ANNIE L. LIN

Remote | 2022–2025

Swiftly helps cities move more efficiently.

First exec People leader in company history. I was brought on as the company was getting ready to accelerate its growth. My biggest/proudest impact here includes:

• Building a performance-focused culture, while maintaining our people-focused values -- resulting in a major turnaround in business results and a successful company exit. When I joined, the company was known for being an inclusive, empathetic, "nice" workplace. This was excellent, but what it lacked was sufficient accountability, results, or focus. This led to a period of company underperformance, and eventually a painful layoff (which I led). I partnered closely with the CEO and the rest of the exec team and my team to overhaul processes, cadences, incentives, expectations, and norms across the company (e.g. how we set & track goals, what good looks like in each role and level, how and who to promote, what we recognize and celebrate and what we don't, what we focus on at All Hands, what we expect from managers, what daily habits we enforce, etc etc), so that performance, prioritization, and alignment are just as big of a day-to-day emphasis as our people-first values. This contributed to a significant, sustained turnaround in business results and a successful company exit in 2025, and a significant, sustained increase in employee retention (especially of high performers) and keeping our employee engagement score very high.
  
• Significantly improving employee retention, eNPS, and hiring. By creating a culture of performance, operational excellence, and care, by implementing intentional processes and programs, and through thoughtful, strategic partnerships with leaders across the company, my team and I significant increased employee retention across the company to consistently 120%+ of industry benchmarks, achieved company eNPS scores that were consistently ~50 pts above benchmark, maintained a strong median time-to-fill track record for hiring, and improved offer acceptance rates by 20% and new hire retention by 17%.
  
• Up-leveling exec team effectiveness. I was regularly described by other execs as the "glue" for the exec team. I made sure there was a strong degree of cohesion, alignment, focus, and accountability across the highest leadership layer of the company, as well as between the exec layer and the leaders immediately below execs. I partnered with, and guided, the CEO to work through any disagreements or tensions among execs and to make sure the exec team was making high-quality decisions and setting the right example/bar for the rest of the company.
  
• Integrating acquired companies. We acquired a strategically and culturally aligned company, and I managed the cross-functional, multi-phased efforts to integrate their team, culture, practices, processes, tools, products, customers, and GTM motions, resulting in the two orgs coming together cohesively and successfully. I also contributed directly to M&A diligence processes on both the buy and sell side, resulting in impactful acquisitions and a successful company exit.

San Francisco | 2018–2022

Lever is the people-first recruiting software that helps teams stay ahead with flexible, data-driven hiring.

Hired on as the company was getting ready to pick up its growth trajectory. My biggest/proudest impact here includes:

• Co-drove (with the CEO) successful, wide-scale cultural transformations across the company to be more focused on results, performance, and data, while staying true to our inclusive and people-oriented values. This contributed to the company outperforming its top KPIs multiple quarters in a row and raising a successful Series D, and eventually achieving a successful exit (acquisition by Employ, Inc).
  
• Led the company through the COVID-19 pandemic and affilitated changes. My team and I made sure the company transitioned seamlessly from a full-time-in-office to fully-remote arrangement and that employees had the support (emotional, tools, policies, benefits, etc) they needed to navigate an unprecedented time, while simultaneously accelerating business results and employee engagement + retention. I also led a large-scale company layoff at the beginning of COVID and quickly helped refocus and re-energize the remaining team afterward, resulting in strong and sustained business results through and beyond COVID.
  
• Achieved consistently strong employee retention and hiring results. In partnership with leaders across the company, we attained record-high employee retention rates across the company for six consecutive quarters -- despite the pandemic, a layoff, and the "Great Resignation." My team also consistently beat median time-to-fill targets, with quarter-to-quarter improvements.
  
• Opened the company's first non-headquarter office. The company had historically been based mainly and only in San Francisco. With my team, I led the company's office expansion to Toronto (which we pulled off end-to-end in 8 weeks), including all its HR/legal/compliance/tax implications, standing up Canadian employee benefit plans, partnering with local organizations to reach candidates for our open roles, setting up the physical office, and designing and leading a very intentional effort to make sure the new Toronto-based team would share similar company values and a sense of connection with the U.S.-based team.

I also leveraged my untraditional background for various Internal Operations needs across the business, including co-driving the company's annual strategic planning process, shaping how Lever tracks and reports business KPIs on the exec team and across the company, and being the interim owner of Product Operations for bug burndown efforts.

As the meta users of our company's product, my team and I also regularly contributed to product conversations, as well as marketing, sales, and other customer/prospect/public-facing activities (sales demos, customer webinars, PR efforts, industry thought-leadership pieces, etc). We've also helped Lever win a multitude of employer awards. A few examples: Findings from the 2021 State of DEI Report (podcast with RecruitingDaily); Applying Diversity Strategies to Remote Equity (podcast with Hired); blog post writeup when we were recognized as a Best Workplace for Parents (2021).

Blog posts I've written or co-written about aspects of my work: I'm Out to Reclaim "HR" and You Should Join Me; Three Lessons From Building a Great Place to Work for All Genders; 8 Tips for Opening Your First Global Office in 8 Weeks.

San Francisco | 2016–2018

HotelTonight is a hotel-booking service focused on making last-minute trips easy and fun.

Designed and implemented integrated people strategies and initiatives across the company and on specific teams, that drove employee engagement, performance, and development and that were aligned with org culture and based on data. I did this primarily through program development and management, organizational design and serving as HR business partner to company leaders, 1:1 and group coaching, designing and facilitating trainings, and people analytics.

My work helped the company achieve a spot in the San Francisco Business Times' Top 10 Best Places to Work in the Bay Area within a year.

Chicago & San Francisco | 2013–2016

Named by Fast Company as one of the world's 50 most innovative companies, General Assembly is a global network of campuses offering events, workshops, part-time courses, and full-time courses in design, tech, and business topics.

Oversaw the launch, growth, and general management of General Assembly's Chicago market. Grew the local business from scratch to half a million in quarterly revenue in 4 months. Owned P&L and full suite of KPIs. Consistently achieved some of the highest student satisfaction ratings in the company. Built and managed cross-functional, multi-layer teams of full-time and part-time employees in Chicago and San Francisco. Led reorganizations of team structures as business needs and scale evolved. Directly project-managed all aspects of the company's flagship product (an intensive coding bootcamp) locally.

Named to Chicago's Techweek 100, which "identifies leaders who have made a significant impact on the technology and innovation ecosystem in which they operate."

San Francisco | 2013

IDEO is a global design consultancy helping the world’s most audacious dreamers create braver tomorrows.

Selected as the OpenIDEO Challenge Community Champion for the Healthy Ageing Challenge. Encouraged online community participation and interactions. Facilitated the cross-pollination of ideas. Helped make sure that tone of community interactions is friendly and constructive. Wrote weekly blog posts highlighting community members, ideas, and actions. Here is a feature on me that OpenIDEO published.

Detroit, San Diego, Chicago | 2013

Uber helps people go anywhere and get anything and earn their way.

Launched Uber’s operations in new cities — from nonexistence to being a fully operational business with quickly increasing revenue — within weeks. Developed co-marketing partnerships with local businesses, influencers, and events, to increase awareness and rapidly grow Uber's local user base. Trained drivers on expectations and how to use the Uber app.

All over the world | 2010–2013

The Wikimedia Foundation is the nonprofit organization that operates Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia free knowledge projects. Its vision is a world in which every single human can freely share in the sum of all knowledge.

Launched and ran successful Wikipedia education programs in the U.S., Canada, India, Egypt, and other countries. Led strategy and execution of all on-the-ground operations across continents, for each phase of program growth (pilot, scale, maturity). Oversaw multi-layer, cross-geography teams consisting of hundreds of people (including volunteers and part-time + full-time staff). Cultivated local leadership teams. Designed and revised systems, processes, and roles to enhance program scalability, participant satisfaction, and quality of results. Planned and led 30+ in-person trainings and workshops for community members in different geographies. Gave numerous talks and presentations, including at the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University, the Reinventing Higher Education Conference at Madrid's IE University, and the EDUCAUSE webinar series.

Ultimately mobilized over 5,000 people around the world to participate in using Wikipedia as a teaching/learning tool, and made sure they had a great experience doing so. (The program was featured in a lot of press outlets, including Times of India, Christian Science Monitor, HASTAC's blog, Harvard Ed Magazine, Inside Higher Ed, The Guardian, and Fast Company.)

Orange County, San Francisco Bay Area | 2007–2009

Retail stores for Apple, Inc.

Mentored a large number of customers on using Apple products. Led public and 1-to-1 workshops on how to use Apple hardware and software. Advised customers on utilizing technology for personal and business purposes. Topped sales ranking repeatedly in store in Southern California.