VP of Authorized, Final Frisbee champion, and dealing guardian Cathleen Hartge has been with Department since 2018. As Department’s first lawyer, Cathleen has worn many hats throughout her tenure. From privateness compliance to authorized assist for the HR staff, she’s performed an integral half in rising our enterprise, ERG efforts, and tradition for working mother and father. Learn on to study Cathleen’s rising authorized staff, her expertise as a guardian at Department, and the way taking part in Final Frisbee impacts her work as a Department govt.
Inform us about your typical day.
My typical day has modified tremendously over time. After I joined Department in March 2018 as its first and solely lawyer, I dealt with all the pieces from negotiating SaaS offers, to constructing a privateness compliance program from the bottom up, to quarterbacking main company transactions, to supporting our HR staff — and all the pieces in between. I keep in mind a particular second early in my Department tenure after I had mirrored on what an attention-grabbing day it had been. I had spent the morning on the cellphone with German privateness attorneys and the afternoon discovering the correct Japanese actual property counsel to advise on a specific difficulty.
Management noticed how necessary a robust authorized perform is to the enterprise’s success. With their assist, I constructed and now lead a staff of seven improbable authorized professionals (and we need to rent an eighth). Whereas I nonetheless personal a number of of my very own strategic initiatives and offers, I’m hyper-focused day-to-day on methods to assist and scale our high-performing staff. That means, I can allow them to give attention to what they do greatest: doing good work to construct worth for the enterprise.
How has hybrid work impacted your life as a guardian and govt?
The flexibility to make money working from home has been an absolute sport changer for me. Whether or not you’re a guardian to human infants, fur infants, or are a caretaker for an elder, working from residence offers you house to be versatile. Now, with a hybrid choice, I get to steadiness that at-home flexibility with cross-functional conversations within the workplace and constructing connections with my coworkers.
Department has tripled in dimension from once you first joined. What is among the largest adjustments you’ve seen in that point?
Placing apart the apparent ones (regarding sheer progress or the pandemic), the very first thing that involves thoughts is how way more snug and welcome I really feel as a guardian at Department. After I first joined the corporate, I created a Slack channel for Department staff who had been additionally moms.
There have been — drumroll, please — 5 of us. Excellent for intimate lunch discussions. Much less so for shedding the sensation of being the “exception.” I’d seize all the pieces and rush out the door at 5:15 p.m., day in and time out, to make sure I may meet household obligations. Whereas nobody ever gave me grief, and I guess nobody actually observed on the time, I felt uncovered and even barely embarrassed as I’d make my rushed exit by means of our open workplace house. No glad hours for me. And I’d take post-5 p.m. calls from the automobile.
We’ve employed a whole lot extra individuals over the previous few years, naturally including extra mother and father to our ranks. And lots of of my colleagues who weren’t mother and father after they joined Department now have kids of their very own. Partially due to suggestions from mother and father (together with me) and different caregivers, Department has been considerate and deliberate about making office adjustments, corresponding to educating colleagues and managers all through the corporate to be totally welcoming and supportive of caregivers.
We now have a sturdy Mother and father ERG with greater than 70 members. These colleagues have offered invaluable assist by means of difficulties starting from pandemic parenting to processing the tragic occasions that unfolded in Uvalde. I now not really feel I’m alone. I’m a member of a big (and rising), supportive, smart group of oldsters and caregivers who additionally occur to be my colleagues.
You’ve simply returned from taking part in within the World Masters Final Membership Championships in Limerick, Eire. Inform us about that have and about your Final Frisbee profession.
The World Masters Final Membership Championships convey collectively Final Frisbee groups from around the globe to compete as soon as each 4 years. I used to be invited to play at Worlds this yr with the staff representing India within the blended division (women and men competing collectively). I used to be particularly excited to play with this explicit staff as they’re from Bangalore, the place Department’s largest worker base is positioned exterior america.
Taking part in blended Final is a novel expertise. It’s one of many few sports activities on the earth that, even on the championship stage, has a blended division. With out robust feminine expertise, the staff can’t succeed.
That merely doesn’t occur in most different sports activities. In truth, one of many causes the Bangalore staff invited me to hitch their roster is as a result of they had been in search of a robust feminine chief. When staff captains raised the subject of feminine management in my interview, I drew closely on my expertise as a girl govt at Department. I merely can’t think about this arising in another sports activities setting. However in Final, it was the deciding issue for them in providing me one in all their restricted roster spots to symbolize them in worldwide competitors.
How does taking part in Final influence your profession and vice versa?
My taking part in blended Final has led to some attention-grabbing synergies in my skilled and sports activities profession. A couple of years in the past — and coincidentally proper across the time I joined Department — I used to be requested to spearhead formal gender fairness conversations for my blended Final Frisbee staff. A number of occasions over the course of the season, we’d dedicate staff offsite time to those conversations. Repeatedly, teammates shared challenges about being spoken over, opinions being undervalued, and easily not being heard.
It struck me that a lot of what my teammates voiced parallels related considerations I’ve heard from girls colleagues in workplaces all through my profession. Upon listening to this suggestions in a sports activities setting, it made me that rather more grateful that Department was already one step forward of the sport, having already carried out obligatory company-wide coaching on inclusive communications and implicit bias, and having a devoted Girls’s ERG, amongst different initiatives.
Main these discussions within the sports activities setting additionally impressed me to dive headfirst into Department’s variety initiatives as a then-relatively new worker. Constructing on our robust basis, I offered suggestions and recommended methods for ways in which the corporate may present an much more supportive working surroundings for ladies and caregivers. I’m grateful Department offers me the house to take action, and I’m happy with the progress we’ve made on this entrance over the previous few years.
