Featuring: Dajana Berisavljević Đakonović

Dajana Đakonović shares her journey from dreams of stardom to more supporting roles that have incredible impact on society and her company.

Check out her Journey Line here.

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Hello and welcome to Journey Lines, the podcast answering the question, how did they get there? I'm your host Kim Minnick. Each episode, I invite a guest to complete a reflective exercise plotting the ups and downs of their career against a line of neutrality. Together, we go through the highs, lows, and everything in between. My guest today, and bear with me, Diana Braseljewicz-Jukanovic. Perfect. Say it correctly. Please, please help me. Thank you! Diana Pericavljevic-Zakorović. It's much more beautiful when you say it. have to comment. You did good. Well, thank you so, so much for joining. I am so thrilled. We have been online friends for quite some time and I'm excited to dive into your story. But before we do, what do you got going on today? Personally, professionally, holistically? Thanks so much for the great intro, Kim. And thanks so much for having me here. The moment they saw the format of this podcast, was like, I have to do this exercise regardless of the podcast. It was so exciting. So thanks a lot. I appreciate it. But yeah, I am Diana. Professionally at the moment I am the head of people at Toggle. So I am orchestrating the remote operations of a fully distributed team of like 150 people. That's where I am. Personally. I'm a huge fan of arts and this is something that we will go through, we will see throughout my career journey. So arts has always been present in my life in different ways, in different, different form. But at the moment I am part of this community group in my hometown where we organize different art events throughout the year. And we just had last year like a huge music festival. So that was one of the exciting personal projects that I was part of. And personally, I just got married last year and I have a huge family here in Serbia. I mean, it's only me and my husband, but for my mother's side, I have like four aunts, nine cousins, 13 nephews and nieces. Like it's a lot of us. So that's me. That's how I spend my days. I work, I enjoy, enjoy arts and spend time with my family. I mean, what else is there to do? You've got art, you've got family, you've got work, like, living the dream over there. Right now, yeah, but it's been a lot of ups and downs up until this point. Well, I mean, I get that and I'm excited to dive into them. So why don't you kick us off? I've got your journey line for our listeners. It's linked in the comment description below. And we're kicking off with your arrival into the world. That's right. Well, it was the summer of 1992. That is when I arrived. It all started there. If I could actually, because I don't have a really great design skills, but my idea was to create some kind of like a family tree because the way I actually see my life is that, yes, I arrived in 1992, but it's also a result of all these people and everything they've done over the years before me. So yeah. It was my family, my grandparents, my mom and dad. And in 1992, there was little Diana. Unfortunately, the circumstances in which I arrived weren't ideal. It was the wartime in Serbia. I don't know how much audience is aware of the historical and geographical context, but Serbia was part of Yugoslavia. The country was breaking up. So during the 90s, there was war, not in Serbia, but in those surrounding countries. And my country was participating. participating in it. So these first formative years, of course, I have great memories. mean, my parents did the best to give me the best possible childhood. But people are struggling. People in Serbia were struggling. And just recently, one of my therapy sessions, I actually realized how much this actually shapes you. You look at people around you, you see how they're doing, and then you also learn some things. luckily to me, it's learned me a lot of resilience and this We have also this fighting spirit that you can do things in life if you are resilient enough and if you push through. So that was my early childhood. And when I was a really, really young age, I fell in lobby theater. I was only, I think, five years old when I did my first play. It was in kindergarten. love this. Tell me all about your first play. love at the first sight. I even did it, I was only five and I did it with older kids, they were seven and I got the main role. I remember there were like some other moms and parents are being pissed about it. But. wants their kid to be a star, and here you are, just undercutting these seven-year-olds. Exactly, exactly. But that was up until these days, I still see acting as something like I was born to do. Unfortunately, I didn't end up in that career, but that was my first love. Like that was everything for me. I loved every second of it. The first play that I did was the Snow White and Seven Dwarfs. It was really cute. was really, really cute. I was Snow White, yes. Exactly. So it all started back in the kindergarten and I was always the one who liked to talk. So we just like talking and talking and talking and writing and acting were always kind of my huge passions. My kindergarten teacher would actually take me to radio shows where I would talk about, don't even know what, I was so little, like five, six years old. I I don't know a lot of kids that are doing radio show tours. Look at, you must have loved the limelight. I did, I truly did. Like I truly enjoyed it. was the purpose of my life since like the very, very young age. I know like that is what I wanna do. And I continue doing it. was a musical theater kid growing up. like, I understand the call for the stage. Here we are. Here we are talking on our brand new radio show. Exactly, exactly. So how long, your next plot is that you gave up on acting and to enroll in literature studies, but like, how long was your theater journey? Yes, it was quite long actually. So if you say it started when I was around five, it was going on for the good 15 years. So I was doing it for a really long time throughout the primary school, middle school, high school. At high school, actually, I almost got expelled because I didn't go to school. I spent all my time at theater. So. this like a community? Because in America, like growing up, all of my theater stuff was in school. Like we would have after school plays and this was all like community. You were going like the big time. Yep, yep, yep. It was actually, I was part of the local drama group. First, it was the group for kids. So it was all the kids and we were doing like plays for kids. But then later I was actually part of the drama group with like adult actors in our local theater. So we will be doing plays. We were actually having tours, like traveling all around the Serbia with our plays. And it was, that was me like living my best life in the end of elementary school and like high school. School while I was always like academically really successful, but for me it was just like the formality I would have like really good grades, but then skip classes to actually be able to to do my acting and actress life Amazing. I also skipped classes to do drama, but my grades were not as good. I did not play the field correctly, if you will. I did my best. I love that. So you have all of this time in theater and then you change. I mean, I get it. I left theater around 20. What happened? What made that decision? That's a good question. And it's one of those breaking points in life, which if I look back at time and think like, if I made the different decision back then, probably I would have had a completely different life. But the thing is, it was my parents and especially my father. So it was the end of high school and it was time to decide to what college I'm going to go to. I only wanted to go to drama. I only wanted to do that. I didn't want anything else. But now... I told you the context where I grew up at and the thing is, Serbia is not really economically strong country. Also, you can't really have a decent living if you're doing acting unless you move out and go to some other country. So my father, out of all of the love that he has to me and all of the caring that he has to me, he vetoed that and he was like, no. So it was months of fighting, a lot of tears, a lot of heartbreak. I still wasn't ready. I was 18. I still wasn't ready to say like, hey, this is what I want to do. And if you don't want to support me, I'm just going to go and live on my own and support myself. That's another thing about Serbia. We don't really have a system where we can both work and study and earn enough to actually make a living. So it's really tough. Yeah. you... So there wasn't going to be an option like, I'm 18, I'm moving out, I'll figure it out on my own and I'm going to pursue this acting dream. Not an option. have been really tough. Like I consider myself a tough person. Like I can do whatever I want. Like whatever I set my mind to, I'm going to achieve it. Back then, that would have been really tough. Like to find a decent job, to be able to pay for apartment, for food, for groceries, and to study, it's pretty much impossible in Belgrade. Unfortunately, that's why a lot of people, young age and students, they didn't have their parents supporting them. they can't really start studying, they have to find work. It's just the situation that it is, that the country is in, that it was back then and that is still. So yeah, a lot of fighting. And then my father's proposal was that I enroll to pharmacy. And I was like, no, that was my veto. was like, his idea was that. that's going to make a good living. That's going to give you like a stable wage. You can start your own business, yada, yada, yada. But I was like, no way. So I was, I was ready to make some compromises, but for me, I wasn't ready. Like I could never betray myself like that to like enroll to pharmacy. So in the end we managed to find a middle ground and I enrolled to a literature studies, but actually I enrolled to private college in Serbia where The college is modeled like your colleges in the US. So I had like the major topic, which was literature, and then I had minors and it was communications. So the idea was that I could still study art, but I would get a degree in something useful. I mean, it makes sense, right? Like literature, words, using them well, impactfully. Communication, words, using them well, impactfully. How was that conversation with your family? Because I imagine like you all are coming from opposite ends and need to find this middle point. What was that like? Absolutely. I mean, being 18 years old, like you're still a teenager, you're so angry. So it was absolutely, absolutely. I was lucky that I always had my mom on my side and she was trying to be supportive. But with that, was just, it was tough. mean, right now at this age, I can understand his view and I can totally understand it. Back then I couldn't, like from that position. I couldn't get it at all. was like, why do you hate me? I'm your kid. Like, why don't you want to help me? Why don't you want to support me? What do I want to do? Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. It's a big question how happy I would be because looking at our current situation in the country, looking at our actors, the way they're living, the way they are like fighting for their dreams and for their space in society and in community, it's extremely tough. so it took me some time to like forgive my father for this. I have to say that I was really holding a grudge for years that he didn't let me do it. I mean, in the end, it was my decision. I was old enough to make my own choices. but the conversation was. Really all the conversations were really tough. If I could give any advice to any, any, any young people listening is always. Try to put yourself in other people's, other person's shoes. That's something we don't do when we are that young. It's something we don't do through a lot of our 20s or even as adults. Yeah, sometimes it's hard to really see like, this person wants me to do something that I hate and why? Like, is there genuine care and love behind this awful ask? Exactly, exactly, So it took you years, I imagine you mended things. Yeah, we're dead. Amazing. you, so you enrolled in literature and exchange to the US over on my side of the pond. Exactly. So I started doing this literature and communications in Serbia. I did two years. I was so lucky to be part of that college as well because it was so forward thinking, so not conventional to like Serbian education system. And it also put me in a really good, really good position to apply for scholarships. So I got a scholarship from the state department and I went for an exchange year in Minnesota. I spent a year in Mankato at the university. And I can say, I think that is the year where my heart and my mind and my soul opened to the world. That was amazing. That was a once in a lifetime experience of exchange year, international community, international friends, getting to know other way of living, other country. So I love that. I loved every day and every second of it. How was that like cultural shift, that location shift? Like what was that experience like for you? was mind blowing, especially coming from Serbia. US for us is like Disneyland. It is the end goal. Like every person in Serbia just like dreams about living in the US. Like US is the promised country. This is the place that you see only in movies. So like coming there and like seeing all of these things like in real life, it was truly mind blowing. It was literally like a little kid exploring the world. and seeing the world for the first time. Everything was new, everything was exciting, especially that there was not only US students at the college, but a huge international community. So this is the first time where I actually connected with people from other countries. I had like three best friends from Saudi Arabia, Tunis and Egypt. So I learned a lot about their culture, their way of living. It was truly, truly exciting. I get excited now when I remember it and talk about it. Come back, come visit. It's different now, but come on. in April. You are! I mean, not to skip ahead, but where you going? I will be staying for a couple of weeks in Texas, coming for a conference. So we'll be traveling around a bit as well. All right, well, just keep me updated, because if I can, if you can come to Texas, I can probably make it to Texas. Will do, will do, absolutely! right, so you spend some time in the US. get your bachelor's with not just communications, not just literature, but dabbled in some digital marketing as well. What got you interested in that? Yeah, exactly. My thirst for knowledge somehow just never stopped. So this actually degree in digital marketing, it came a bit later after this, during this NGO life. So I actually got the bachelor in communications and literature. And then I was like, okay, now it's time for me to start working. I was ready to start my official working career. So I already knew what I wanted to do before I left for US. I was already doing some voluntary projects with this NGO in Belgrade. It's called Youth Initiative for Human Rights. And it was a group of young people that had offices in all of the countries from ex Yugoslavia. So like Serbia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Croatia, not Macedonia, think. Now I can't remember. But anyways, we had Montenegro. Montenegro. Exactly. And that was, think, I still, even with the whole acting and everything, this is when I truly felt that I'm making the biggest change in the world. This was the work that actually gave me the biggest sense of purpose because the idea of this NGO, the topics were really difficult to deal with. These were the NGOs dealing with the topics and traditional justice. So we had a war, our country split up. It was a lot of shit. There is still lot of shit going on. Like people, exactly. Exactly. A lot of people who are not held responsible for the things they did during the 90s. A lot of these people still holding positions of powers in all of our countries. And we of course have the shittiest nationalistic narrative, which is the same in each of our countries. representing yourself as the victim, representing everybody else as the bad guys. And then the whole idea behind this NGO was to actually reconnect the youth, young people from all of the countries and to talk about these things. Like, okay, let's sit down, let's educate ourselves what actually happened and let's talk about it. I've never seen, I've got goosebumps talking about it. I never seen a stronger community in my life than community in that NGO. I spent only two years there. In my head, it feels like it's been 15 years because there's been so many things, so many projects, so many people that I met and this huge feeling of purpose and being proud of actually making a change or at least trying to make a change. least trying to I feel like that's so it's such an act of rebellion almost educating the youth on what actually happened ideally to prevent it again what what sort of projects were you taking on what initiatives were you working on if you can share Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. A lot of it was actually based on exchange programs as well. So we would take people from Bosnia, bring them to Belgrade. We would take people from Belgrade and go to Kosovo, to Pristina. We would also organize artistic events as well, but also do the exchange of artists. Like artists from Sarajevo would come to Belgrade, artists from Belgrade would go to Montenegro, vice versa. So it was a lot of movement. And actually one of the huge things that we did is that we established a regional youth cooperation office with the government of Germany in France, I believe. It was one of the last projects that I did back there. It was just the start. I think that project is still ongoing and it's pretty big, which does these big exchange programs, big exchange youth programs in the region. Then we had summits, conferences, all kinds of things. And of course, a lot of work was done in the streets. organizing protests, organizing pride. We did like three years in a row, we were one of the main organizers of the Pride Parade in Belgrade. Yeah, I think these were the biggest ones. wild and I'm curious did your international exchange experience kind of support some of your ideas initiatives or like passion for that? Absolutely, absolutely. Yes. I I also think I always had this instill curiosity myself for other people and for other ways of living, which were also like came to life during the exchange year at the US. But then also when I came back, I wanted to know these people. I wanted to know my neighbors. We grew up in Serbia and you know, it's around the countries like in school didn't teach you what happened during the nineties. Nobody talks about it. Your parents wouldn't tell you, your teachers wouldn't tell you. Like for example, there was a siege of Sarajevo. The city was under siege for four years. I was 25 years old when I learned about that. And it is like... four years and they just swept it? Like, no, that didn't happen. We'll just... That's wild. thing among a long list of other things. And I was 25 years old when I found out, like for the first time, in Sarajevo, it's like five hours away from my city. Like I sit in the car, I'm there five hours, it's it's right there. It's another part of the world. So I was mind blown when I started like realizing all of it. And when I realized that it just happened and we don't know about it. And we are still having the same politicians in power. We are being fed the same narrative. My generation, a generation younger than me, still have no idea about it. So it was, I truly felt a dislike on the mission to educate young people on it and to make them understand. And then when you see people from all of these countries getting together and talking, you realize we're all the same. It's never the people fighting, it's the influence. Because you're right, you come together, you've experienced the same horrors, you live in the same region. It's actually not as horrific as maybe we have been led to believe and then hidden. Absolutely, absolutely. And especially there is still a lot of fear in our region nowadays. Like people from Belgrade are afraid to go to Kosovo. People from Kosovo are afraid to come to Serbia. A lot of tension that media is creating. And then like I was 25 years old when I went to Kosovo for the first time, extremely scared. I'm like, I'm going there and you have no idea like what could happen. Like somebody's gonna kill you in the street. Then you go and you realize nothing will happen. It's so chill, it's so fine. Nothing. We have humans have such a strong fear of the unknown. And then when we're things to increase that fear, when I first moved away from my mother into like a larger city in the U.S., I remember her, okay, well, whatever happens to you happens to you. You've lived a good life. what? I'm there's just sidewalks here like anywhere else. So I understand how that fear can just grow and taking the step to visit other countries or learn like shatters some of that fear, but it's so hard to do. So you're at this NGO for you said two years, but it felt like 15. absolutely. And the second year I decided, I want to go back to college. So while I was working at the NGO, I enrolled back to college because I wanted to learn more about digital marketing. At this NGO, I was doing some project management, and then I was also doing a bit of digital marketing. And I was like, OK, I want to learn more. So I enrolled to one additional year of BA, and it was about digital marketing. It was lovely until it wasn't, it was great to learn throughout the year, but then the time for exams came and I was, it was too much. It was too much to do the exams and do the work. the main reason was that this NGO life, it wasn't work. It wasn't nine to five. It wasn't during the work day. was literally consuming my whole life. was 24 seven. Like I was on a mission at some point it was even. the case that four of us from the office, we started living together. Because we were like, we're together 24-7 anyway, so we're just going to rent an apartment together. So it was work from night and day all the time. And it's actually really bring out not only that, not only like the temple, but also at some point. I think I was hit with harsh reality how hard and how difficult it is to make a lasting change in our society. And then I realized that it's not worth my life. And that was the moment where I decided that I had to change something. It was huge. That's a huge recognition to say this is such important work. It's not worth my life. Yes, yes. That was a really, really tough decision to make. I was wrapping up the college. I did the digital marketing part. Not to go into all of the details, but all this work, which was so exciting, and exchange programs and everything, it's followed by with also really dark reality, where sometimes you have police escort, sometimes you have life threats. Sometimes you're like called out for being a traitor of your nation because you're not saying that everybody else is bad and we are good guys. It's a lot. And for somebody that's young, of course, I didn't realize how young I was back then. I was so capable for everything. It was a lot that it took at all only later. I wasn't even realizing how difficult it is. And especially because, of course, We are dealing, working with young people, but there was a lot of fun in it. But the main topics we were talking about, like war crimes, transitional justice, responsibilities, genocide, like these are the topics that stay in back of your head that they're always there with you. And they're taking the toll without you even realizing it. Yeah, I don't know a lot of people in their 20s or 30s who are actively trying to pursue war criminals or fight against genocide. mean, unfortunately, I think we're seeing more folks get involved in those actions, but to do it as a 24-7 job with your roommates, I can understand burnout and anxiety and panic attacks. It's like, you know there's a bear chasing you and that bear is right behind you all the time. Absolutely, absolutely. And for me, it even, it didn't start while I was at the NGO. I actually made the decision to, I needed a cut. I felt like I needed a clean slate. I knew I don't want my life to stay in these topics. The main reason was that disappointment of, I stopped believing we could make a real change. And unfortunately up to nowadays, nothing really changed. I stopped believing that the government will change. I stopped believing that these politicians would change. And I was like, okay, I don't want to spend another 10 years here without actually making a big difference. So I knew I wanted like completely to pivot. And this was my pivot moment. I was like, okay, I need to figure out something else. And I had the vision. actually, while I was working at the NGO, I used toggle track. I use like the time management app to track projects, to track how much time I spent on what, yada, yada, yada. And I was a huge fan of the, I was reading Toggle track blog and I knew about their working and I knew about like remote tea, remote culture. And it all sounded like, my God, this is like, this is a dream. This, this can't be true. So Toggle opened a position for marketing manager and I actually recommended it to my best friend. I told her like, Hey, this awesome company that I've been following had this position open. should apply. She applied and she got a job. So she started working at toggle and she started like traveling the world, going to the meetups, they're going to conferences. was like, okay, I need to get in. And that was, knew I wanted to get into toggle. So it wasn't like any company. wasn't SAS. It wasn't no, it was toggle. knew, I knew I want this one. What I did is actually. I, back in time, I live in Belgrade and then I completely burned out. It was a mix of like professional disappointment, personal disappointment. There was a heartbreaking love story somewhere in there as well. Always, always. The heartbreak is the undertone that sometimes gets surfaced and sometimes, yeah, it'll change things. Tough times in Belgrade. yeah. And then it was, I was finishing college and then I was done with college. I quit my job at the NGO. was like, I'm moving back to my hometown to figure things out and to see what I want to do. So I moved back. spent, I think like two months obsessively following Toggle's website and like waiting for them to post jobs. I remember I applied once and got rejected. And then they posted another role for team building manager. You're like, hold on, I know about community work. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, okay, this is my way to get in. So I applied and I started working at Tuggle in February 2017. And I started living my dream. I started traveling. I was part of this like amazing remote team. I was doing something that truly, truly enjoy. And only then actually my panic attacks and burnout, it caught up with me like two months in when I started at Tuggle and I was so confused. It is such a delayed reaction because I think you're like going from this high stress environment to moving home, trying to find a new job, trying to figure out what's next. And finally, when you get a second to breathe, you're like, no, I can't breathe. Exactly, exactly. You describe it so well. That's exactly what happened. It was a scary, scary, actually two years because I didn't know these were panic attacks. When they started, I would like feel lightheaded, be dizzy, know, like feeling like not going out, not being really social. And I couldn't figure out what it was, especially people who knew me. I'm like extremely outgoing, extremely extroverted. loud, wordy, I don't stop. It's like I have energy. Nobody could ever guess that I'm like being anxious and having panic attacks. So we were all convinced that it's something physical. So for like almost two years, I spent like time going from doctor to doctor, spending huge amounts of money on like blood tests, all kinds of different tests, starting to figure out what it was. And we just couldn't figure it out. It was getting worse and worse. At some point he got so much out of hand that I couldn't keep my house. So I had like two weeks of literally like staying in one room because I couldn't go to the store. would feel so dizzy. Like the moment I would go out, everything would start spinning. So scary. It was extremely scary. first one that was like, hey, maybe this is mental, not physical? Was it you? my best friend, my best friend who knew me since I was born. Like she's two years older than me and we grew up literally in a house next to each other. So she gave me the hint. She was like, hey, something is off. Like maybe you should go and try talking to somebody. And I was like, okay. So I went to see a psychiatrist. She diagnosed me like three minutes, I think. It was tough. Anxiety, probably some PTSD in there. Absolutely, it was like this. But when that happened, was like, that was the first time I could finally breathe. I was like, thanks God, like I know what it is now. I know I will deal with it. Like I will find a way to deal with it, whatever it is. And then it's just the... answer just helps you. okay. I can handle this now. I know what this is. I can approach it better. Absolutely. That fear of unknown and feeling of being out of control was something extremely scary for me. But I don't know what it is, so I can't tackle it. I can't improve it. But once I figured it out, then I started on my healing journey. It was years of medication, therapy, all different kinds of therapy. But it truly improved my life in all different kinds of ways. Like you get to know yourself better. You get to know what you want to do, what you don't want to do in life. I got to meet my husband during this healing journey. So somehow all the pieces started falling in right places. And to be honest, one of the things that I'm most grateful for is actually Toggle and Toggle as a company and Toggle environment because I was able to heal in that environment. And that is the main reason why I'm still there. Like it's been eight years. And if you look at the current market at a current state of things, like it was crazy enough to stay at the same company for eight years. Like, why would anybody do that? I mean, or who's lucky enough to stay at the same company and grow because kicking back to the original conversation, you're the head of people and you started as a, what was it? A team, team building manager. So that is, I mean, that's a wild eight year career path that we can start getting into now. So you got your first job there, celebration all around. Absolutely. So happy and through the roof. My first job was booking plane tickets and booking hotels like manual. If you didn't even have a system or a tool for it, it was literally like going to Skyscanner, scanning the flights, taking screenshots, sending it to people and be like, choose one, then like book it for them. So that was my first job at toggle. Back then. really getting in the logistics, people's preferences, you're getting to know people. I think there's a lot of good that comes from those like administratively focused team building roles. Absolutely. Absolutely. And then even after my first year, think I would just started like filling in the gaps. Like I would see something needs to be done and I would jump on it. We were a really small team around 30 people and we were growing really fast. The company was growing fast. Like we are a SaaS company. It's a huge market. Companies see like big growth. Uh, so the team was growing, the company was growing and then the things that needed to be done were also like popping up. everywhere. So we'll just like jump with these things. So after a year, we revamped my role to internal communications manager. That was one of our biggest pain points. Communication was a mess when you have a remote team, but you don't really have things in place. That was a really big pain point. Communication is tough on site when we see each other every day, but you know, seven, eight years ago, life before remote working was so accepted, we didn't have a lot of great examples for internal communications practices, remote team building practices. Like, how did you navigate that? You're just like, this might be fun. This might work. is so true. It is both a bit scary and really exciting because there is no blueprint. There is no recipe. there is no some companies, some of course there are companies who've been remote before us and who know how to do it. But there is no this like conventional way of doing this because remote and distributed work models are so new. So it was a lot of improv and a lot of figuring things out. As you go, for me, to be honest, amazing and exciting. And this is how I did all my roles. I relied a lot on external knowledge and like connecting with other people, other professionals from other companies that are similar to us and just like trying to figure out how they're doing it over there. And that will be my like tip number one to anybody who starts in their careers, find your communities, find the people you can connect with, find the people you can look up to, find the people. that can inspire you. I cannot stress this enough, like don't get stuck in your own bubble, really connect with others and find your tribe. For me, that was one of the most important and most valuable things as I was improving things at toggle. somebody would have told me that earlier in my career. Everyone was always like, network, go network. And I was like, go show up to events and be like, hi, I'm Kim. That sounds horrific. But how you framed it, finding your community, finding people who you can look up to, who are maybe doing what you're doing, go say hi. Just go say hello. It is insane how many strangers want to help you within your broader community. not agree more. And I'm so thankful of like, and everybody I met on this journey. And some of the greatest thing I did at toggle were actually with a help for people from different companies. For example, I was internal communications manager. So I was like setting up our documentation, communication practices, synchronous versus asynchronous, how do we tell we do meetings, yada, yada, yada. And then at some point we actually were about to reorganize the whole company. So we did the whole company restructuring and we had to figure out the best way to structure our product and engineering teams. And I remember back then I was actually going and knocking on doors of people that from the companies I admire like Todoist, Buffer, Spotify, Google. I found people from these companies from HR teams and I was like, could you please help me? Like I have no idea how to do this. Could you please tell me how you're doing it? People were so generous. Literally everybody I approached were like, okay, sure. Let's jump on a call. I will tell you how we do it over here. It ended up being this like huge couple of months of research. And they found like out of all of the things that I, that they heard, I actually made the model that up until nowadays work at toggle. It's amazing. And our product team is still structured. They're still structured like that. So I did. I mean, that's years. Look, okay. Shout out HR people who take two months of prep work to build something that can last for six years or so. We are so fast. Okay, let me get it done. Let me get it out. Let me build for today. But, friends, we got to build for tomorrow too, because I bet this has been way less stressful than having to repeat that every couple of years. absolutely. And I'm so lucky that Agul is environment where you can actually do it. We are for these like big things and big decisions. We take the time to actually make a proper decision. It also helped me bring the team on board. We restructured the whole company, all levels, all roles, all teams. We had zero people leaving. We had 100 % retention rate. You deserve a gold star. There needs to be like an award ceremony for this. Forget like the Emmys or the Oscars. We need like a people opsers. Thank you! We should make that! That's actually a really good idea! All right, we're gonna do, keep an eye out for annual HR awards, annual people, peopleopsies. Love it. Love it. I was so proud of that. It meant so much to me. I'm like, but I had proper time to actually do the proper change management process to explain to people what we are doing to actually involve our whole team. The team wasn't that big. It was around, I think 70, 80 people. but still, still, yeah, I had time to talk to all of them, to listen where everybody wants to be, where they see themselves, to make compromises with them. So in the end, we ended up with like a really good structure where everybody knows why they're there and why we did it in the way we did it. That was amazing. feel like just for context, when I've done a big reorganizational change, 10 % to 30 % of folks leaving within three months is not uncommon. Like they didn't get the right compromises. They didn't find themselves in the right role because the time wasn't taken to learn all of that before making the decisions. Like what a gorgeous investment from not only you, but the leadership team at Toggle. Thank you. Thank you so much. That was one of the biggest projects that I did back then and one of the ones that I'm the proudest about. But yeah, it also tells about how supportive people from the outside can be. And you need this context. You can't make a good decision and good research just by reading blogs and reading books. It's not the same. Like you will never read in a book something that's from the real person from a real other place will tell you. So that's one of the huge tips that I would also give to anybody doing something for the first time. Go and talk with other people who already done it. You don't have to do it the same way, but it can be even a minor thing that somebody will tell you, will spark your imagination in a way you can't even imagine. So talk with people. Whenever I'm doing that, I pretend I'm a penguin trying to build a nest and I want to go around to all the other penguins and like check out their rocks. And like, do you have a rock I can take and put it in my nest? Like, I really do believe we all do things a little bit differently. And the only way we're going to do our thing the best is by learning and getting tools and ideas and little golden nuggets from other people. I love that. I love that metaphor. Mostly me waddling around like a penguin with a rock in my mouth. So cute. So cute. Well, first off, pop quiz, can you name all of your titles at toggle? Because you have second, third, fourth, and fifth role. Do you remember them all? I probably can. Team building manager, internal communications manager, organizational development manager, people and culture manager, and head of people. That's That's five. And during all of that, you went back to school agai- I did. I did. It was, I can't say what it was. It's all blurry, but at some point I was like, okay, now it's time to do master's degree. As I said, arts have always been like near somewhere in some shape or form. And so I decided to do the MA in now bear with me, transdisciplinary humanities and theory of art. your background maybe not current role but I do see I see the Venn diagram overlaps How was that master? a lot of things. doing a master's degree while learning all of these new roles. that was actually pretty exciting because I was doing two things that I really, really loved and enjoyed on the one side. had toggle where I loved her. I still love working with great team, great supportive boss, like the right environment where you can do other things and not just be stuck in work. And especially I would say PTSD from previous NGO life for me, it was mind blowing that I can, I can have life. I can breathe, I can do other things. So I decided to go to college again. And then it was really different experience as well, because this time I wasn't doing a degree for career. I wasn't doing a degree to earn money. I was doing this degree just because I truly, truly love it. Again, it was in a small group of students. There was a lot of one-on-one work with professors. So I truly enjoyed it and truly loved every second of it. I was focusing on the avant-garde art from the beginning of the 20th century. So that was my topic throughout the year and I did the finished ending paper on it. That was lovely. It wasn't difficult to balance at all. It was just enjoyment all over. Yeah, like kind of soul-filling and it's hard to get, you know, too burnt out. You can, but when it's soul-filling work, you're normally excited to do it. I can see how that degree definitely melds into your community work that you do with the arts and all of that. Do you find it influencing some of your HR work too? Very good question, which I never thought about, so I don't have an idea what an answer could be. I would have to think about it. I mean, probably yes. I just, I couldn't, I couldn't make like a clear parallel right away in which ways it is. we do our awards ceremony, we'll call him Avant Garde HR. Avant Garde, Garter, I don't know, we'll figure it out. Sold Kim, sold! Perfect, perfect, coming to a country near you soon. And, oh, I don't want to miss this little heart before we get into what next? You mentioned it at the top, you met someone and got married. it happened during COVID, COVID relationship. That's how it started. It was COVID times, travel restrictions. I was stuck in my hometown once again. And this is when me and my current husband met. He was also in a different part of the world and came home because of COVID. So we met and the rest is history. We got married last year, 2023. And that's it, enjoying the married life. little pandemic bringing some folks together while they only took, you know, a global health emergency for you to meet your husband. The world works in mysterious ways. It does. Well, what's, first off, do we miss anything in your journey that we need to touch on? is a huge, I mean, Toggle is a really long, huge journey. I it's eight years long. So there's been a lot of milestones and a lot of points. So I was going from role to role. This current one, I stepped into two years ago, head of people. So right now, like I have a team of five, six of us dealing with like different topics at Toggle. And in the last two years, I've been, mean, last eight years. toggle has been shaping me and I be shaping toggle. So I see it as this like love story of like shaping each other. Um, and I'm so proud to say that this company they joined, which I had this like crazy love for, which I thought is the best place in the world. get to say like eight years after that, I still think is the best place in the world. I truly see it as this, like the world is fucked up. Let's be honest. The world is crazy. When we look around, when I hear people, I hear my friends, when I hear about companies they work at, you have like micromanagement, you have burnout, you have overworked people, you have monitoring and surveillance. Just recently, we actually, I don't know if you saw on LinkedIn, but we did this like creativity index report and toggle. Yeah. It was exciting research, but the results are so devastating. Like you can see that like the majority of leadership and like C level people, they believe it's okay to like monitor their employees and like they want tools for surveillance. It's so scary. Like the world is truly. It's a mess. having being part of toggle, I can see, I see them like kind of small oasis, like a small oasis for these 150 people who work there to do something differently, to like have a healthy professional lives, which also give you a healthy personal lives and to do some good work and decent work, but be treated like a human being and not a number. Goodness, I feel like first going back to what you said, you get to shape the company and the company shapes you. I genuinely think that reignited sparks for my People Ops career that had been hidden for a while because that's so true. we have the privilege as People Ops leaders to help shape a culture, to help craft perks and rewards and benefits and experiences. And also if we're listening. It's shaping us too. And I just wanted to double down on that comment because it struck my heart in the best way. And when you think about that, you are making the world a better place for 150 togglers? Okay, great. 150 togglers. And if another head of people can make the world great for another 150 people, there's 300 people. Okay, cool, like I really do believe that our profession has the opportunity to change the world and maybe that's a big bite to chew, but I'm in. No, me too. Me too. what's next as you look to the future and so much opportunity to fix things? What are you, what's next for you? To be honest, I have no idea. For now, for being, I'm here, I'm at Toggle. Only recently, actually, a couple of months back, I started being more vocal publicly about the way we do things at Toggle. Before that, wasn't really, I was learning from others, but I wasn't actually exposing our ways to the world. So I started being more active on LinkedIn, started writing there, started connecting with people more. It's been truly exciting. So I want to continue doing that. I want to continue screaming louder to the world, like, hey, there is a different way to do things. Like, hey, we can all run profitable businesses, but being healthy and having fulfilled lives. I want to show people that it's possible. And I still see that as my mission for the next probably couple of years. So yeah, I'm here, staying where I am, and I will see. Well, I'm gonna link your LinkedIn down at the bottom for our listeners, but where else can people find you? Lingue would be the best place. Another two places actually where I'm very, really often is the two, favorite communities. One is running remote and another one is open org. I love both of them. So, and a really warm recommendation to people, helps people to join any of these communities. Shout out to the open org community. Shout out to Running Remote. I'll go ahead and throw links for those too, because I have been so fortunate. I'm not active in those communities, but I've met folks. I've stolen some of their open source resources. Truly amazing. And I love this shift in our career field of like open source sharing, give, take, and make better. That's how I found you. I found your Lego blocks. I in love with them. was like... Yeah, I'll link my Lego blocks down below too. link them, people should check it out. If you're an HR person looking for some docs with my weird language. Check it out, they're amazing. my gosh, Diana, this was phenomenal. Thank you so much for joining. Thank you for being our first non-US guest. That is a delight for me. I appreciate you making time zones work. Anything we missed or anything else you want to tell the world. think that's it. I blabbered enough for almost an hour. So thanks so much for having me, Kim. It's been a true, true, true pleasure. Thank you and we'll see everyone next time.