Transferable skills: from running classrooms to shaping company culture

Danielle Greene is the People Operations Manager at Coactive AI. Before Coactive, she began her career as a teacher and then earned a PhD in Race, Inequality, and Language in Education from Stanford University. Spoilers: she’s hella eloquent with her words, and really understands people. In this blog you’ll hear how her transferable skills and unique experiences are embraced at Coactive AI.

Now, before we get on the school bus, does anyone need the bathroom?

Alrighty then.

Danielle, welcome! Tell the class about your background prior to Coactive AI.

Hey there! I come from a family of teachers, which means my upbringing was really shaped by a strong educational ethos. My mother and grandmother’s teaching careers actually inspired me to become a middle school teacher myself. Learning from them and teaching were really formative experiences. The job and my colleagues further shaped who I am, how I see the world, and how I approach my new position as the People Operations Manager at Coactive AI.

Given that we don’t hire middle schoolers, how did teaching prepare you for this role? And when is it break time?

Break time is later, try to stay focused until the bell rings.

Teaching further opened my eyes to how so many people feel and experience life differently on a daily basis. Through teaching I learned how to truly listen. It made me highly observant and attuned to people’s emotions. Every middle schooler, at some point, feels like they're not included or like they don't belong, and that’s really shaped how I see the adult world. No matter how old we get, there’s still that inner 12-year-old who wants to both be able to be their individual unique selves and feel like they belong.

I strive to make people feel included in all settings. It’s something colleagues here have commented on, actually. Just the other day, Will, our co-founder, chuckled and told me that I was always noticing and complimenting his new haircuts. It may sound trivial, but noticing positive subtleties is actually really important in the workplace. Folks are happiest when they feel they’re seen; like they bring value. I like to be a facilitator for belongingness.

And yes, you can have a cookie now.

Yay! Omnomnom. So what drew you to Coactive AI?

Not my engineering skills, that’s for sure! I’m here because of the company’s ethos, and my respect for Cody, our CEO. Cody and I first met at Stanford during our postgraduate studies. He came to some events I was hosting as President of the Black Graduate Student Association. A few months in, we were on a bus traveling back from a ski trip and we got stuck in a fourteen-hour tailback. There was nothing else to do on the bus, so we got to know each other really well!

Down the line, Cody invited me to consider his startup. I was hesitant, and really emphasized how little I know about engineering, but he was incredibly passionate about the company’s mission, and insisted I would add value to the team. He explained that he wanted to build a software engineering company unlike any other – not just in terms of the category-creating product that they are building, but in terms of how people feel at work.

I'd always thought of big tech as this soul sucking place where your social morals get sidelined for the sake of earning money. Cody wants to disrupt that notion. As he puts it, he wants careers at Coactive AI to be “The hardest job that people love to come to.” I decided I wanted to help make that vision a reality - after all, it does align with my personal expertise.

What’s an example of how you bring inclusivity into your new role? Also, I lost my homework.

When people come to an interview with me I want it to feel like a conversation. At the end of the day, even if you don't get the job, I want you to feel like you wanna be my friend, because that's what life should be about. I’m always surprised at how nervous people are when interviewing, and I think it speaks to negative conditioning by the wider marketplace. It’s something I want to help change. We spend eight hours a day with our coworkers, so it’s important that work is a place where everyone feels respected and heard. That ethos must start as early as the first interview to truly be ingrained. That said, if you forget your homework twice in a row, you have to bring in doughnuts for the office.

Noted! As a non-engineer, do you feel listened to? And has anyone seen my retainer?

Being a non-engineer has been an adjustment at times. For instance, the first time I gave a presentation here I had a real culture shock. People kept interrupting me. It turns out that’s common practice in computer science or engineering settings, but it was alien to me. I come from an educational background where people listen through to the end, then have ample opportunity to ask any unresolved questions.

I expressed my discomfort immediately and the team reacted really positively. Rather than making me bend to their already established culture, we created a new policy together. Now, at the beginning of any presentation, the presenter sets the tone for the audience and states whether questions are welcome throughout or at the end. So the culture here is not top-down or homogenous, it’s truly collaborative.

One of the things that I love about Coactive is that it's very evidence-based. If you can present a solid argument and have evidence to back that up, whether that’s quantitative or qualitative, then requests are really something that they take seriously. Your experiences and feelings matter just as much as the numbers.

What would you be most proud to achieve at Coactive?

Retention is a key challenge in modern HR/People Ops, and it’s natural for employees to explore new opportunities with different companies throughout their career. What matters to me are people’s motivations when they decide to leave us. I don’t want us to lose a single employee because they were unhappy with the culture.

If a person leaves because of a bad culture, there's no amount of money that will bring them back. On the flipside, a great culture will always be a pull factor. I want people to feel like this was a ‘work home’. You should always want to come back home.

That’s the bell! Dr. Danielle, aka Ms. Greene, thanks for teaching us about your inclusivity journey today. Here’s to building a place people call ‘home’.

Culture is our number one product at Coactive AI, and the first thing we launched. We pride ourselves on having a truly collaborative, diverse, and ever-learning team. We’re also the industry leaders for analyzing unstructured image data. Are you ready to join the next revolution in machine learning? Check out our job openings.