Natalie Breece

▶0:01HostWelcome to the Built by People podcast, where we share the stories and insights of the world's top HR leaders. Join us as we dive deep into the minds of HR executives, uncovering their strategies, challenges, and triumphs in shaping today's workforce. I'm excited to welcome Natalie to the Built By People podcast. Natalie, thank you so much for joining us. And as a starting question, I always love to ask if you could share a little bit more about your career journey.

▶0:55GuestYeah, thank you so much for having me today. Thrilled to be here. So I have been in the HR space for close to 20 years now. A lot of us end up in HR kind of by happenstance. I am not one of those people. This was truly by design that I landed here, and, and I, I really have always been driven by deep passion for people and culture and really building equity in the workplace. Before joining ThrodApp, I spent about 12 years primarily focused on talent acquisition, like very heavy recruiting background. I worked for both Fortune 100 companies and some startup environments. And when I joined ThredUp, what really drove me to the organization was just the mission. I was really inspired by an organization that was focused on sustainability, creating a better future and more sustainable fashion environment. And then I met the executive team and was just completely floored by the caliber of the team and what they were looking to do here. I've now been here for over 8 years now.

▶1:49HostNatalie, as the only woman on your executive team, how have you approached building credibility and influence across the C-suite, particularly in your relationship with the CEO?

▶1:59GuestI would like to think it's not much different for me as a female. I would say I've never felt disadvantaged at all as a member of our C-suite. In fact, I think I have a unique perspective because we have a product offering that's designed for women. So I can give it a, my unique perspective on the product and really lean into the conversation around what I think women are looking for in their shopping experience. But I think ultimately, I believe that credibility is built on delivering exceptional results, making thoughtful decisions, and really advocating for what is right for both the business and for the people. Frankly, I've approached my role really by ensuring that the people function is seen as a key driver of success and not an administrative function. I think gone are the days where HR is kind of this back office function pushing paper, and we really have been front and center in the conversation on how you build a lasting, sustainable company at scale. And with our CEO in particular, he and I have a really special relationship built over many years, and it's really built on trust and transparency at the core. That means I really focus on understanding his priorities, being really focused on providing data-driven insights for him and for the rest of our business leaders to make the right decisions, but also not being afraid to challenge his perspective, give him feedback. Help him peer around corners around how to lead the organization through times of change and through the ebbs and flows of the business. And I also think part of what we do well in the people function is generally pretty good listeners. And so I listen deeply for the things that kind of matter to him, where I think I can add value, and always coming to him before he even has to ask for, like, how do we get— navigate the changes and the flows of the organization through the people first.

▶3:43HostMadely, you and your Chief Strategy Officer were nominated for the Power Pair Award at Transform. Can you share how you've developed such strong partnerships across the executive team?

▶3:54GuestYeah, super excited about that nomination. He and I have been partners for many years, over 8 years, really the duration of our, both of our tenures at ThredUp. We've worked together. His name's Alain Rotem. He actually started out as our General Counsel, Chief Legal Officer, and has moved into the Chief Strategy Officer. So the two of us have worked not just in growing the organization and taking the company from being a private company to a public company, but also through COVID where I think we be— all of us became really grateful for who we had rowing the boat with us during that time. It was so challenging through civil unrest, through a war in Ukraine where we have really valued team members located and had been displaced. So I think it actually, a lot of that relationship building came through navigating the tough times together. With a ton of mutual respect. The other thing I really value about the relationship that we have is there's a ton of real talk. The two of us give each other feedback probably weekly, if not sometimes even daily. The relationship is deep at this point and honest at this point that doesn't even feel like feedback anymore because we know that we value each other's partnership, we value each other's insight. And I think that we have really the same goals at the end of the day, which is to create a business that lasts through hundreds of years and is wildly successful.

▶5:12HostNatalie, ThredUp implemented a 4-day workweek in 2021. What led to that decision? How has it impacted your organization's performance and culture?

▶5:22GuestYeah, I love talking about this. The 4-day workweek was really an experiment for us in 2021, where I think so many organizations were thinking about how do we return to work after a pandemic that we all thought was gonna last 2 weeks and that's lasted years and really wanting to rethink what does, what's the work environment we wanna create and what are the things that matter most to our employees today? And so when we did that, we recognized that people were thinking differently than they had. They wanted different things out of their workplace than they had in the past. So how do we create an environment where it supports employees' wellbeing? It hopefully boosts productivity and efficiency because we're able to do more With less time, we're figuring out what really matters. We're trimming some of the things we don't need to do. We're adding back more time for head-down thinking, and then also retain and attract the best talent out there by giving them an environment that really invests not just in them as a professional, but invests in them as a person by giving them some time back to invest in their things they're most passionate about. That's really how it came about. And it's like I said, it started as an experiment and we are now 4+ years into this thing and has proven to be a really successful way for us to work. We always test it, we challenge it, we evaluate every year whether it's the right thing or not. But every time we do that, we come back to thinking the benefits of creating more flexibility in how we structure our week and how we structure our time pays dividends in people being able to do really great work.

▶6:48HostNatalie, having led HR through ThredUp's transition from private to public company, what were the key challenges and lessons learned in that evolution?

▶6:58GuestSo to— going from a private startup environment to a public one is challenging, and I think it's even more challenging when you try to do this during COVID So we went public in March 2021 when there was a lot going on in the world around us, and employees focus on a lot of different things. It's one of those things that's both very exciting, but also really complex. And I think it's easy to go down the path of being like, we're going to be a public company now. These are the processes we have in place, these are the policies we're gonna create. And yes, you have to do some of that. You have to create structure in some areas as you become a public organization. But I actually think part of it is also remembering who you are and getting— being really rooted in the culture that you've built that brought you to that place. 'Cause the last thing you wanna do is take all the magic that helps you get to the place where you now are a public company and stripping that out because we're public now and we have to do things differently. So for us, it was really like, diving deeper into the culture, doubling down on the things that we think make ThredUp a unique place to work, and then educating the team on what going public means for them. We're all innately self-interested. We wanna understand what does this change mean? What are the financial implications for me? How does my role change? And so we really leaned into making sure we were providing information to employees before they even asked for it around what this can mean for my financial future. So we wanna make sure they have all the information that they need. And I would say the biggest takeaway for me, for anybody that's taking this path now or in the future, is communication is everything. Transparency is everything. And then also like being relentless about maintaining the culture that got you to where you are at that point.

▶8:33HostNatalie, how are you approaching performance management design to support business growth in the coming years?

▶8:40GuestI think everybody in this space is talking about performance management right, right now. I think we're all talking about that. We're talking about org design. Especially in this day and age where there really is this upskilling that's happening with AI and jobs are changing. And so you have to lean into what are the things you can do to make sure that our teams are equipped to do the very best work. And so to me, it's about aligning business goals with employee development and a culture that is really focused on continuous feedback. It's not just feedback during your performance review cycles or your 360 feedback cycles. It's feedback every day. Instead of these rigid annual reviews that companies have done in the past. So we actually recently just did a training for our team. We do a leadership development summit every year. The one that we just did was on communication and words matter because those interactions you have with your team every day are precious. Giving that feedback in the moment is important, and it makes it so much easier to have the tough performance conversations when you feel like you already have good communication with your team and you've been giving them feedback regularly. And it's actually more in my mind about, it's actually less about evaluation, more about enablement for the team and helping employees do the best work of their lives by telling them what they're doing well and telling them where they have opportunity to grow and doing that consistently.

▶9:56HostNatalie, what parting advice would you like to share with our community?

▶10:00GuestProbably no surprise for me to say this as a people leader, but you gotta invest in your people. I think AI is gonna do so much. AI agents is gonna change the way that we all work. But those things are only gonna be successful if you also enable your people to do great work. And I think we're at a moment in time where we will see folks shift their skill sets. We're gonna see them upskill in a lot of different ways, and you've gotta prioritize how do you leverage your people to get the best out of those technologies and how do you prepare your teams for being able to do work, even a lot of times becoming technologists where they hadn't been in the past. So, I think you've gotta put your people at the center of those conversations, and that shows through how you treat them, how you develop them, and how you empower them to learn new technologies and be part of that journey as we all embrace a new world way of working.

▶10:52HostNatalie, thank you so much for joining us in the Build by People partnership put on in partnership with Transform. It was a pleasure to have you involved.

▶10:59GuestThanks so much for having me. It was a great conversation.