Featuring: Adrianne Barlow

When you don't have the risk tolerance for Musical Theater, you join the CIA as a counterterrorism analyst, right? At least that's what Adrianne Barlow did before finding her way to a (brand new) People Partner role!

Check out Adrianne's Journey Line (and top notch .gif game) here.

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Hello and welcome to Journey Lines. I'm your host Kim Minick and this is the podcast answering the question, how did they get there? I am super excited if you're hearing today's episode because that means it's been approved by more than zero government agencies and thrilled to introduce today's guest, Adrian. Adrian Barlow, how are you? Hi Kim, I'm good. I'm so excited to be with you. I'm so excited to have you here. Before we dive into your past, tell me a little bit about today. What you got going on personally, professionally, holistically. Yeah, so I am based in Seattle now, but only for a month. We just moved back to the US after living in London for several years. So I'm settled into like a half -baked apartment. My stuff is on a boat trying to make its way through the Panama Canal. we're getting there. You know, and as I previewed for you, like my kid sliced her chin open and had five stitches. So we're just like really taking advantage of the American healthcare system and what you get by paying. Yeah, I don't know if maybe that injury should have happened two months ago if it would have been better for you. on the NHS, but they gave her some like magical drugs that make your kid like docile and vaguely drunk for a few hours while they're doing this. And like, I don't think we would have gotten that on the NHS. From a like trauma mitigation perspective, I'm okay with it happening here. All right, pros and cons. Well, welcome back to the States. Pumped to dive in. Why don't you kick us off on your journey line? I see we start in 2009 with a little graduation cap. What's going on? Yeah, so when I was in late high school, I was trying really hard to decide whether I was going to go to like wildly different university paths. Did I want to go to music conservatory and study opera, which is something that I had been doing since I was 12. I grew up a musical theater kid and that parlayed into opera. But I was also like an AP classes nerd. And I was trying to assess my own personal risk tolerance for like the arts versus a quote unquote real degree. And like as we'll be. a moment? Did you have a moment of, don't want to have to audition for work for the rest of my life? 100 % and also like my music reading skills are just not as strong as I think some of my other cohort would have been. And so between not wanting to audition, not having a high risk tolerance for like a lack of financial security and just like trying to figure out what my whole life was gonna look like because that was who I was at 17. world ending, 17, I know. Changing your whole path though. I was a musical, I was a drama nerd too. I wanted to go to school for musical theater, got rejected, so didn't even have the option. But same, had that same risk tolerance of like, but I want money. Right, you're like, but what about a W2? Yes, please. I hear I'm supposed to have a 401k. Correct. My sweet dad, the engineer, was just like, okay, we'll support you in whatever you want to do. Like, knew all the right things to say. Side note, my sister did end up getting a musical theater degree. So my lack of risk tolerance, I suppose, paved the way for her to take that risk. And now that saint teaches middle school drama in Texas. So more power to all the people who've chosen teaching as a career because whew, whew. Preach, my sister -in -law also does musical theater and drama and teaching at a high school level and bless, that is more than a full -time job. But not the path you went on, you decided to go to UVA and what'd you do there? I see this is kind of like a neutral line, like we're kind of starting baseline, kicking off life. I was, I was good with where I was at, but I wasn't like hella stoked or anything. it was two hours from my family, like far enough that they couldn't drop in randomly, but like close enough that it was safe if something went awry. Sure, go home, do laundry. more than frequently. But I ended up loving my history degree. So I got a history degree focused in Eastern European post -Soviet reconstruction. Still super like nerdily interested in all of that type of thing. I don't even know what to ask about that. What is something I should know about that education and learning? think like one of the most interesting things I did was I studied the role of nostalgia in like late 90s rebuilding after the fall of the wall and looking at just the different ways that people rewrote their family histories mentally, whether they were like Eastern or Western German. And it's just. I think we see some parallels today in what the political landscape looks like and whether you identify as progressive or conservative and what your orientation towards the things you prefer. Do you tend to be more forward looking at where we're going or is there a romanticization of the past? I'm sure you can tell my own personal bias there from the way I phrased that and I could have done it more gently, but. I'm suddenly wishing this podcast topic was totally different because like how interesting and intriguing that you can study that part of the world and see so many parallels. Like we always talk about how history repeats itself and what a nice perspective. you would maybe not do it within like a 30 year time span, but you know, whatever. short memories. I joke that I have a memory of a goldfish, but maybe the country. Okay, so go to school, nailing it, loving it, history. And then a year in, well, two years in maybe, but 2010, 19 years old, your first security clearance. You do not feel responsible at the age of 19 to have a security clearance. feel like that's a fair assessment. However, I was like an aggressively responsible teenager. Royal you, I have concerns about giving security clearances to 19 year olds. I'm just thinking of where I was at 19 and like, not a good idea. But vibes are off. But yes, I got like a wonderful nepotism fueled internship. My dad works for the Defense Department and I ended up like writing technical documentation for some very early machine learning programs that folks were working on. I didn't use that security clearance like at all. I just had it so I could sit in the correct room to open the correct computer to like. typed through some of that documentation. But it really was my first foray into a very different type of writing, right? Because the American educational system beats the five paragraph essay into you as if that's like a fundamentally productive way to communicate. And it's me. Right? As if your reader is very stupid. Side note, sometimes your reader is very stupid, but you should still probably be going shorter. And I feel like in technical writing, you have to do both. Assume your reader is stupid and make it short and sweet. And that's actually why they hired me to do this because I was a history major and they were a bunch of glorious nerds and they were like, we shouldn't write this. so I had to figure out what does the system actually look like to a human? was catching the bugs, throwing them to the teams to fix them. And then also writing down like, how does a regular person look at the system and then engage? What do they touch? Where do they go? How do you drive that forward? but it meant a lot of much shorter, much more concise writing. And I think that sparked something in me because I love writing, I love reading, and I always hated the five paragraph essay. And I was like, so academic writing is not the only type of writing out there. How very interesting. Yeah, how fun with creative writing and short form writing and things that words have so many uses. was like, this is just like fundamentally different. But I think it is creative. It's just creative in a particular way. So was this like your first job? First big kid job? Okay. Okay, nailed it. But I have always valued my autonomy. And my parents were like, great, if you want to spend on frivolous things, like you do you boo boo, but you get a job. Great. Love it. All right. So you've got your first security clearance. You're doing technical writing. And we now we're dipping a little bit lower beneath the line of neutrality. And you become a counterterrorism analyst and join the CIA. Like, are you a spy? Am I allowed to ask that? What is happening? So the job that I did was not the exciting job that Jack Ryan does, right? Like, technically, Jack Ryan is an analyst. But what Jack Ryan does on TV and in the books is not what an analyst does. Like, I've often described the job as like, you know, when a journalist gets information that comes across the wire, and their job is to weed through that and build a story that tells people things that need to be known. That's what I did. The information just happened to be classified. It's a desk job. But it was what I had wanted to do for so long. My aunt is a retired army general. My dad works for the research arm of the Department of Defense. And so for me, this was a fairly normal career path. I grew up outside of DC with plenty of people's parents. worked for the agency. And so it wasn't quite as bizarre of a leap as I think it is for a lot of folks. But then I got there and did the job. And that's where the like below the line of neutrality dip happens. Yeah, do you recall, cause like musical theater, counterterrorism analyst, just slightly different. Was it always, as we all do, as we all do, was it always kind of like a, could do this or this. So when it came to this, you were like, well, this feels so natural. Okay. it wasn't until I was a year and a half or so in to my time at the agency where I actually realized the ways that my musical theater creative background actually did play in to that job. And the short version is my role was really focused on writing and also briefing. So for people outside of government speak, briefing is telling people live what. you wrote about. And that has always come very naturally to me. Like I have zero modicum of stage fright. Like I am very happy to improvise. I'm good with the like back and forth banter. And so I think that was an element where I went, okay, like there is some of the skills that I developed without thinking of them as skills by like playing the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland that I am bringing to work with me today. But I have too many feelings. Way too many. the job was not as great as maybe the rest of the family had made it seem. Tell me. hands down some of the smartest people I've ever worked with and for, and some of the best managers, surprisingly. Like you wouldn't, I don't think most people necessarily assume that like the government produces like stellar managers. And I'm sure there are many of them who are. Right. My two managers that I had as an analyst were just stellar, bright humans, so like focused on. people and our health and like our emotional well -being given the type of work that we were doing. And just very coaching oriented in a way that like I don't think 10 years ago we necessarily would have called it coaching. They were just doing what felt natural to them. I've turned back. Where was I supposed to go with this? Right. that's all right. So you started doing the job. They were super smart people, loved working with them, great managers, but you use the word emotional. Yeah. So for me, it was just this realization that there were a lot of people who were really good at this job and felt really good at this job. And I was fine at the job. And I didn't feel really good on the day to day. Like my... Blood pressure was elevated. I was having anxiety for the first time. Now granted, as like a recovering gifted kid, I probably had anxiety before that, but I had not identified it as such at the time. of us are realizing our success is fueled by anxiety and when we take a minute. But yeah, I imagine it's kind of like, I'm using an analogy a friend told me, it's kind of like watching a bear and like, ooh, I am keenly aware that that bear might want to attack me and I know what's happening with that bear way too much. Yeah. And there's just like, there's the human component too of like, no matter how bad the human is, like, I don't know, I could just never, I could never dissociate the empath component. and to do that job well, I think to some degree you, you need to be able to bifurcate those, those sides of your life. and so that's where I think having really, good managers came into play so strongly is that I wasn't happy. This wasn't the right spot for them, but they had created such a safe space that I could come to them and go. It's not you, it's me. Like, what else can I try? How did they help you navigate those conversations? There are sort of internal rotational programs. So I was an analyst, but there were things within like the directorate of support that I could try doing. And so I was able to take an internal rotation to sort of test out HR. And that taught me that I definitely wanted to do something in the people space and I definitely didn't want to do it for the federal government. But it was perfect because before I made my husband find a job in Portland, I could be like, I am sure what I want to do. I just can't be the first one to get us there. I feel like sometimes the HR career, speaking as an HR professional, we're like a little Venus flytrap. We're just like waiting for you to crawl into the crutches of our profession and then we snap you up and we love you and then you turn out mine. But before we get there, so you did a rotational program at 2015, we hit a high point. And for those of you who are listening, take a moment to click on the link below and check out Adrienne's career journey, journey line, because there are some adorable gifts that need to be appreciated. You married Mike and you met Mike when you were 12. Yes, so I met my husband in middle school, which like most people who go to middle school, not my A game, not the person I grew up to. not just a stunner at 12? My mom has straight hair and I do not. And so I looked like somebody who had a parent who did not have curly hair in middle school. I have straight hair and desperately wanted curly hair and had a habit of getting perms in middle school. So we all have our moments in time where... Yes. But in my hair's defense, Mike had a bowl cut at the time. like, neither, we're nailing it. saw... You each saw the potential in one another. Which is funny though, like we didn't date until college. We were at different universities. And so we were in the same classes and some of the same sort of like orbit stuff at school, middle school, high school. Went off to different universities and then went on a series of first dates over the course of like three years. So it was like freshman year, we were back over winter break. We went on a date. We were like, that's fine. Whatever. Like I'm not going to do anything long distance. And I studied abroad, came back another first date, slightly better. again, not worth long distance. And then it was like winter break of our senior year of college, when we were like, it's good. Just a couple false starts and then ready to go. I love that. so we got married fairly young. We were like 24, which is a good decade sooner than most of our friends and cohort has gotten married. But I put it, it's the highest point on my career journey line because choosing each other was the best thing that we've done for our individual and collective career paths. Like the level of... support that I have always found from him when I wanted to do something weird or when I wanted to stay somewhere that didn't feel good for like whatever reason, like phenomenal sounding board, phenomenal support system. When I was like, hello, you've never been to Portland. Could you take that job there so that like I could leave DC where I'm not happy? And he was like, okay. very similar feeling relationship with my husband and love of life. He was one of, like, we push each other to be better in the careers. We support each other through scary stuff. He was like the only person who told me, yeah, go do HR, go back to school for HR. So like, I truly, it really resonates with me. Like, my partner in life has also elevated my career because like we're in it together. And it's one of the weird things I've noticed as I've hit my 30s is like, we now know enough people who have had marriages that haven't worked and particularly with the pandemic as such a like intense proving ground for whether things were gonna go great or poorly. Like my level of like gratefulness to have found that so early and we are such fundamentally different people than we were at 22 and 24. And we talk. grow together. Right, we talk often about how both lucky and intentional we've been that our growth has like paralleled one another. So you asked him to move to Portland, take a job in Portland. You asked him to move to Portland. I'm gonna say it again. And Portland is the lowest part on your journey. 2018... because Portland wasn't bad, but it was also the pandemic. It was the pandemic. It was half the time we were there, which was just objectively bad. Fair, But needed a hard reset, a new career path. So you move across the country. Resonates, I moved to California from Florida. Tell me a little bit about the move, about the experience. What's going on then? Yeah, this was the first time outside of my first semester of college that I hadn't had a job for 10 years. And as somebody who still struggles to not derive my worth from the capitalistic value of being at work, That was super challenging, because everybody's like, enjoy your downtime. And I was like, I'm trying to change careers, and I have no money coming in. Like, how am I supposed to enjoy this? I'm not relaxing. I'm terrified. I'm trying to learn something. I'm switching career. I'm worried about my profession. By the way, that anxiety that's been around forever. Yeah, it is. That is a scary point in time. And I think while well -intended, and we see this with folks who perhaps have been laid off or gone through like a reduction in force, are, enjoy the downtime, but... And saying that also like presupposes things about their finance or their family life that we, the platitude has no right to presuppose that like, sure, if Mike or I were to get laid off right now, we have plenty of runway, but that is just not the case for the vast majority of people. And so, sorry, I'm diverging and soapboxing here, but like, I just think that's such a fundamentally unhelpful thing to tell people who are going through a really challenging moment. in their life. And we do it from this place of like, I want to say something that makes you feel better, but I just think we should all be a little bit more thoughtful about what we say. Yeah, I agree. And I look at the times where I was like stress anxiety laid off and I'm like, I should have enjoyed that downtime a little bit more because it does. I know, hindsight. What a, what a bitch. All right. So we're in Portland. We're not loving, we're not loving it. Yeah, so those first couple of months were really challenging, but I did get fairly lucky that my first HR job, my first generalist position came within a couple of months. And honestly, I think some of that again is like that briefing skill that I developed. The agency like trains really hard on that type of stuff. So if I could get an interview, I could be impressive. It was just getting somebody to think my resume warranted talking to me about this career that didn't have a very clear transition nexus. Mercifully, counterterrorism not super relevant in the West Coast in 2018. But yeah, I got lucky. clicked really well with my boss and I got to do a job where I did everything. in the HR arena. And Crystal, my manager at the time, was fantastic in that she assessed fairly early that I was competent, even if I wasn't necessarily knowledgeable about what I was doing. And so she gave me as much coaching as I want, but also as much autonomy to just figure out benefits, deal with payroll, all that type of stuff. And so the year that I was there was a great foundation setting. But it was also when I was diagnosed with chronic migraines. So I have from then until now, I get 15 migraines a month. And fun fact. a year and it's horrific. Fun fact for those of you who also migraine, you'll know the abortive medication that you can take, you can only take it nine times a month. man, for those of you that migraine, like it's awesome club. That's why I'm gonna make it a club. I'm sorry, I'm migraining today, which means I'm under a blanket. battery signal on Slack and I'm like, I'm here. I'm like not here. I'm not bringing my highest self to work today. So migraines are an invisible illness, just recently really recognized as something beyond a really bad headache. Right, fundamentally like different mechanism of pain than a headache. and so much. I will not step on that soapbox, but I'm curious, like, what was that like? Because I imagine it happened before you got the diagnosis. So getting the diagnosis and then navigating it in a, I'm assuming a screen forward career. Yeah, yes. Well, one of the strange things about my migraines in particular is that I don't have very clear triggers. So it's not food, it's not screens, it's not weather changes. It's just like my body's kind of a bitch two weeks out of the month. Right. So cute. But the challenge there was in order to get really good preventative treatments, you need a long period of time where you're documenting how frequently you're getting your migraines and how bad they are. And by the time I got to that point, I was pregnant when you can't take anything except for Tylenol for your migraines. timing just nailed it. Right, and like I got pregnant on purpose, so like I knew what I was doing, but it still was just, it was a super challenging time. I was in a new role when that happened. And I was, again, I was lucky to have a very supportive boss. His wife worked in labor and delivery, so like a very good environment. But it just meant that as somebody who is anxious and has some like health anxiety in particular, I couldn't stop thinking about, yeah, but when can this feel better? Like when will this suck less? And so there's just so much of that happening the whole time that we were in Portland trying to navigate like things that worked, things that didn't work in order to get the good drugs. have to fail the cheap drugs, like four different ones. and I failed them all spectacularly, but it takes time failing up. failing off in the worst way. Man, healthcare. Yes. And yeah, and then it was like, my daughter was three months old when the pandemic started. And so it wasn't like I could go to the doctor the regular way anymore. We're probably not prioritizing migraines at this point in history. there's some lucky stuff that like when you're breastfeeding often migraines that are hormonal in nature will go away. And so I did get a reprieve for a little while, even that I didn't get one during pregnancy, which I was promised and not delivered. Right. But like there was a moment where I considered, was like, should I pump forever just so that the migrants stay gone? that. If I was at the frequency and like that was a relief, I'd be like, whoa, let's just extend this a little bit more. Yeah, so anyways, that was just all of this was happening in Portland at the time. And so I love Portland. I loved our house, like all of my family stuff and a lot of my work things there were great. It was just like from a health perspective, things were an unholy terror most of the time. fair, but you did land your first HR role there. You kept moving up. And then again, back to like an amazing... Wait, should we stop? Should we talk more about your first HR role? Some of the fun things, you know, anything you want to like reminisce, nostalgia? is like the the first HR role was with creative agency. So the the organization basically did experiential marketing for like Nike because Portland and that was really fun in that like as a former theater kid being around a bunch of like creative type people, the hurting cats mentality didn't bother me so much as it invigorated me. And so I just really I really enjoyed the types of people I was working with because they were also so fundamentally different than the types of people who tend to gravitate towards government work. And so it was just a really, at the time it was a very healthy pendulum swing. love that. Well, you kept growing your HR career 2019 2021 became a people partner bought a house had a kid first VC back sass roll just all cylinders firing and it does sound like a lot to manage. It was the most like, you know, like some people block out birth. think I've blocked out like that year of the pandemic. At the time, my husband was with a very high stress, fintech startup. Our daughter was home. She went to daycare for four weeks before the pandemic started. And then we were like, cool, I guess we're all just here in a townhouse in Portland. cozy. families still live on the East Coast outside of DC. there wasn't, I mean, our bubble was small. We were like very safe, but very isolated. And then my daughter decided to walk at nine months. And I was like, I would have paid good money for a late bloomer. Thank you very much. Like, during the pandemic? Yes, No. is not on my bingo card right now. I cannot be chasing a nine month old around a townhouse. with a bunch of stairs. in December of 2022. I'm not doing it. No, no mercy. How was moving into VC life? That's different from government. really like it. like the pace. and the company I was with was an HR tech platform, which meant that it tended to have a more progressive people team and a slightly less under invested people team. And so that was just a really nice place to start. my boss is like the best, the best boss I've ever worked for. My team was fantastic. Like most, most learning opportunities, most fail fast type of stuff. And so it's not like the stress didn't go like this, but overall the undercurrent was positive, even in the middle of the pandemic. My daughter did go back to daycare before I started that job, because I couldn't do that thing. she could and she can and it was fine. Yes, and she, unlike me, is extroverted and so she needed fellow baby humans at the time. for everyone. I appreciated that call out you just said fail fast. think that is something we're not often given the opportunity to do in people operations. Our programs span large time frames and sometimes big ships are hard to turn. I'm curious about some of the things that you really loved about failing fast, moving, learning quickly. Let's dive into that a little bit. I think one of the things that it drove home for me is that rolling out an 80 % solution and communicating really well that it's an 80 % solution. And so there's still all of this flex room for improvement, change, tweaking, right sizing, whatever brings the whole org together to say, we heard you that you said X, Y, and Z matters a lot for whatever reason. We didn't want to spend six months waiting to get you the perfect version. So here's what we could put together in two. And then you tell us, fellow engineers, help us iterate. This is our MVP. What do you need better? If I put this into release notes or into a PR, what would you comment back and tell me needed to tweak or we could think about it this way? And that space for iteration is so appealing as somebody who tends very analytical. I almost always come to something with a fairly strong perspective, but not, not being convinced that I'm right, just that we needed to do something first. Yeah. We can tweak your rudder, but we can't like U -turn. Exactly. And I appreciate this kind of experimental mindset, especially with employee facing programs, perks, initiatives. Like we could spend all this time and build it perfectly and roll it out and miss the mark. And that would suck. Or it's devastating and the engagement survey sucks and the CEO is pissed and like, you're burnt out and you're like, maybe I should look for a new job. And then you're like, well, why didn't they love it? I spent so much time on it. And you're like, well, I know I've been there on all sides of that. But also like, I do love this idea that we're seeing more from folks of like, we're gonna try this little thing. And then you tell us, you tell us, help us navigate so we really dock this perfectly. Yeah, and I'm just, I'm very passionate about that mechanism of like people operations. And on the business partnering side, which is where I tend to sit, oftentimes this is smaller or maybe it's more tailored to the individual function that I'm supporting. And one of the reasons I gravitate towards smaller orgs is that I don't necessarily have to rely on pulse surveys to do this, right? Like if I'm supporting an 80 person client group, I can just talk. to half of them. Right. Just like give me the Jibber Jabber. I don't need your like Likert scale rating here. Like I just want to know how it feels. Yeah. Surveys are well done when they're done well, and there's time and places for them. And pulse surveys make my palms sweaty. Like literally right now, I'm like, ugh. Okay. All right. So we keep on going. And then you're like, everything's awesome. I'm going to move to London. Yes, so the CEO of the org I was at at the time like mentioned offhand in one of the meetings I was having with her like, like it would be great if you moved to London. had, as we grew, we were more in Europe and on the East coast of the US. So my time zone was really challenging. Like I was up pretty early, which as the proud owner of like an 18 month old at the time, like I was up pretty early. So that was okay. But it was challenging because my overlap with Europe was like minimal. even when I was up at 730 in the morning. And I thought she was joking. So I like blew it off. And then she asked again. And I was like, you mean it. Like, you're asking if I'll move to London. So I looked at my husband and was like, okay, well, we're team one and done. Like the baby we have is the only baby we're having. His job is portable. So he works for a company with a really generous global mobility policy. So they were just like, yeah, man, like you do you go off. and so with like a kid that was portable and resilient and a job that was portable for him, we were like, we have, we have to say yes to this. What an opportunity. And so we were choosing between London and Berlin at the time. And for us, we just decided the English language would be helpful overall. Not that Berlin is not a very English heavy city, to be honest, but London felt like a good fit. had a pretty decent size office there. And so we moved two years ago. Did you have, I mean, look, I've jumped ahead and I see the journey line. You're not there anymore. But did you, when you moved there, were you like, this is gonna be short term, this is gonna be long term, or were you just kind of like, we'll see. 40 that we would stay long -term. So we thought a little bit that we would stay, yeah, that we would stay in plant. And there's sort of three core reasons that we didn't. The first was my chronic migraines and my daughter's food allergy were a real challenge on the NHS. Not that the treatments don't exist, it's just that everything is so slow. So some of the treatments that my daughter can do here, there's a nine year waiting list. And I'm not exaggerating, they were like, maybe when she's 12. Right, whereas here it's like, we'll probably be done with it before she goes to kindergarten next year, which is what I wanted. And then with my migraines, was just every time I would fail a new drug or whatever, it would take five months to get the next appointment, to get the prescription that I needed the next time, which was usually an in -office thing, which would be scheduled two and a half or three months later. And so just not, for me, not having any preventative medication meant that like I'm 10 % stupider at my like day -to -day life when I'm dealing with that. And then it's just wages. Like it's one of the weird things you have to explain in the people space of how compensation is benchmarked and how we regionalize compensation programs and philosophies. And the comp in the UK is always going to be lower. I guess not always, but like is lower comparatively than it is in the US, despite the fact that tax rates are much higher. And when we looked at my salary, my husband's salary, future earning potential, all of that type of stuff and like math, some of the math out. made more sense to be in the U S and that wouldn't have been a deciding factor for us on its own, but the NHS health stuff was kind of hard to get. yeah, you. super weird to be like packing up and moving right as the UK was like making a good choice in their election so that we could come back and like have questions. You're like, all right, well, everything seems fine here. See ya. Tell me about living in London. What did you love? What was surprising? I imagine there was still a culture shock, even though the language was the same. Yeah, definitely. So it's funny actually living in Seattle now, which is famous for the Seattle freeze, which is just like, people are not that friendly here. I feel like people are like 10 times smiley -er and just like generally friendlier than we found in London. And I caveat that with like, we found a really good group of friends. We lived in a very like immigrant heavy neighborhood. My daughter's school had like kids from Italy and Germany and Senegal and like Spain. And so like, we were fine. But you look down at the sidewalk so as to avoid making eye contact with someone erroneously in the UK. And I was just like, right. I was like, my husband wants to do the up nod, and I want to do the smile and move on kind of scenario. And so. it comes from like working in restaurants. There was a, if somebody's within five feet of you, you say hi. And like that has just stuck with me far too deeply. I say hi to strangers all the time. For me, it's a hiking trail protocol. It's like, if you pass someone on the trail, you greet them in some form or fashion. And I was like, we're passing each other on the trail. The trail of the sidewalk. We're urban hiking right now, man. Yes, public transit there was amazing. Like we never had a car, we never needed one. It would have been a huge pain in the ass to have a car. Got back to America and had to buy a car right away because I was like, this is actually terrible without a car. And like, I think we took a huge amount of advantage of just living near airports and being able to travel and it being so much less expensive. I Europeans often get a culture shock just seeing how expensive intra -American flights are. They're like, I can fly to, I don't know, Greece for like 150 pounds and you can't fly from Seattle to LA for less than 400? Like what's going on here? Well, I could fly from Seattle to LA for less than 400, but if I want to get back, yeah, we're gonna have. Yeah, exactly. No, truly. And also, like, they can drive to a lot more countries than we can. They don't drive. Which fair. They don't need cars. I'm here for it. It's better. I'm just saying. Trains are good like outside of the UK. Our intra -country flights are just a squeak longer. I'm gonna hold, I'm gonna, that's what I'm gonna say to make myself feel better. Reminding people that flying from Seattle to Florida is like flying from London to Greece, not like flying from London to Germany. Right. of travel. So London, two years, you stayed at the same company? No. four rounds of redundancy in the year that I was there. Like it was HR tech in 2022, 2023. That was a super challenging landscape. Like we are only just starting to see the rebound from that, I think. And like that was just sad because like this was a company that had such a special culture and values. Like it's the only place I've ever worked where I felt like the... the espoused values and the lived values were well matched for most of my time there. And they happened to be ones that resonated deeply with me personally, which I think matters so much for your own psychological safety at work is feeling like those lived values match your own personal values. And seeing how corporate values come into conflict with rifts, redundancies. That was like emotionally challenging for me, I think, because I wanted us to live them a little bit stronger, but it's the, this is the flip side of like working for VCs. Sometimes when you're really well funded, things are great. And sometimes the board's just like, nah, get fucked. Like do what I said. mean, truly, like when somebody else is holding the pocket strings, you don't always get to do the details. And I went through something similar in 2022, had to do a couple riffs, fought tooth and nail to do them differently. But somebody's pocket book was a whole lot bigger than mine was, which means their voice got a little bit more pulse. Yeah, it's a, I still look back and think that like given the constraints we were under, we did them as humanly as possible. But it's garbage and I hate it. You got to play the hand you're dealt. And I think present company included, people ops people will do the best they can to play the best hand. But did that impact? Did those redundancies impact you? But really, I'm asking that because did it impact your ability to stay in London? You were an immigrant. those bizarre fortuitous things. So yes, eventually I laid myself off. It's like the weirdest part of a people partner role in particular is I'm often sitting at the budget table and eventually I'm looking at the line items going like, okay, we're at the stage where you just need to keep the lights on and like, I am too expensive to help you keep the lights on. Sounds like you have very similar experience. me, this role, get rid of this role. It doesn't make sense. Like, you're not going to hurt my feelings, but please help me find a new one. not like a revenue business partner. but no, it did not impact our ability to stay or my ability to find a new job because we were on my husband's visa. So I alluded to earlier, his company has very generous global mobility policy. Part of that was that although we were going for my company and my company like paid our relocation expenses there, we actually went on his visa. because they were just set up to do it faster and said that they would do it. And I could not be more grateful for us having decided to do it that way because it meant, like it meant I could make the best recommendations about getting rid of my own role because I knew that the only thing I then had to do was find a new role. I didn't have to find a new role that would also sponsor my family's visa. And you found a new role in London? I did. So I worked for a company there for about a year. And then the strange thing about Europe with long notice periods is like when we did decide we were going to move back, it was like March when I told them. I was like, hi, you're going to lose me in July. So like, let's get going. I'm here till July. See ya. Cool. and so I've been with them part -time a little bit over the summer, working on some project work and that type of thing. I actually have a new job starting in September, which I'm super excited about back to the like smaller startup life. The company I was with in London was grew from like 500 to 600. and my like joie de vivre is at like 125 to 300 type of thing. So you're back in the Pacific Northwest in Seattle. The best part of life is when you are wrapping up a role, you get a little break right before you already have that new role lined up. any good plans for the next? It's mid August now if you start in September. What's on the docket while you wait for your stuff to get there? my suit to make it through the Panama Canal. My daughter's like childcare situation is weird right now. So she's got a couple of like space themed summer camps coming up. And then the last week before I start, actually she has no childcare. So we're just going to tool around Seattle, like making bad choices at Ikea and going to the aquarium seven times. here for it. I'm here for it. I love it. A good aquarium. I love it. educational field trip as an adult. Please take me on those. I've got all of these little notebooks of trail walks and how to have a nature walk with a four -year -old. And I'm like, but remember, Adrienne, your four -year -old is a hellion. So how are you going to do cardio in addition to finding leaves? Because do not put me down for cardio. I am not here for it. But she is. this with a lot of love and a lot of understanding, you could put a leash. Like one of those little, you know, like a cute, like a monkey backpack and it has the long tail. I am gonna out myself as like a judgmental teenager, which like shocking every teenager is judgmental. But when I worked at that toy store, when I was like 15, 16, we were next to a pet store called Wiley Wag. And somebody came in one day and was like, hey, do you sell like backpack leashes for kids? And I was like, no, but you could try the Wiley Wag. And then I had a runner. was just karma that you now I get it. worked at SeaWorld in college at a theme park and that was always, I used to judge and now some of my friends have runners, which I have experienced and I'm like, no, that's a great idea. Right, like we ended up never needing to use one because when she was at peak running phase was also like the pandemic. And so there just weren't that many people out and about who lived in the suburbs. Like, right. We can keep her safely safe. But I have just lost all, all sense of judgment for parents who do end up making that choice because it's like, do you care more about your kid not getting hit by a car or like some shitty little teenager judging you like. You care more about your kid not getting hit by a car. Like, there's only one correct choice here. teenagers though, they know. They know how to get to, yeah. Well, that brings us to the end of your journey line. Anything we missed, anything you wanna shout out or tell us about, the floor is yours. think one of the most special things about my journey line is that I have had almost no bad managers. And that is so fucking rare to be in your mid thirties and only be able to look back at a couple of leaders and be like, nah, that was not the play. Like I've had, I've had people who cared. I've had people who pushed me. I've had people who gave me the rope to hang myself by. And then like, came to collect afterwards so that we could fix it together. And I think like, it's so strange and special and I'm so grateful for that because I don't, I don't think my transition from counter -terrorism to like people business partner would have worked at all if I hadn't had people who like took that time to recognize who and how I am and like figure out how to elevate my skills and grow with me. And it's just like special, it's really special. I know a lot of people who hate their jobs. And I don't, like even when my job is hard, even when I'm not happy with the decisions that are being made, I'm still like fundamentally satisfied with the career path that I found myself on. If there are some fledgling or experienced or potential managers out there as someone who has benefited from so many great managers, what are some management advice or tips that you would give to a new manager? It is not kind to withhold tough feedback. It is fundamentally self -protective to steal a like Brene Brown -ism. Like it is fundamentally self -protective to not give the challenging feedback. And that's not a euphemism for being blunt or uncaring or not thinking about like how what you have to say will be perceived. But like some of my best growth moments have happened because somebody has pulled me aside and been like, yo, I've got challenging feedback for you like Can you receive that right now? And I think pulling back in some of the things that you learned in your early technical writing days, like words matter, being concise and clear, even when it's hard and difficult is really important. It has to resonate. That feedback has to resonate with your audience. And the hill I will die on is that the like shit sandwich of feedback is a shitty way to deliver it. You do not go positive growth positive, but like. That's whiplash. That's just whiplash. And it's like so easy to dismiss the middle bit and you leave the person confused. Like that's my soap box. Anytime a manager comes to me and is like, well, I would like couch it and positive feedback. And I'm like, no, we're practicing something new. Come with me. Here, here's the way. It's a new paradigm. Adrienne, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for sharing your journey line. Again, check out Adrienne's journey line in the description below and we will see you next time. Have a great day, everyone. Bye, thank you.