Workplace & People: Top Women Leaders

Women’s History Month is a great time to highlight great women leaders around us and their achievements – and check in on how much we have actually supported and elevated them during the past year.

To close Women’s History Month in 2023, we made a list of 12 passionate, driven, successful, and dedicated women leading the People and Workplace efforts in their companies and making a difference as they go.

Tracy Hawkins, Grammarly

Tracy Hawkins is the Global Head of Workplace Experience and Connection at Grammarly, a company dedicated to making work flexible and optimized for connection. Grammarly focuses strategically on employee experience and connections, which is why Tracy is leading their efforts on this front as a highly experienced, successful expert.

Tracy is passionate about how people feel at work, and she’s focused on building strong, diverse, inclusive, and high-performing teams. She has experience leading global distributed teams, and she’s perfectly equipped for building a workplace of the future that elevates and strengthens women and makes inclusivity a priority. Tracy is always happy to chat about the future of work, and you can catch one of her chats on our Coffee with Gable channel:

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Elyse Wolin, Future

Elyse Wolin is the Employee Engagement Manager at Future, a company bringing human connections to digital personal training. Future’s team is distributed all across the US, and Elyse is focused on providing them with fair, equitable experiences at work.

Since Future is remote-first, Elyse focuses on giving employees as much independence as possible, promoting trust and flexibility as the core values of the workplace. She believes in the power of connections at work (both in and cross-teams), curiosity, and bringing people together.
We asked Elyse how women can support other women in remote environments, and here’s what she said:

“Brag about each other and brag about yourself! In any work environment, women tend not to promote their achievements as frequently as men which can ultimately hold you back. This especially rings true in a remote setting when there’s less informal interaction. Whether through Slack, at the start or end of a meeting, or through a performance feedback tool - use the opportunity to brag about your fellow women. Thank them in public and share a few specific details about what they did. My favorite thing - start a hype group with your ladies to always have a place to share your accomplishments, brag about yourself, and be there to amp up everyone else.” -Elyse Wolin

Victoria Yang, Bonusly

Victoria Yang is the VP of People Operations at Bonusly, an employee recognition platform. Bonusly is a remote-friendly company with a core belief that happy, engaged, motivated employees are the key ingredients of successful organizations.

Vicki is always on the lookout for fresh insights, data, and trends about people success and workplace experience. You’ll find her as a speaker on numerous webinars, sharing her angle and experiences – as was the case on a panel episode of Coffee with Gable in late 2022.

Simantinee Roy, Imperva

Simantinee Roy is the Head of Workplace, Global Real Estate & Travel at Imperva, a distributed company with employees across the globe. In her role, Simi is responsible for leading the workplace strategy and ensuring Imperva’s employees have all the tools they need to succeed in the new work environment.

Simi firmly believes that remote and flexible work is essential for the success of women in the workplace:

“Women are looking for remote/flexible opportunities, and it's one of their reasons for joining or staying in an organization. The option to work remotely or have a flexible work schedule is especially important to women who have to juggle many things in a pocket of 24 hours. Maintaining good health and work-life balance comes from flexibility – so if employers offer it, they will hire and retain women from diverse backgrounds more easily.“ -Simantinee Roy

Nikki Chamberlain, Apartment List

Nikki Chamberlain is the HR Program Manager at Apartment List, a seamless renting platform and a remote company with employees across 32 U.S. states. Nikki and Apartment List share the values of an equitable, fair workplace where employee experience is front and center.

For Nikki, supporting employees is an essential part of her role. She ensures flexibility, trust, and supports what employees need at Apartment List, leading to motivated, happy, and empowered employees. She’s always looking for ways to bring balance and level the playing field in the remote work environment.

Read Nikki’s story on bringing balance to remote work >>>

Leisha Laatsch, Strava

Leisha Laatsch is the Senior Manager, Employee Experience & Workplace at Strava, the world’s largest sports community. Leisha and the Strava team believe in a flexible workplace and an environment where employees find it easy to connect with each other and enjoy equitable work experiences.

Leisha is dedicated to refining the workplace experience and designing an environment where employees can connect, thrive, and enjoy the work environment of the future.

Sara Hale, Evernote

Sara Hale is the Senior Manager of Workplace Services at Evernote, an app that helps you find your productivity happy place, and they’re a remote-friendly company with distributed employees.

Sara is an experienced Workplace professional who remains curious about the new intersection and synergy between the Workplace and employee engagement, satisfaction, and happiness. She always strives to provide a top-notch experience to her team, and knows the ins and outs of how the workplace can be leveraged for business success and employee satisfaction simultaneously.

Ewa Sarota-Raczek, Docker

Ewa Sarota-Raczek is the Operations Coordinator at Docker, a company that helps developers bring their ideas to reality by conquering the complexity of app development. Docker is a remote-first company with employees distributed across 221 cities. Ewa and Docker recognize that the concept of work-life balance has changed, and they believe in making it easy for their teams to connect, but without office mandates.

Ewa believes in levelling the playing field, access, and visibility for employees in all locations and the importance of building relationships, in line with one of Docker’s key virtues - open collaboration.

Read Ewa’s story about empowering employees to connect >>>

Marnie Robbins, Resolve

Marnie Robbins is the Head of People Operations at Resolve, an all-in-one net terms solution for embedded B2B payments. Resolve is a fully remote work environment, supporting employees in working flexibly.

Marnie is passionate about building and fostering inclusive, diverse cultures in organizations and supporting women’s empowerment in the workplace. She believes workplaces that aim to support women should be inclusive, diverse, and equity-oriented and provide mentorship and support for work-life balance.

Amy Lavoie, Torch

Amy Lavoie is the Chief People Officer at Torch, a professional training and coaching platform helping unlock the potential of people, teams, and organizations. Torch is a remote-friendly company that emphasizes who its employees are – not where they are located.

Amy has spent years gaining insights and understanding the science behind happiness at work, and she sees the importance of inclusiveness, diversity, and leadership in teams and organizations. You’ll often find her sharing insights on employee happiness, coaching, and leadership development.

Annette Ferrara, IDEO

Annette Ferrara is the Senior Workplace Experience Director and Co-Lead of the Creative Operations + Belonging Cohort at IDEO, a global design company that approaches workplace experience with creativity, passion, and curiosity.

Annette is driven by a human-centered approach to the workplace, so she doesn’t only look at amenities and perks (although they’re important) but focuses on unlocking meaningful experiences for individuals and communities. She believes in creating conditions where everyone can bring their authentic selves to work and be honored and cherished for their contributions.

Michelle Saurel, CultureAmp

Michelle Saurel is the Director of Global People Operations at Culture Amp, a platform for employee experience. Michelle leads their People Operations team, and she’s focused on problem-solving, relationship-building, and designing top-notch experiences.

You can often catch Michelle speaking about building equitable experiences, workplace culture, and bringing people together.

Supporting women in the workplace is essential  

Women need access to tools, resources, and support in the workplace. They often come in the form of working with driven, passionate women who elevate others and make a difference in how they manage and work with others.  

With successful women running the Workplace and People teams in companies worldwide, we’re one step closed to supporting women with flexible work options, better work-life balance, and a work environment that helps them flourish and grow, both at work and outside of it.