are the ones you'd least expect. That's why maintaining your network is so important, regardless of where you are in your career.

Jena Dunay: Let's talk more about culture. How would you describe the culture at 1Password for someone considering joining?

Katya Laviolette: Our culture is deeply mission-driven. We exist to help keep people safe from an identity security perspective.

With the rise of AI, security challenges have evolved beyond human users to include AI agents and automated systems. Our purpose remains clear: helping people and organizations stay secure.

As we've grown and expanded our product portfolio, we've become a very high-performance organization. And I'll be direct—it isn't for everyone.

We are transparent during the hiring process. We talk openly about remote work, about moving quickly, about iteration, and about embracing mistakes as learning opportunities.

This is not an eight-to-four environment. We're building something meaningful in a fast-moving market. We need to move quickly, adapt quickly, and respond to change.

There's a lot of ambiguity, and resilience is critical. We make sure candidates understand exactly what they're signing up for because we don't believe in overselling the reality.

Jena Dunay: When you say "high performance," what does that mean practically?

Katya Laviolette: It means delivering on commitments. Building and shipping products. Meeting forecasts. Operating with strong data and facts. Attracting exceptional talent and creating an environment where people are proud to work.

It's about building something meaningful and sustainable that can impact millions of people.

Jena Dunay: Let's talk about rewards. What does 1Password offer beyond compensation?

Katya Laviolette: We take a holistic employee experience approach.

Compensation and equity are important, and every employee receives equity. But we also focus heavily on development opportunities, employee resource groups, leadership programs, inclusion initiatives, and learning experiences.

We offer wellness days, top-tier benefits, and flexible remote work arrangements.

Remote work isn't for everyone. It requires self-motivation and the ability to collaborate across multiple time zones. Flexibility comes with responsibility.

We continuously gather employee feedback and make adjustments to improve the overall experience.

Jena Dunay: Tell us more about the wellness days.

Katya Laviolette: Employees receive 25 paid time off days annually, plus four wellness days—one per quarter.

They're essentially company-wide recharge days. While some employees supporting our 24/7 operations may flex the time differently, the goal is to encourage people to step away, focus on themselves, and recharge.

Often, we'll pair wellness days with small recognition perks like coffee credits or activities to encourage employees to enjoy the time.

Jena Dunay: Looking ahead to 2026 and beyond, what are the major priorities for your people strategy?

Katya Laviolette: We have four major pillars.

The first is continuing to strengthen our high-performance culture by ensuring role clarity, prioritization, communication, and development opportunities.

The second is AI. We have a comprehensive strategy around AI adoption, education, and internal deployment. Since we're building AI-enabled products, our workforce must also develop AI competencies.

The third pillar is collaboration. We want to strengthen collaboration across our global regions with more intentional in-person experiences and team-building opportunities.

The fourth pillar is employee ambassadorship. We have millions of customers, and we want every employee to understand and advocate for our products, whether on the consumer or enterprise side.

Those are the four pillars guiding our HR strategy into 2026.

Jena Dunay: I love that employee ambassadorship is one of your priorities. That's something more organizations should think about.

You also mentioned coaching and development. Why has that become such a priority?

Katya Laviolette: Managers are essential to execution.

When you look at engagement data, managers often experience the greatest pressure. They're balancing expectations from executives while supporting their teams.

We've built a custom leadership development program called People Essentials, which serves more than 90 managers.

For senior leaders, we provide operational coaching—not life coaching, but coaching from experienced executives who've done the job before.

We also have mentoring programs, including reverse mentoring, because experienced leaders can learn a tremendous amount from newer generations entering the workforce.

Ultimately, managers are under significant pressure, and our responsibility is to support them.

Jena Dunay: That's such an important point. Managing up is often overlooked.

No company is perfect. What are some areas of opportunity for 1Password?

Katya Laviolette: Growth creates complexity.

As a scaling company, we're constantly adapting to changes in technology and customer needs. Sometimes that means pivoting quickly.

One example was our AI enablement strategy. Initially, we assumed employees would immediately embrace AI adoption.

But we're a security company, and security-minded people naturally ask tough questions. They want to understand risks and implications.

We realized we had moved too quickly without fully addressing those concerns. So at our next all-hands meeting, we acknowledged it, reset expectations, listened more carefully, and rebuilt the approach.

Today, we have roughly a 90% adoption rate for our AI tools.

That's one of the strengths of a fast-moving organization. You learn, iterate, and adjust.

Jena Dunay: I love the humility in that story. Trust is built in moments like that.

Who succeeds at 1Password, and who doesn't?

Katya Laviolette: I often tell candidates who won't succeed before I tell them who will.

The people who struggle are those who arrive with a rigid playbook and assume they can simply apply it exactly as they've done before.

Bring your expertise, absolutely. But you also need curiosity, adaptability, and a willingness to learn.

You need to respect the company's history and understand why things have evolved the way they have.

The people who succeed are collaborative, flexible, and willing to adapt while still contributing their knowledge.

Jena Dunay: If someone's listening and thinking, "This sounds like a great place to work," what kinds of opportunities are available?

Katya Laviolette: We're hiring across nearly every function.

We have opportunities in sales, engineering, AI, product management, security, HR, legal, finance, strategy, marketing, communications, content, and partnerships.

There are a lot of meaningful opportunities for people who want to help build something special.

Jena Dunay: Where can people learn more?

Katya Laviolette: LinkedIn is a great place to connect with me. And for job opportunities, the best place to visit is the 1Password careers site.

Jena Dunay: Last question. What advice would you give someone who wants their application to stand out?

Katya Laviolette: Right now, organizations are receiving enormous numbers of applications, and not all of them come from real candidates.

As a security company, we're investing in additional safeguards to ensure we're evaluating genuine applicants.

My advice is to think creatively. Leverage your network. Referrals remain incredibly valuable.

We receive thousands of applications for some roles. For example, an Executive Assistant posting can attract over 1,000 resumes within days.

That's why networking and human connections matter. You never know where the right introduction will come from.

Jena Dunay: That's great advice.

I've really enjoyed learning more about 1Password. I've known the brand from the consumer side, so it's been fascinating to hear about the B2B side and the growth journey.

We’ll include all the links and information in the show notes, and we’ll see you next week on another episode of Culture Uncovered.

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