Elevate: Women Transforming Employee Experience
Discover the real stories behind workplace transformation. Elevate features inspiring conversations with women who are reshaping employee experience through empathy, courage, and impact. From navigating challenges to leading meaningful change, each episode offers honest insights, practical advice, and powerful moments of leadership. Whether you're new to leadership or a seasoned pro, tune in for motivation to lead with heart and make your workplace better.
Elevate: Women Transforming Employee Experience
S02 EP08. Who Are You At Your Best: Building a Culture Where People Actually Feel Seen
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What if the most important question in onboarding isn't "Here's what we do", but "Who are you at your best, and how will you bring that here?"
In this episode of Elevate, host Joy Fajardo sits down with Mary Newville, Director of People Experience at Arctic Wolf, to explore what it really takes to build a culture that makes people feel seen, not just on paper, but at 3,200 employees across six continents.
Mary joined Arctic Wolf in 2020, right as the company entered one of the most intense growth periods in tech, sometimes onboarding 120 new hires every two weeks. She's spent nearly six years building the programs, rituals, and infrastructure that turned a fast-moving wolf pack into a Fortune-recognized great workplace.
What makes her perspective worth listening to isn't just the scale. It's that she's never treated culture as something employees consume; she's always built it as something they steward together.
In this conversation, you'll hear how Arctic Wolf's Pack culture goes from values on a website to real daily behaviour, why their WellWolf Ambassador program filled up almost instantly when they opened applications, and how Mary thinks about where AI belongs in HR and where it probably shouldn't go. There's also a really good story about a Howl on Zoom that you won't see coming.
If you're a people leader, HR pro, or internal communications specialist trying to build something that lasts past the next all-hands, this one is worth your full attention.
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Welcome to Elevate, a podcast where we sit down with the women shaping workplace culture at some of the biggest names in the business. These are the leaders navigating change, putting people first, and keeping teams connected and engaged every single day. Elevate is brought to you by Line Zero, a global employee experienced consultancy firm that partners with organizations to create connected workplaces. Tune in to learn how today's leaders are breaking barriers and building cultures where employees truly thrive.
SPEAKER_02Welcome back to Elevate. I am your host, Joy Fojardo, and today's conversation is about something a lot of organizations say they care about, but very few actually get right. How you create a workplace where people don't just show up but genuinely feel seen. Mary Newville has spent her career figuring that out from the inside. She's the director of People Experience at Arctic Wolf, where she's helped shape the culture of a company recognized by Fortune as one of the best workplaces in technology, best workplaces for millennials, and great place to work certified in the UK, all while scaling globally. But what makes Mary's work stand out isn't just the recognition, it's how she thinks about it. She believes recognition isn't a program you add in later, it's the foundation everything else is built on. Mary, welcome to Elevate. I'm really glad you're here with us today. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here today. Amazing. So I know that our listeners are excited, so let's just get into it. So my first question, I wanted to start at the very beginning. Not Arctic Wolf first, but really you. How did you end up in people experience? Because, you know, I want to work in HR, is not usually the thing kids say growing up. What was the actual path for you?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, great question. I definitely wasn't dreaming of being an HR director when I was a little kid. I don't even think I knew what human resources was. But my path to HR was as a freshman in college, I had no idea what I wanted to be. And I don't know about anyone listening, but that's quite a big decision to make when you're 18 years old and haven't experienced a lot of the world. So I went in with my major undeclared, but my heart was really torn because I have played piano since I was three years old. And it's always been a passion of mine. And from a young age, I would describe myself as a quote unquote big dreamer. So I love setting big goals and dreams for myself. And I had always dreamed of being a piano, a pianist, a famous pianist. I loved Lori Line. It's probably a very niche reference, but if if you you like pianists, she does some really beautiful lyrical music. And I had this dream of being a pianist. But I also knew um, I didn't know if that could really pay the bills. And I was really torn with like settling, like, oh, if I don't pursue this, am I settling? And I'm, it goes against my identity of being a big dreamer. So my other idea was I really like helping people and nurses, you know, help people. You there, there's always a need for nurses. So that was where I kind of started out my career exploration. But I knew I couldn't be a nurse at the end of the day because I could not wear scrubs to work every day. That knows me, knows I love getting dressed every day and putting together my outfits and styling my jewelry. So nursing was just a no-go, and that's no shade on scrubs. I so many of my friends and people that I know that work in medicine, they love that they get to wear their scrubs and not think about it, but I didn't want to wear scrubs every day. And just through some career exploration in college, I actually took a class called major and career exploration. I had to do a bunch of personality tests and also informational interviews, and all of my personality tasks, jar, was something that just kept popping up as a field I might be interested in. And so I started doing a bunch of informational interviews and meeting with people that worked in human resources and learning about their careers, learning about what they did. And I realized it was such a great fit for me of wanting to help people and work with people. I knew that like spreadsheets or something that was solo just wasn't going to be it for me. So I knew I could help people be part of a team, be part of like helping a company be successful, but specifically focused on the people. And I also through that journey realized I'm not selling out on my dream because I also have a dream of creating a life for myself. And and not that musicians can't, we wouldn't have all the beautiful things we have today if people were like, there's no chance. But I just knew for me, I was able to differentiate between I can still play piano for fun and have it be a part of my life. And it doesn't have to be a career, and that doesn't mean I'm giving up on a dream, you know? So realizing this dream I had to get a job someday and just have a little bit more certainty in that with a more clear path, I realized was another dream of mine. So declared my major in human resources development at the University of Minnesota and the rest is history.
SPEAKER_02It's super intentional because some of the folks that we have interviewed in this podcast, they are actually more of in the right path. Somehow a manager or a team led them to this role. But for you, it's super intentional and it's very refreshing to hear that because as you said, sometimes it feels like you're just settling. But in your case, you made this intentional decision to really take that path.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. And you know, the more I started taking classes and learning about human resources, it really got me inspired and excited and seeing the strategy behind human resources and how HR can be a really important piece of an organization's success and leveraging your talent, which is your biggest asset. And yeah, I think in my heart too, just having wanting to leave the world a better place and thinking about like how could I do that through through work? And it for me, like it just seemed like a natural fit between my strengths, my interests, how I operate, and also, you know, that visual of like your calling is where your skills meet the world's need. And there's a third thing that I'm blanking on in this moment, but it just felt right to me. So um, but then unlike you were talking about a lot of people you interview, they kind of felt maybe they started in consulting or different areas of the business and ended up in HR. I once I declared my major, I have been like HR from the onset. So an internship at Innate on Resources and then went full-time and I've been in the field ever since graduating.
SPEAKER_02You came into this with a real sense of purpose and intention, as we said. And then code 42 was where you actually got to build things and then you made the jump in 2020, which was not exactly the call of year to join a new company. Um, what was it like stepping into a people role at a fast-paced growing company in the middle of a pandemic?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, great question. It was like jumping onto a rocket ship. I'll share that analogy more in a moment, but you know, I will say that counting my lucky stars at Code 42 job was really my first experience in high-growth startup environments, and I loved it. And so while working at Code 42 wasn't nearly at all the scale that I have gotten to experience and build here with my team at Arctic Wolf, it definitely was a taste in chaos and building from the ground up and building at as the same time as you're delivering. So I knew I already really enjoyed startups. So to answer your question, yes, if anyone else switched jobs during the pandemic, a pretty weird experience to be sitting at your desk in your office, at your house, on your MacBook, or like for me, it was from Mac to Mac. So it was just like shutting one laptop, and then the next week, just opening up a different laptop in the exact same space and joining another Zoom meeting, but now it's a totally different company. So it was quite the experience. And when I joined Arctic Wolf, we were just in the beginning of a period of rapid growth. And so I joined, and I think there was maybe 20 to 40 people in my new hire cohort. And two weeks later, I was co-facilitating PAC Prep. And then by the next, you know, two weeks later with the next new higher new hire cohort, I was leading Pac Prep, which we call or it wasn't even called PAC Prep at the time. I was leading onboarding with my IT counterpart who had also just been hired. And I remember I would look at the new hires and be like, don't worry, you're in great hands. If we don't know the answer, we will find it for you. But my analogy earlier, like, you know, you know, getting on board a rocket ship and blasting into the stratosphere. When I started at Arctic Wolf, I used this phrase a lot of like, it's we're building a plane as it's taking off the runway. But a couple weeks into working at Arctic Wolf, I quickly upgraded my analogy. And I was like, we are building a rocket ship while it's blasting through the stratosphere. So I honestly feel like it was less COVID. We were all working remotely, but it was more just the high growth and the built, like the hiring upwards of 60 to 120 people every two weeks, delivering onboarding, training, all of the new higher materials and support from scratch. Like we didn't have, you know, new higher training tracks or templates that we could use or tools or automations and at the same time had to do all that. At the same time, we're trying to build these programs. So I look back and it's amazing how much we were able to accomplish and still enjoy the ride. But you know, fast forward five years, almost six now. We have tools with us, it seems operating procedures. But it was it was a wild time.
SPEAKER_02It is. It sounds like a wild moment to start your career. You mentioned two weeks in and you're doing onboarding when you yourself are still kind of on boarding too. Um and you mentioned 20 to 60 onboards every so often. That's really super fast. So you know, you're trying to learn the culture while the culture is actively being stress tested, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's a really good way to put it.
SPEAKER_02The kind of the pressure either clarifies your priorities or wearies you pretty fast. And in your case, I feel like it really clarified things for you. You came in during a moment of, as we just talked about, very real intensity, and you had to figure out what Arctic Wolf's culture actually was versus what it it aspired to be. Now that brings me to the pack. So the pack is all over Arctic Wolf's culture. You know, there's packaging tea, run with a pack, the whole thing. But most company values, they end up as like words on a wall. But yours, it seems to stick and have some traction. So, what actually made it land? What did you have to build to make it real?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, such a great question. And that is something we actively work on is how do our values not be just words on a wall, but how do they be transformative and really help us deliver our mission, which is the promise we made to the customer? So I'll start with a little story. When I first started at Arctic Wolf, or when I got the job offer, I had worked for the chief people officer, Kristen Dean, in Another Life. So when I accepted the job, she sent me an email and the subject line said howl with a bunch of exclamation points. And she wrote her a nice little note, like, excited you're joining. And then she signed her note, P.S. We howl around here a lot. And having worked in people experience most of my career, I was like, oh my goodness, that is so cute, so clever. I love that. They're Arctic Wolf. They're the wolf pack. They in quotes howl. I did not think she meant literally. So fast forward to my I joined Arctic Wolf. I'm in my first all-company meeting and it's COVID, right? So we're all on Zoom. And the CEO at the time was talking, and in the middle of what he was sharing, he said, I think this deserves a celebratory howl. Three, two, one. And he just counts down. And the whole Zoom meeting, everybody unmutes, just on cue, no delay, and everybody's howling. And meanwhile, I'm sitting at home and I'm like, oh my goodness, she was serious. This is so cringe, awkward. This is so weird. I've never held in my life. And I was like, okay, she meant that literally. Um, and I just there it's kind of funny. But when we talk about what does it make look like to make culture real, there's so many things. But I'll just since I just shared that story, I'll start with rituals. And one of our kind of quirky rituals that makes the pack the pack, I mean, we are wolves, we're a wolf pack, is we howl literally. So if we're celebrating a win or a promotion or a sale or some big news or an acquisition, or just because we will literally do the countdown and everyone just erupts and howls. It's just the weirdest thing, but it makes us us. And so when we were designing onboarding, which we call pack prep, we really lean into that we're the wolf pack. Um, we knew that we had to incorporate the howl and make it sticky because that original crew of 500 was being quickly outnumbered as we were hiring sometimes 120 people every two weeks. If we had a group of 60, we were like, wow, walk in the park week, like this is gonna be great. Like that was a light onboarding group for us. So we embedded the howl into the onboarding experience so that when you start, we celebrate the end of your onboarding with a howl and we kind of joke, it's just getting that first awkward one out of the way. But it's been really fun to see five years later and glowing, growing from being in North America to all over the world. The howl is this really, like I said, quirky, random ritual that unites us. But on top of that, to your point about values, not just being words on the wall, I think, you know, it goes that impact really comes from when your thoughts, your words, and your actions are in alignment. And so when we think about the employee experience, how do we put our thoughts and words and beliefs and actions in alignment so that we're pulling in the same direction and can make an impact? And it starts with onboarding, but it doesn't just end there. It's how do we embed these things into recognition, into performance management, into company rituals like our quarterly town hall meetings, um, in how we talk and show up and the things that we wanted and celebrate. So, some small examples are impact prep, which is onboarding. I talked about the howl, but we also do a couple of really, really intentional things. And one of them is we start onboarding with a question. And before we go into 20 minutes about Arctic Wolf and going on and on about the new higher journey, we start with a question: who are you at your best? And how are you gonna bring that to Arctic Wolf? And your best doesn't have to be, you know, it's end of month and you're in finance and you're compiling your spreadsheets. Maybe you at your best is when you're telling your kids their bedtime stories and you're being really theatrical and they're hanging on your every word and you're gonna bring that into how you lead your team, right? Or maybe you at your best is, you know, ninth hole on the golf course and you're just in the zone, nothing can rattle you, you're cool, calm, collected, you're performing at, you know, peak performance. But we have people start from a place of who they're at their best and how they're gonna bring that to the pack to set the standard from day one of creativity, of innovation, of openness and connection. From there, throughout their experience, they talk about how they're gonna live our values in action. And it's exactly, it's exactly meeting that point you're talking about, Joy, of values just being words on the wall. And we literally say, we don't want our values just to be words on a website that we kind of pat ourselves on the back for. So we ask new hires, what will it look like for you to contribute to this culture and keep it strong by living these values in action? And everyone thinks about not just saying one of our values is people, not just saying, I really value people. I really think that's so great. I'm totally aligned because you hear that a lot, right? But the difference is how do we say, because I value people, when I'm in a one-on-one, I'm gonna give you my full attention. I'm not gonna be multitasking on Slack. Or if someone gets interrupted, I'm going to make space for their voice. Or to value security, I'm always gonna use unique, long, secure passwords, right? Like, what does this look like in action? So we already start to like have the wheels turning of like, what does it look like for everybody to live this out and create culture, not just consume it or expect it to be there? And then we have recognition tied to our values when people complete their performance reviews, they're asked to talk about how they're living out our values. So there's a lot of ways, but it's also a lot of intentionality to how do we how does everybody know what they need, like what it looks like to be successful by defining our values and defining participating in culture? And then how do we engage them in living those out through programming, through recognition, et cetera?
SPEAKER_02I didn't expect the howl, but probably towards the end we should try that. My first you want to do your first one? Yeah, but yeah, I really like what you said about the three things the alignment between words, action, and what's the other one again, Mary? Your thoughts, your thoughts, your action, your actions. They should all kind of align because employees they can tell. In your case, they can smell maybe. When culture is like just performance, you know, something that you just put on your slide deck, right? Yeah, totally. But yeah, I love that. Now, one of the things that I've heard you talk about is recognition, you know, not recognition as a program, but it seems like recognition as something quite structural. You have a quote that I keep thinking about. It's something that I read from an article, and let me read it. It says, Don't underestimate the impact of small acts of recognition. The way you show up for your team can shape culture more than you know. So can you tell us what you mean by it and what does intentional recognition design actually look like inside Arctic Wolf?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, great question. I think when we think recognition, often in the workplace, we think what is your recognition platform, your recognition tool, your recognition program? And I think whether by intentional design or just maybe who I am and like I shared at the beginning, like wanting to leave the world a better place, really caring about people. When I think about recognition at its core, it's how do you make people feel seen, recognized as a full human? And what kind of culture infrastructure can you set up where people have the opportunity to show up as themselves and be welcomed and embraced and fully seen? And we do have formal recognition programs at Arctic Wolf. But I think what's more powerful is the authenticity and psychological, the psychological safety that people have to show up as authentically themselves, to have great managers that care about them, and to do life in community with people that want them to be their best. And so, and then of course, I'll talk and the programs that we have, the formal ones, really do support all of this as well. Cause it's so fun to get a formal piece of recognition and have it sent to your manager and get star, you know, we do star coins and I can talk more about that in a little bit, but kind of back to what I was just talking about in onboarding of how do we live our values in practice. One of our values is people. And we in practice, it looks like being stronger together. So our culture statement is we run as a pack. And I think what makes Arctic Wolf really special is the community. It really is a community of people that care about each other, um, care about the mission that we're on together and want to do well, but also really care about the people alongside them. So you really feel like you're supported and strong because you're part of the community. And to foster that community, we do a lot of things. And one of them you mentioned, I think in my intro, but something we built to Arctic Wolf is our DEIB diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging program we call PAC Unity. And in onboarding, when I'm talking about PAC unity or really in general, I always like to talk about how we're not trying. Our goal isn't PAC uniformity. We're not saying, hey, everybody, to fit in here, you need to think this way, look this way, believe this way, talk this way, um, have all these same hobbies, all the same beliefs, political religion. And we're actually saying we're trying to foster pac unity where we're creating this culture of respect, regardless of, you know, if you and I differ on maybe certain things. But how are we creating this environment where everyone can be respected and grow and thrive at the same rate? And in practice, we have pack unity alliances. So there are these communities for people to find connection and support, people that have shared experiences, or maybe you're joining because you want to be an ally or a supporter or learn more about whatever group. So we have over nine alliances, including Women Transforming Tech, Proud Wolves for LGBTQ employees. We have Black Excellence Allyship Movement, which we call Beam. We have Honoring Asian and Pacific Islanders, which is Happy Wolves. We have IP Wolves, which is Indigenous Peoples, we have Well Wolves, which is focused on mental health and well-being. We have Wolves Without Barriers, which is focused on disability and accessibility. And I know I'm missing a couple in this moment, but they're all thriving groups of employees from different walks of life and in different departments and different regions. How about being fully seen to come full circle here? I've shared this story before on panels, but for me, it's still one of my favorites and really powerful. We celebrated holy for the first time a couple of years ago. I had never even heard of holy before. And some of our happy honoring Asian Pacific Islander wolves came together to put on holy, and people shared photos of how they were celebrating in their home and how they were decorating their home and how they were dressing for their celebrations. And then we did an in-office. We had some treats and food. And you could like put the paint. It's like it's a festival of color and light overcoming darkness. And it's very celebratory. And if you've ever seen the pictures of people with like powdered, yeah. Dust all over them, super colorful. That's holy. I had never heard of it. It was so fun to get to celebrate and experience something meaningful to my colleagues that I work with. But after the event, and the event was so special, like people from all over shared how they celebrated holy growing up, their favorite parts. They shared pictures. But after the event, I talked with one of the women that organized it. And she was in tears. And it was very emotional for her to tell me in her entire career of working in the United States, she had never gotten to celebrate holy in the workplace. And I think about for me, I live in the US. I am a Christian. My faith is really important to me. And but I live in the US because everybody knows what Christmas is. We get Christmas off. Like I never have to like have this big celebration about something I really care about at home and like have it like completely, not that it's unacknowledged because it's not necessarily intentional, but just like not celebrate a big part of me isn't represented at work. Um, so employees have opportunities like that to share who they are and be celebrated and seen and show up fully and share their culture. And that's one tiny example. Stuff like that is happening all the time. We just celebrated Eid and Lunar New Year, and for all the heritage months, there's different celebration and things going on. And then I'll also highlight when I we look at our engagement scores and you look at recognition, when you look at all the comments, it's a lot of them are about the your manager. My manager really cares about me. My manager is helping me grow and develop. My manager gives me really good feedback. And again, I think that speaks to the power of not just checking the box and we have a recognition program, but how are you creating a culture where people are truly seen and valued as humans that show up fully in the workplace, not as robots? And so we do a lot of things to help support our managers, but we have really great managers, which is one of our highest scoring areas on our engagement survey is my manager cares about me and my development. But lastly, I'll just touch on our formal recognition program. So we use Bucketless, huge fans. We've been using them for the entirety of my time at Arctic Wolf. But it's a platform where you can go in and I could recognize you, Joy, and say, Joy does such a phenomenal job with the podcast. And then you would get the note and your manager would get it. And people really love the tool. So that's another way that, you know, practically there's a medium for making sure people get seen for what they do. And I think it's really powerful because if you're relying on every manager to remember, you know, some managers are better at than others, but also managers don't see everything. And when you open it up in that peer-to-peer space, that's someone that's collaborating with you on a project or is in with you in a meeting or event, you know, they can really speak to what a rock star you are. And those um little positive, uh, those moments of positivity are so good for the emotional tank, gas tank, if you will. You know, people to hear what they're doing well.
SPEAKER_02That's so great. All of those that you have shared, they are very insightful. And I know that our listeners would get a lot of nuggets there. But to me, what I like the most among everything that you've shared is the community piece. Because community is not something that you'll straightaway think about when you talk about job or like work. Work is kind of separate. You have community outside of work, but having your own communities inside of work where you belong and you feel like you're celebrated. I really like the story about Holly too. Holy yep, yep, I like that. Also, I think people underestimate how much recognition is really about just communication, right? It's telling someone, you know, we see you, this matters, you belong here. And every um, like every person would have a different way on how they want to get recognized. And based on your um, like within your organization, it seems like it's direct to the person and it's also to their manager to kind of acknowledge that people are seeing what they're doing, which is just great culture overall. Now, the recognition piece connects directly to something else that you build at Arctic Wolf, which is the Well Wolf ambassadors. So for our listeners, Well Wolf ambassadors, that's a peer well-being support model, which is not the most common thing to see in a tech company, right? What was the thinking behind it? And how do you build something like that without it feeling like HR surveillance in a different costume?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, great question. Well Wolves is a program I'm so passionate about and feel so um proud to be part of a community that has people that sub I'm in this capacity. And um, you're so sweet to be like I built and all this. And I just let the record show this was built as a team and community, so many amazing minds and people coming together, both my colleagues, my team, my manager, my peers, but also the employees we work with. I'll talk about them right now that are part of this, but these different programs, this is definitely could not be done in isolation or a vacuum or by one person. I'm so grateful to get to do this work in partnership with just so many great people. But well wolves. Okay, so well wolves, actually, I mentioned the engage our engagement survey. We call it pack insights. Just you're gonna get sick of me and all my pack puns um and analogies here, but that's fine. We call it Yeah, we call it PAC Insights, of course. And we do it right now every six months. We're ideating around maybe switching the cadence to once a year, just um, it's a whole nother conversation. But if we can't action the feedback, we we don't want to do more harm than good, right? So we only want to survey as much as we can action it. We're thinking about maybe switching the cadence a little bit, but right now we do it every six months. And a couple of years ago, one of the themes that we saw coming out of the survey was support for mental health and well-being. And the question at Arctic Well or at Arctic Wolf, I'm not gonna get the question right in this moment, but something to the effect of like, at I feel like I can prioritize and take care of my mental health at Arctic Wolf and well-being overall. It it trapped with the time. I mentioned the rocket ship analogy. Like there was more work than there were hours in the day or people to do it even hard to prioritize because there was so much urgent, so many urgent things. Everybody, no matter where you were in the organization, we're building from the ground up. Um, so really hard to how do you how do you prioritize mental health and well-being? And so we wanted to be really intentional with fostering a culture where our success is fueled by our well-doing and not, or our sorry, our success is fueled by our well-being and not only we just know that people can't pour out of an empty cup for so long, right? Our well-doing, we want well-doing to come from well-being, right? And if we are super successful at the expense of our talent, which is our differentiator that lives our culture out and builds our products and connects with our employees, can we really be that successful if our talent is running on empty? So this is way easier said than done because startup culture, very hard. I mean, there's a lot to do and the opportunity is great, but the work to get there even more so. But we wanted to be intentional with how do we create a culture where we're fostering mental health and well-being? It's normalized that if you are struggling or having a hard day, you can talk about it and there's no stigma, or at least less stigma, that you know what resources are available to you. But we A, want to be like we want to help reduce the stigma. We want people to know what resources are available to them. And we truly want to foster an environment where people can be their best. And so, how do we encourage mental health and well-being? And that's where the Wellwolf Ambassador Program was developed. And so we just did another training in the APAC region, the Asia Pacific region. So we now have over 70 trained ambassadors, but we, when you talked about HR surveillance, this couldn't be further from that. These are employees that genuinely care. It was so cool. The first time we put out the application, we like filled up all 30 SWATs almost instantly. People wanted to do this. They were like, yes, this is a topic I really care about. I want to do this. And we, you know, we asked people to fill out a why so that when once they went through the program, we could share like who they are and and their why for doing it. And so many people just sharing, this is something that I care a lot about, or I want to help those around me be well. Or I've struggled with this myself and I want to be able to give back so that anyone that's been through what I've been through, I can help them. So our well-wolf ambassadors are just like salt of the earth, best of the best kind of people. They care so much about those around them. They go through 12 hours of training to be mental health ambassador certified, if you will. And they're not trained to be a therapist or a coach. They're actually trained to listen well. How do you be there and support someone and shift from like, I need to help them? And they do want to help them, but in the sense of like, I need to fix this. Instead of being a fixer, how can you listen? How can you just be that space? A lot of times people just need someone to talk to. So they're trained how to listen and be empathetic and be with someone in a tough moment and not feel like, now I need to, you know, come at you with all these things you should do or all these things I've done that work for me. But how can you be there and be present with them and then also be a liaison to company resources? Because we have some great resources available to employees. Do they know about it? So we ask our ambassadors, uh, we we, you know, put their information up all over the place. So hopefully if somebody's having a rough day, they're like, hmm, I could reach out to this person. But additionally, we ask our Wellwolf ambassadors to post in Slack and or speak in their spheres of influence, just reminding people about the importance of mental health and well-being, taking time for themselves. A lot of our ambassadors lead things like breathing sessions. There's like a weekly breathing session led by one of our ambassadors in Utah. And a lot of our offices do a weekly Wellwolves walk where they're, but it's the little things that are the big things, right? How do we just make this part of our culture that we take breaks, we invest in mindfulness, we spend time connecting with each other, we bring in, you know, different speakers on different topics. But that was where the initiative that was the origination of it. And it really is so genuine, but it's rooted back in that community of people that really care about each other and want to be part of investing in the community that they care about.
SPEAKER_02I love that. And I think it also goes down to the actual company culture because sometimes you open this program, but if it's not actually embedded into the culture, people might be a bit wary to raise their hands. Like, is this another thing that's gonna be added to my plate? Like, is the company really gonna be supporting this? But I think because the trust is already built in your case, that's why people are more supportive of the program. And it's interesting because whenever it's peer-to-peer, like it requires a different kind of trust too. You're not asking people to use a resource, but you're also asking them to be the resource themselves. So it's giving a piece of you at the same time, which is a bigger ask.
SPEAKER_01But it's a but I think in this way, it's not like like a check the box ask or uh, it's really meaningful. Like people get to help somebody in a really meaningful way. And you talked about trust. I also think it it is for sure trust, and it's from the beginning. Employees are stewards of culture, not can just consumers of it. Like we build this together, and because of that, we all genuinely care and we're not just like looking to one person, like, oh Mary, because she's in people experience, it's her job to do all this. Everybody, we have PAC gives back ambassadors, we have PAC unity leaders, we have our Well Wolf ambassadors, and I think it's people that really want to be a steward of the culture because they really care about it and they want to be able to get back.
SPEAKER_02Mary, you're building all of these things that we just talked about, you know, the recognition programs with your team, the well-being infrastructure, the employer resource group, the culture rituals. And at some point, you also decided to start a podcast called The Howler. The Arctic Wolf internal leadership podcast, it's called The Howler. Now I want to ask you about this because it's a really interesting choice, you know, using audio, using podcast format as also a form of people experience strategy. How do you think about communication as a cultural tool and you know, not just a channel, but an actual lever for how people feel about where they work?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that is such a great question. And when you talk about how do people feel about where they work, part of that is leadership. Do you trust leadership? Do you know them? Do you believe they're taking the company in the right direction? Well, it's hard to know them or trust they're taking the company in the right direction, or trust them generally if you if you don't really know them. And something that we picked up on in our hypergrowth was we used to all be in the same place or just one of three small places. So the leaders, everybody knew them because we only had three offices. The leaders would travel amongst them, even if the leader wasn't traveling to your office or visiting between different company meetings. Like everyone knew everyone. But as we started to grow and we built offices in Germany and the UK and entities in Australia and New Zealand and now India and Japan, we knew that people, if if you're in the Ireland office, like it's gonna be very rare that you're gonna run into the CEO of the coffee machine, if ever, you know. I mean, he does visit the office there, but you know, you that that those shared connections and the camaraderie and just human-to-human connections were going to be less natural. So how could we make it a little bit more natural, if you will? And podcast felt like the perfect medium because you meet people where they're at, when it works for them, in their earbuds. They don't have to join a Zoom meeting, and especially as we are growing globally, it doesn't, most of our leaders are in North America. So it's just not realistic to ask people to like please join this fireside chat with the CEO at 8 p.m. your time when you're trying to put your kiddos to bed or at three in the morning, you know. So, but then also to the scheduling, it's just, you know, really challenging to create meaningful connection opportunities as we go globally. So our thought was how can we meet people where they're at? They could be washing dishes, going on a walk, checking their email on their own time, but they're getting this free form, long form content, not super long, but they're getting to hear the leaders not just when they're giving their quarterly updates on sales and goals and metrics. They're getting to hear about them talk about, you know, their kid learning how to do the Rubik's Cube and how they their favorite, the best concert they've ever been to, and how they think about leadership or how that's evolved from when they first became a manager to where they are today. What, you know, so they have this opportunity just to get to know our leaders personally and not just what they're doing on for their teams and for Arctic Wolf, but also who they're as humans and use that communication just to keep culture strong and that connection and community feel that I think is a really special part of the pack culture. That was kind of like the intention behind it. And I will say we've actually seen this wasn't the intention of what I just talked about. How do we connect the pack globally as we grow? But we've seen a ton of impact from new hires. We find that people wanting to join Arctic Wolf are like, hey, I want to check this out. I wanna, because I want to learn about this company. And we get feedback all the time from new hires of like, I loved listening to the podcast before I started. It was so fun to get to know XYZ leader. I loved this episode. It made me so excited to start. So it's also been a really good win for getting people excited about joining Arctic Vlog.
SPEAKER_02There's really something about audio specifically, right? It creates proximity because you cannot scheme a podcast the same way that you scheme an email, for example. When someone's voice is in your ear, the relationship feels slightly different, slightly more personal in a sense. And based on what you shared, it's very personal stories, also for your leaders, which adds to that personal vibe. So that's really cool to hear. Now, I'll move on to the next question. You've described what it takes to make a culture land at 3,200 people, recognition systems, well-being programs, the same thing that we've mentioned. Now, the infrastructure matters, right? So, what does that actually look like on the technology side? What tools and platforms does Arctic Wolf use to keep people connected and informed? And when you're evaluating employee experience or internal communication tools and technologies, what are you actually looking for?
SPEAKER_01Great question. Um, I've already mentioned one of the tools we use. We use bucket list for recognition. My one of my favorite tools that we use specifically in people experience is a tool called PIN PYN. Highly recommend. It is a tool that helps you personalize communications at scale. So PIN is connected to our HRIS. So we're able to pull from basically any piece of data in our HR human resource information system that we have connected to PIN. So name, start date, birthday, team, location, base like basically all the data we have in PIN in our human resource information system. And then what that allows us to do is we can create really custom thoughtful comms that go to the right people at the right time and are really personal. So we're hiring people all the time. And the people experience team, we are a team of five. We have 3,500 employees, and that's a lot of employees for just five people. So PIN allows us to, for example, write a really thoughtful welcome email and have specific details for you, Joy, if you're starting remotely and me in starting in Texas and Amanda starting in the UK. But when Amanda gets that email, she doesn't see any of the remote information. She doesn't see the Texas information, only sees, hi Amanda. We're so excited to have you starting next Monday, whatever the date is. And since you're a new hire in the Germany office, here's what you can expect and here's where to go. Um, and it just has really been an awesome tool in helping us scale people experience and connect with employees in a way that we could not do as five people. So that's a favorite one. Arctic Wolf, we use Slack, so really big Slack Zoom for connections. But and then, of course, the HR team, we use Workday as our HRIS. And we're working on, we all use co-pilot for day-to-day operations, like work, but we're working on building an AI, like an agentic member of the HR team with co-pilot chat, leveraging all the resources that we have in our documentation. We use Confluence, but there's a lot of information out there. But, you know, it's hard for employees to find or they're not sure which is relevant to them. But we're building this chat so that 24-7 employees can get answers about those day-to-day things. When's the next holiday? I'm having a baby. What do I need to do? I'm resigning or I have a new hire starting. This chat can pull from all the resources we have and help employees right away versus them having to wait until one of us is available. You know, depending on when they reach out, if they're in a different time zone, they can get those answers right away. So that's another tool we're really excited about.
SPEAKER_02But the tools question matters even more when you think about what's coming because you mentioned already AI is starting to show up in every layer of this work. But before we go there, I want to spend a minute on something more personal. So you've built a lot, you've grown through a company that's been moving fast the whole time you've been there. You've finished an MBA on top of it all. Now, I want to ask you about what that's looked like as a woman in leadership role in a tech company. In the very beginning, I already mentioned your leading people experience at a tech company and industry that's cues heavily male and culture can sometimes feel like it's very male-dominated, right? Now, what's your experience actually been like building credibility and influence in that environment? And what do you think about when you see other women coming up in HR in people roles? What do you want them to know?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's a really great question. And I will say I'm still working on my MBA. I'm about 40% of the way through. So, but it is in progress. But you know, I will say one thing about being in HR is even though we're in a male-dominated industry, I'm in a female-dominated field. So the majority of my colleagues are female. So I will say I think I have had, with regards to the content of your question, maybe an easier time than my colleagues that are in RD or security, where it really is more like majority men. And even though I was joining a male-dominated company, I mean, I will say from day one, I felt supported in safe to bring my whole self to work, valued for the contributions I do bring. That's one of my favorite things about being part of Arctic Wolf is there's share, there's mutual respect for all parts of every piece of the puzzle. We know that, you know, you can't make a great product if you don't have great people and you know, who hires and supports people, but also who sells the product? We can't get it to customers. So I feel really respected and I feel super grateful for that. And I think that comes from really great leadership. I know that my leaders have been empathetic, supportive, encouraging. And while I don't interface with their leaders directly, like the CEO usually, um I know that they have spoken highly of the care they feel as humans and the respect they feel. And you see that trickle down effect. And your question about like what would I say to women growing in the field or in HR? What would I say? Sky's the limit. Honestly, be yourself. Your dreams matter, your voice matters. There's space for you. And And there's so much work to be done. Like I am so grateful for that. I get to do this job. I love it. And I think if everybody had got to feel the way I feel about work, because I'm in a community that cares about me. I'm respected. If we had more work environments like that, like maybe we'd see less of some of the sadness and the hardships we see in the world and the mental health struggles. Because we spend like a lot of our lives, maybe the majority of it at work. And if not that, sleeping. So we might as well have a great time, but also like, you know, I think everybody wants to, everybody has a purpose, right? So if they have a place for that purpose and can show up fully and contribute meaningfully and grow like humans are made to grow, the more workplaces there are like that. I think that would just have such a powerful ripple effect on the world because most people go to work.
SPEAKER_02It's it's beautiful. What you said about having the leadership spearhead, the kind of culture where it's welcoming, you have mutual respect. That's the kind of environment you want to be in. So it's probably finding that right organization, or at least an organization that has a chance to adopt the same culture. It's hard to be bound in an organization where it's the opposite. You and I, I think we're so lucky, blessed, whatever we want to call it, yeah, to be part of organizations such as where we are at right now. Everything you just said is going to land for a lot of of the people listening to this, and it connects to where I want to take the last question because the future of this work is changing so fast, and you're someone who thinks about it clearly. AI is showing up everywhere in HR. And people experience right now, like recruiting, onboarding, engagement tools. AI is just everywhere, right? As someone who's built a culture that's fundamentally human, what's your honest take on where AI fits in this work? What are you actually paying attention to? And what are you cautious about?
SPEAKER_01Another great question. And I wouldn't say my philosophy on AI is fully baked, but I am optimistic about it. I think it is here to stay, and like anything, it can be used as for good or for evil. So how and why, like all matters. Actually, on our internal pod on the Howler Podcast, Chelsea and I were just talking about this with a guest recently, and Chelsea brought up the great point of like, no one's answering her question about the water usage and the environmental aspects. And that's such a great point. So I do want to be a mindful consumer and a good citizen of the earth. And I also know it's here to stay, and it's super helpful. Um, and when it comes to HR, like human humans are so special. Like AI can be so, so helpful. And I think it's just knowing the right place. Like what matters most human to human and what can you automate? Because it doesn't need to be human to human. So, like I said, we're working on our AI chatbot, the next member of the HR team, our agentic team member, if you will. And we're not trying to replace the HR team, and we're also not trying to not give our employees access to the people they need. But sometimes if you're if it's eight o'clock at night and you're trying to remember what your the group number is for benefits, you ask the chatbot and it'll tell you. Or if you're working on your performance review and you can't remember, you know, how to recall blast years to find it, just you know, you don't have to wait for someone in HR to wake up and see your email. Um, if it happens to be like late at night or something, you can just at the ask the chat bot. So I'm excited to lean in and find the good and seize the opportunity.
SPEAKER_02What I got from there is that there's a version of AI in HR that's about scaling the administrative load, you know. Great that. But there's also a version that tries to automate the relationship itself. Maybe that one we have to be a bit cautious about.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Joy, you're so good. Like, thanks for just telling that. Because absolutely, like, you know, I I think some of the the the things about being human, AI won't be able to do well or in a way that is good for society. But there's so many things it can do that I think it's just about knowing what it's almost an hour.
SPEAKER_02Can you imagine, Mary? All right. So fun. We started today talking about recognition, about the idea that small acts consistently build something bigger than any program. And what I'm walking away with from this conversation is that Mary's work and his colleagues' work as well has always been about building the condition for people to feel seen. Code 42 at Arctic Wolf through hypergrowth, through acquisitions across 3,000 people, globally, through a podcast, through a well-beat program, ERGs, through the MBA soon. Now, before we close out, is there anything that you'd like to leave our listeners with that we haven't covered yet?
SPEAKER_01That we haven't covered with no, I would say I think I already said it. I think this work is really needed now more than ever. When like when we talk about AI. So I'm excited to roll up my sleeves and dig in and keep doing like be part of this community of people in this space because um I think there's so much potential for us to make a meaningful difference and it for it to be a benefit to the organizations we serve as well. Is there anything that you'd like to promote? Yeah, well, if you want to join the pack, I know I've really been hyping this up, but we do, we're hiring all over the world. You can find open positions at articwolf.com backslash careers. If you're curious about cybersecurity and what you can do to keep yourself safe from a cyber attack or financial fraud type stuff, if you go to our website, articwolf.com backslash pack gives back. We have some free cybersecurity awareness materials that you can leverage there. Um, and then actually our howler podcast is external. So it is on YouTube, Spotify, wherever you normally listen to podcasts. So if you're interested in learning more about the pack, feel free to check that out.
SPEAKER_02Thank you so much, Mary. This conversation was one of those fonts where I kept wanting to slow down and stay in it longer. I really appreciate you sharing all of it. If today's conversation got you thinking about how your organization connects with its people, how you communicate, how you build culture, or how you can help your employees do their best work. Line Zero can help you figure out what's next. We offer a personalized employee experience assessment where our consultants will spend real time with you to understand your employee experience ecosystem and the specific challenges you're navigating. You can learn more at linezero.com. The link will be in the description. Give Mary a follow on LinkedIn as well. She's worth adding to your feed. And also for Line Zero, follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and LinkedIn at Line Zero for more conversations from the women for transforming employee experience. Until then, keep elevating, keep inspiring, and let's make every workplace where people try. And with that, let's give it a howl, Mary. Can we try? Let's do it.
SPEAKER_01Okay, are you ready? Okay, let's do it. Three, two, one. Oh! Okay, next time. You're a pack member. Literally. That was impressive. Way to lean in.
SPEAKER_02Thank you so much, Mary.