VP of Authorized, Final Frisbee champion, and dealing mum or dad 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 help for the HR staff, she’s performed an integral half in rising our enterprise, ERG efforts, and tradition for working dad and mom. Learn on to study Cathleen’s rising authorized staff, her expertise as a mum or dad at Department, and the way enjoying Final Frisbee impacts her work as a Department government.
Inform us about your typical day.
My typical day has modified tremendously through the years. After I joined Department in March 2018 as its first and solely lawyer, I dealt with the whole lot 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 the whole lot in between. I keep in mind a selected second early in my Department tenure once 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 best Japanese actual property counsel to advise on a specific subject.
Management noticed how necessary a powerful authorized operate is to the enterprise’s success. With their help, I constructed and now lead a staff of seven incredible authorized professionals (and we want to rent an eighth). Whereas I nonetheless personal a number of of my very own strategic tasks and offers, I’m hyper-focused day-to-day on methods to help and scale our high-performing staff. That manner, I can allow them to deal with what they do greatest: doing good work to construct worth for the enterprise.
How has hybrid work impacted your life as a mum or dad and government?
The power to do business from home has been an absolute sport changer for me. Whether or not you’re a mum or dad to human infants, fur infants, or are a caretaker for an elder, working from house 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 measurement from while you first joined. What is without doubt one of the greatest adjustments you’ve seen in that point?
Placing apart the plain ones (regarding sheer progress or the pandemic), the very first thing that involves thoughts is how way more comfy and welcome I really feel as a mum or dad at Department. After I first joined the corporate, I created a Slack channel for Department staff who have 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 the whole lot and rush out the door at 5:15 p.m., day in and time out, to make sure I might 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 way of our open workplace house. No completely happy hours for me. And I’d take post-5 p.m. calls from the automotive.
We’ve employed tons of extra individuals over the previous few years, naturally including extra dad and mom to our ranks. And lots of of my colleagues who weren’t dad and mom after they joined Department now have kids of their very own. Partially due to suggestions from dad and mom (together with me) and different caregivers, Department has been considerate and deliberate about making office adjustments, akin to educating colleagues and managers all through the corporate to be absolutely welcoming and supportive of caregivers.
We now have a sturdy Dad and mom ERG with greater than 70 members. These colleagues have offered invaluable help by way 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 giant (and rising), supportive, clever neighborhood of fogeys and caregivers who additionally occur to be my colleagues.
You’ve simply returned from enjoying 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 all over the world 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 specific staff as they’re from Bangalore, the place Department’s largest worker base is situated outdoors the US.
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 degree, has a blended division. With out sturdy feminine expertise, the staff can’t succeed.
That merely doesn’t occur in most different sports activities. Actually, one of many causes the Bangalore staff invited me to hitch their roster is as a result of they have been in search of a powerful feminine chief. When staff captains raised the subject of feminine management in my interview, I drew closely on my expertise as a girl government at Department. I merely can’t think about this developing in another sports activities setting. However in Final, it was the deciding issue for them in providing me one in every of their restricted roster spots to symbolize them in worldwide competitors.
How does enjoying Final impression your profession and vice versa?
My enjoying blended Final has led to some attention-grabbing synergies in my skilled and sports activities profession. A number 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 comparable issues 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 applied necessary company-wide coaching on inclusive communications and implicit bias, and having a devoted Ladies’s ERG, amongst different initiatives.
Main these discussions within the sports activities setting additionally impressed me to dive headfirst into Department’s range initiatives as a then-relatively new worker. Constructing on our sturdy basis, I offered suggestions and steered methods for ways in which the corporate might present an much more supportive working setting for ladies and caregivers. I’m grateful Department offers me the house to take action, and I’m pleased with the progress we’ve made on this entrance over the previous few years.
