Meet the Team is our ongoing series of employee profiles. It’s an opportunity for our users and partners to get to know us a little better. As a remote company with employees around the world — from the U.S. to Slovenia to Spain to New Zealand — it’s also an opportunity for our team to get to know each other a little better.

We’re excited to introduce Stefanie van Dyk, People Operations Manager at GlobaliD. Stefanie has been working in customer success and people operations roles for about ten years. She earned an undergraduate degree in sociology from San Jose State University.

Now, Stefanie is helping build our culture and team here at GlobaliD. During our conversation, Stefanie discussed her role leading the People Operations team, the challenges of operating during a global pandemic, and how she’ll further establish company values that motivate our team members to be the best versions of themselves.

Meet Stefanie

I’m Stefanie and I’m the People Operations Manager at GlobaliD. I’m in charge of everything that’s HR related from onboarding and recruiting to establishing security protocols and updating company policies. I originally joined the team as an Operations Manager before being promoted to my current position earlier this year.

My main focus right now is trying to grow and enhance the company culture here at GlobaliD, which can be tricky since we’re a fully remote company with employees located all around the globe.

What attracted her to GlobaliD

Previously, I was working in the legal cannabis industry for about two and a half years. I was thrown into that world and had a very eye opening experience where I was able to learn a lot, but I felt I needed to do something that was a little more stable.

I enjoy the startup space and I had a connection to Margaret Slemmer, who is a partner at Hard Yaka and an initial investor in GlobaliD. Our conversation about the business made me interested because I thought it would be a fun opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a company and see how it grows.

As I learned more about the identity industry and how we can potentially solve so many problems throughout the world I became even more intrigued. Now, I’ve been here a little over a year and a half and I’ve really enjoyed my time at the company so far.

On the People Operations team

The People Operations team touches everything across the organization including recruiting, onboarding, culture, performance reviews, compliance, etc. We’re responsible for making sure new employees are properly introduced to their team and set up with all of the necessary equipment or software they need. We also assist with insurance questions, 401ks, equity/options and any other benefits employees want to access.

Establishing culture and company values

We’re really focused on establishing a great company culture. We’re taking strides to ensure that everybody feels they’re part of a team and playing a part in building something really great. We want our team members to feel excited when they begin work every day, and part of that is providing fun and interesting things for them to do outside of their day-to-day roles. Since we’re a fully remote company it’s even more important that we find ways to gather employee feedback, and then we try to implement those things as soon as possible.

We’re also working on establishing clear and concise company values. We’re asking employees to think about what we believe in and what we want to live and breathe as an organization. At the end of the day, it’s really important that everybody is on the same page about what we’re actually trying to accomplish.

The challenges of operating during a pandemic

We prioritize mental health and wellness, and I believe this was especially important during the pandemic when we are all working remotely. When you’re not spending time with people in person it can be harder to identify if they’re going through something they may need help with.

As part of these efforts, we’re creating a wellness program to combat inactivity and remind people to take a break from their computers. Many people have said they don’t know when to “turn it off” so we’re exploring different platforms that challenge people to get outside for 30 minutes, stretch or just a simple reminder to drink some water. We wake up and go into auto-pilot when we start our day, so six hours can go by and you realize you haven’t had lunch yet. The goal is to create a fun way to remind people to move away from their desks and ​​find a way to have the “water cooler chat” in a remote world and across time zones.

On the importance of sharing successes

Celebrating each other more often, including some of the small wins is important because it shows how we’re making progress.

We started a new program where Kevin, our CEO, has started accepting nominations for employees who have gone above and beyond in their role and made a positive impact on the organization. Nominees will be recognized during our bi-weekly team meetings in order to excite and encourage each other to keep working hard. He’s also going to begin sending emails to the entire company to announce big wins — when we gain a new client, secure more funding, release new product updates, etc. We want to be very open and vocal about our success with all of our employees.

On her background and career before joining GlobaliD

I graduated college with a degree in sociology because I’ve always enjoyed people. After college, I moved to San Francisco and accepted a sales position with a startup company that was a marketing sales enablement platform. It was a small team that included myself and only three other colleagues, but we were very close and one of them is still a mentor to me to this day.

Eventually, I moved into a customer success role and ended up working in that position for about five years. I liked working with customers, understanding their pain points and developing solutions to try and solve their problems.

Then I was recruited by a former colleague to work in the cannabis industry. He asked me to be an account manager at a company called Eaze, a cannabis delivery company. My job was to manage all of the company’s partners in Northern California. However, because the industry is so highly regulated and nobody had tried building a cannabis delivery service at the time, there was a lot of uncertainty. Then I got pregnant with my daughter and I decided it was time to find a more stable opportunity.

Standout moments or experiences she’s had so far

When I first joined the company I met up with a handful of folks from the operations team who lived in the San Francisco Bay area. We took a day off and had a wine tasting adventure. It was a great way to meet some of my new colleagues and learn about the business directly from them. They shared a lot of fun stories and memories about the business and talked about how they’ve already seen the organization come so far from where it started. It really got me even more excited to work at GlobaliD and I started to think about all the possibilities for growth that we had.

Her hobbies and interests

I’m a big outdoors person and a huge animal lover. I just got back from a camping trip and I’m going to hike half dome for the third time this month, which I’m excited about because it’s a challenging but amazing experience. I enjoy traveling and exploring which is something you can do more of when you’re living the remote work life. It’s a great opportunity to get out there and discover things you couldn’t with a traditional office job.

After getting married in Mexico earlier this year, I decided that I want to start taking Spanish lessons again soon. I understand Spanish relatively well but would like to be able to have a conversation in another language.

What she’s looking forward to

I’m very excited about new meetings we’re going to start having called Lunch and Learn’s. They will be quick and simple half-hour meetings where a team member will share information about something they’re working on, or provide more details on their role and day-to-day work life. We’ll encourage everybody to relax, grab a bite to eat and learn more about each other. The meetings will be a great way to gain more insight into what everybody does and create some transparency into each other’s worlds outside of the bi-weekly meetings.

Another thing we aim to implement later this year is a management training solution. We want to empower our teams and leaders with tools to have effective one-on-one meetings, promote team growth, create a rich feedback culture and more. We want GlobaliD to be a place that encourages everyone to challenge themselves and others and a place where everyone is excited about the opportunity and vision.

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