VP of Authorized, Final Frisbee champion, and dealing father or mother Cathleen Hartge has been with Department since 2018. As Department’s first lawyer, Cathleen has worn many hats throughout her tenure. From privateness compliance to authorized assist for the HR group, she’s performed an integral half in rising our enterprise, ERG efforts, and tradition for working dad and mom. Learn on to find out about Cathleen’s rising authorized group, her expertise as a father or mother at Department, and the way taking part in Final Frisbee impacts her work as a Department government.
Inform us about your typical day.
My typical day has modified tremendously through the years. Once I joined Department in March 2018 as its first and solely lawyer, I dealt with the whole lot from negotiating SaaS offers, to constructing a privateness compliance program from the bottom up, to quarterbacking main company transactions, to supporting our HR group — and the whole lot in between. I keep in mind a particular second early in my Department tenure after I had mirrored on what an attention-grabbing day it had been. I had spent the morning on the cellphone with German privateness legal professionals and the afternoon discovering the best Japanese actual property counsel to advise on a specific difficulty.
Management noticed how essential a robust authorized operate is to the enterprise’s success. With their assist, I constructed and now lead a group of seven incredible authorized professionals (and we wish to rent an eighth). Whereas I nonetheless personal a couple of of my very own strategic initiatives and offers, I’m hyper-focused day-to-day on how you can assist and scale our high-performing group. That manner, I can allow them to deal with what they do greatest: doing good work to construct worth for the enterprise.
How has hybrid work impacted your life as a father or mother and government?
The flexibility to earn a living from home has been an absolute recreation changer for me. Whether or not you’re a father or mother to human infants, fur infants, or are a caretaker for an elder, working from house offers you area to be versatile. Now, with a hybrid possibility, I get to steadiness that at-home flexibility with cross-functional conversations within the workplace and constructing connections with my coworkers.
Department has tripled in dimension from while you first joined. What is without doubt one of the greatest adjustments you’ve seen in that point?
Placing apart the apparent ones (referring to sheer progress or the pandemic), the very first thing that involves thoughts is how rather more comfy and welcome I really feel as a father or mother at Department. Once I first joined the corporate, I created a Slack channel for Department workers who had been additionally moms.
There have been — drumroll, please — 5 of us. Excellent for intimate lunch discussions. Much less so for shedding the sensation of being the “exception.” I’d seize the whole lot and rush out the door at 5:15 p.m., day in and time out, to make sure I might meet household obligations. Whereas nobody ever gave me grief, and I wager nobody actually observed on the time, I felt uncovered and even barely embarrassed as I’d make my rushed exit by means of our open workplace area. No pleased hours for me. And I’d take post-5 p.m. calls from the automotive.
We’ve employed a whole bunch extra folks over the previous few years, naturally including extra dad and mom to our ranks. And lots of of my colleagues who weren’t dad and mom after they joined Department now have youngsters of their very own. Partly due to suggestions from dad and mom (together with me) and different caregivers, Department has been considerate and deliberate about making office adjustments, resembling educating colleagues and managers all through the corporate to be totally welcoming and supportive of caregivers.
We now have a strong Mother and father ERG with greater than 70 members. These colleagues have supplied invaluable assist by means of difficulties starting from pandemic parenting to processing the tragic occasions that unfolded in Uvalde. I not really feel I’m alone. I’m a member of a giant (and rising), supportive, sensible neighborhood of fogeys and caregivers who additionally occur to be my colleagues.
You’ve simply returned from taking part in within the World Masters Final Membership Championships in Limerick, Eire. Inform us about that have and about your Final Frisbee profession.
The World Masters Final Membership Championships deliver collectively Final Frisbee groups from around the globe to compete as soon as each 4 years. I used to be invited to play at Worlds this yr with the group representing India within the blended division (women and men competing collectively). I used to be particularly excited to play with this specific group as they’re from Bangalore, the place Department’s largest worker base is positioned exterior america.
Enjoying blended Final is a novel expertise. It’s one of many few sports activities on this planet that, even on the championship stage, has a blended division. With out sturdy feminine expertise, the group can not succeed.
That merely doesn’t occur in most different sports activities. In truth, one of many causes the Bangalore group invited me to hitch their roster is as a result of they had been on the lookout for a robust feminine chief. When group captains raised the subject of feminine management in my interview, I drew closely on my expertise as a lady government at Department. I merely can’t think about this developing in every other sports activities setting. However in Final, it was the deciding issue for them in providing me certainly one of their restricted roster spots to characterize them in worldwide competitors.
How does taking part in Final influence your profession and vice versa?
My taking part in blended Final has led to some attention-grabbing synergies in my skilled and sports activities profession. Just a few years in the past — and coincidentally proper across the time I joined Department — I used to be requested to spearhead formal gender fairness conversations for my blended Final Frisbee group. A number of instances over the course of the season, we’d dedicate group offsite time to those conversations. Repeatedly, teammates shared challenges about being spoken over, opinions being undervalued, and easily not being heard.
It struck me that a lot of what my teammates voiced parallels comparable considerations I’ve heard from girls colleagues in workplaces all through my profession. Upon listening to this suggestions in a sports activities setting, it made me that rather more grateful that Department was already one step forward of the sport, having already carried out necessary company-wide coaching on inclusive communications and implicit bias, and having a devoted Girls’s ERG, amongst different initiatives.
Main these discussions within the sports activities setting additionally impressed me to dive headfirst into Department’s variety initiatives as a then-relatively new worker. Constructing on our sturdy basis, I supplied suggestions and instructed methods for ways in which the corporate might present an much more supportive working surroundings for ladies and caregivers. I’m grateful Department offers me the area to take action, and I’m pleased with the progress we’ve made on this entrance over the previous few years.
