How This CPO Built a Brand New Team Ahead of a Public Listing

People and culture teams are often tasked with the heavy lifting during transformational stages in a company’s life. Taking a billion-dollar startup and turning it into a publicly-traded business is already a lofty transformation, but doing so in a year when the workplace is radically shifting with new work-from-home norms puts an even higher caliber on People executives.

Julie Currie joined Amplitude as a Chief People Officer in March 2021, right as the mobile analytics unicorn was gearing up to go public. A seasoned human resources veteran with over 30 years of experience, Currie has led people teams at Sony Interactive and Western Digital. But coming into Amplitude was different; she knew she would be hitting the ground running.

“If you think about what to do in a fast-paced, growing company that’s going public, you really have to create the foundation and your infrastructure and your processes so it can scale,” Currie said. “I had the privilege to build the organization from scratch.”

Currie breaks down her immediate hires that built out a People team she knew she could count on once the company went public.

Julie Currie joins as Chief People Officer

Jung Jeon is hired to lead global rewards and HR operations

Currie said hiring Jeon was foundational to stabilizing operations on her growing team.

“We were going public, so a lot of work from the people's perspective is about the compensation total rewards for our executives, our public filings and our directors," Currie said. "It’s really important to have somebody who is experienced, thinking about our operations, thinking about how to incentivize our people, globalizing our benefits and globalizing our technology.

Jeon specializes in all of these things, and acts as Currie’s “right-hand man” in all things operations as well.

Nikki Lasley hired same day to lead DE&I

Lasley started on the very same day as Jeon, and Currie said her role was just as vital. Lasley’s role consists of listening to current DE&I efforts happening at the company and creating new integrated strategies for DE&I as the company grows.

“In light of the George Floyd days and the social unrest that we had, in our millennial organization, it was super critical to have a voice and a champion build an integrated DE&I strategy,” Currie said.

As the company grows, Lasley will be responsible for scaling talent and culture with an eye on diversity, equity and inclusion.

Greg Cooley joins as Head of Talent Acquisition

Once DE&I, compensation and operations were accounted for, Currie turned her attention toward talent acquisition. Greg Cooley started in June 2021 as Head of Talent Acquisition. He joined the team from VMware, where he spent seven years driving strategy and execution of global talent acquisition for the research and development teams.

“Right now, we’re hiring people at about 120 people per quarter, organically,” Currie said. “His mandate is to figure out how to hire 1,000 people per quarter”

Making sure the process becomes more automated, yet all hires continue to embody Amplitude’s core values of humility, ownership and growth mindset will be top of mind for Cooley.

Erik Selvig hired to drive Workplace Experience

The necessity of having a Head of Workplace Experience & Operations has been highlighted over the past two years in People & Culture teams as the tech industry figures out its footing with remote and hybrid work. Erik Selvig was Currie’s fourth hire and manages everything from the design of Amplitude’s new San Francisco headquarters, to the company’s real estate strategy that is looking at where the rest of the team will be based once return to work is solidified.

Carl Robson teams up with Amplitude as HR Business Partner for EMEA & APAC

For her fifth hire, Currie focused completely on Amplitude’s continued growth and global expansion. Carl Robson joined in November 2021 as the HR Business Partner for Europe, Middle East and Africa and Asia-Pacific.

“International is one of our big growth areas,” Currie said. “So helping our team scale, opening up in new countries that we will be going into and operationalizing and connecting our people from a culture and talent perspective internationally is vital.”