#52 - From Improv to AI: HubSpot CLO Alyssa Harvey Dawson

Hello everyone and welcome back to Pearls on Gloves Off. We took a little bit of a break as I was in transition between my two roles at Ironclad and here now at Goodwin. But I am your host, Mary o', Carroll, Chief Operating Officer at Goodwin. So excited to be here and to bring the podcast back to you and appreciate everyone's patience as we did take a little bit of time just to get systems and equipment and all set up during this transition time. But we are back and we will be continuing the podcast as if we took no break. So without further ado today we have a wonderful guest I was able to sit down with Alisa Harvey Dawson, the Chief legal officer at HubSpot. She is responsible for overseeing the company's legal and compliance teams and comes to us with over 20 years of experience overseeing corporate governance, corporate M and A, commercial transactions, enterprise, risk management, compliance, data privacy, IP regulatory, government affairs, public affairs, all sorts of things. So I was really happy to have her here today. Prior to this, she was also Gusto's Chief Legal Officer for over two years, overseeing executive leadership, legal compliance, government affairs, partnering with the business to put together all their strategies to enable the company to compliantly and innovatively serve the needs of its small business customers. Before that she was General Counsel at Sidewalk Labs, which was part of Alphabet. She was also responsible for developing the legal team there. Prior to that, she was in several senior legal positions with Harman International, also with Netflix, also with Autodesk, you know, sort of all the who's who of Silicon Valley. So I was really excited to have her on for this conversation today. We get into it with all sorts of things about her experience working in companies of all different sizes. We talk about AI and what it means for a legal team, what are sort of the challenges she has to grapple with both with country by country regulations as well as company and customer regulations and requirements as well. One topic we talk about quite a bit is the changing landscape of the general counsel and CLO roles in house. What does that mean? What skill sets are needed? How do you transition to be much more strategic and part of the business? This applies also to other roles within the legal ecosystem, like how to work with your outside counsel. And then finally we spend a good amount of time talking about the skill set needed these days, business judgment to be so critical in being a successful gc, being a successful outside counsel, and really to be successful in any roles that are surrounding the legal operations, legal, tech, legal field generally, because that is the direction which we are headed in. Finally, we touch a little bit on her experience with improv, which is a little bit like acting, but without a script, and how important that skill set of being flexible and adaptable is to the business world. So without any further ado, I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. And now onto the show. All right, Elisa, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for being here.

Hi. Hi, Nice to be here. Mary, it's good to see you.

You as well. Well, I'm excited to have you here because I absolutely love your background. You have worked at so many of the who's who of the tech companies of Silicon Valley, and interestingly, they've spanned kind of all sizes, stages of company maturity. You've been everything from a solo GC to now a clo of a rapidly scaling public company. I'm excited to dive in because I think we can learn a ton from you and kind of what you've seen over your career. So maybe we can start with you walking as briefly through your background and kind of what you do at HubSpot as well.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you for that. You know, so my background, gosh, I went to law school, did the traditional sort of corporate route, corporate securities, M and A for a big law firm. Then I got the Silicon Valley bug and wanted to try my hand at what was going on out in the Valley. This was in the late 90s, early 2000s, and so I made my way out to the bay area from D.C. i'm an east coast girl, and suddenly I was a Cali girl and I was working on venture capital, financing, more securities work, more M and A, all the things that you would expect to happen there. What I absolutely loved was working with businesses and really being really close to the client and understanding what their real problems were and then applying the legal solutions to help them solve the problem. And so I kind of feel like I naturally gravitated towards going in house. And I since departed a partner of mine, partner mentor of mine near the GC at Autodesk, Marcia Sterling, and recommended that I talked to her when I was talking about what I wanted my career to be. And so I ended up in Autodesk. And what I loved about it was making stuff that the world uses. And I love being at places that have kind of like that impact on the world. I did a number of things at Autodesk and then decided I wanted to try my hand at the Internet, true Internet, honest honesty software company. And then we go to ebay and then the opportunity at Netflix was the next one for Me. And they were right at the start of this dreaming evolution. And I thought it would be exciting. I thought it would be impactful. Didn't actually know if it would work. Guess it did think that was a new success story. But I love the building. I love the building and the growth and the ambition of that company. Eventually I had my son, and so I wanted to be back on the east coast, even though I was having, you know, a heck of a time. Then an opportunity came for me to work with Harman. These actually aren't Harman headphones. I should probably not be wearing them. But Harman was on its own sort of adventure in the audio and infotainment space. And they needed, you know, a talent, some of the profile that I had for the Valley to help them as they were continuing to be innovative and disruptive in their own right. So I was, like, up for the challenge. We moved our family back to the east coast, which I. Where I still am. That was now almost 14 years ago. Eventually they got sold, and I thought it was time for me to go on the next part of the journey and maybe a little bit back to the roots of Silicon Valley. So I went to a startup within a large conglomerate, Cyborg Labs. I was trying to change urban innovation, and then it sort of grew from there. After that, I went to Gusto to help small businesses. And now here I am at HubSpot and where I lead the legal and compliance team. And I do and oversee everything that you would expect a GC to do. But the most important thing that we're trying to do, though, is solve for our customers. And I lead a department that is so dedicated to doing that every day.

All right, Elisa, and for those who are not so familiar with HubSpot, why don't you tell us a little bit about what they do?

Okay, so one of the things I loved about HubSpot story is that the two founders started HubSpot when there was this huge shift in the way that people shop and buy. This thing called the Internet was burgeoning, and there were all of these businesses that needed to figure out how to reach their audience. And the founders saw an opportunity to help millions of organizations figure out how to grow better with some easy to use software. You know, I'm. I've been in the world of software back and forth, and this again, showcases the power of that. So what does that even mean? So HubSpot helps makes software as a service products, and they help people with marketing, sales, and customer service specifically focused on that small to medium sized business segment. And so if you think about your business you're starting up, you know, maybe it's just a couple of you, and you want to figure out how to reach your audience, you know, how do you give them an information understanding of what you're about? We have tools that help you do that. Then when you have those customers, you want to continue to keep them, you want to understand what drives and motivates them, you want to foster those needs. We have tools that help you with that. And then ultimately, when you have the customers, what do you want to do? You want to retain them, you want to make sure that they're growing, you want to make sure that they're satisfied. And so we also offer customer service. In addition to that, we've added on other hubs like commerce and everything that we do now in this world, and I'm glad to say it, and here it's true, is powered by AI, right? And so we know that the way to help these businesses grow better is to help them with better content marketing, is to help them gather and understand and process and figure out all of that data and insight so that they can reach the right audience at the right time in the right ways. And so that's what AI does. And it's been such a game changer for our customers every day.

It's amazing how many wonderful tools and data analytics now exist for folks who are trying to grow their businesses. And then I know one topic that is top of mind for you and probably every other in house team these days that has technology is AI. And I think with more teams kind of thinking about using AI, it raises, of course, a ton of questions and issues for the legal team to consider. Tell me, kind of what's top of mind for you in this area these days? You know, is that keeping you busy? Is it keeping you up at night even?

Here's the thing, it's a new emerging technology. Machine learning has been around for a while, so I want to put that out there. But the speed and the process in which way information can be done now, when generative AI came out, just totally changed and switched the game. But because it's so new, people have legitimate questions. They want to know, can I trust it? Right? Can I trust what this tool, this powerful tool is doing, telling me, explaining to me, or is something else going on? And sometimes it can seem like it's a black box. And so from a legal department perspective, from a company perspective, we're focused on how can we help our customers trust what the AI is doing our customers entrust us with very powerful information. We're a customer platform and their data and information about their customers and is housed in that platform. They need to know that they can trust that we're going to be using their data in the right way and so, and that it's secure. Right. And that there's no bias and things are transparent. That is what we focus on. How can we make sure that our customers trust that what they're delivering when they're on our platform, that it's doing the right thing by their business and ultimately their customers? That's literally what it's about.

And that's so important for every business. I mean, I think back to every software we've worked with, every, you know, as a law firm now AI is most powerful when you can actually use your own data, even other customers data. Otherwise it's not, it doesn't do much for you. And so that's the critical piece. You know, as a legal department, as a legal team, what role do you guys play in trying to figure out the stewardship of the data, the governance, the rules, like how can you use it and how do you communicate that to your customers?

So my team consists of, you know, product counsel, privacy counsel, compliance counsel, corporate counsel, employee as well. Examine a. From a product perspective, we have teams, these legal business partners who have the responsibility of staying up to date, understanding where the various laws are going, whether that's you act or you know, the different laws that we're trying to promulgate here in the United States. Always a challenge. Obviously before AI came up, GDPR was the cpa, like all of the acronyms we are charged with keeping up to date on what's the latest and the greatest. But it doesn't start or end there. Right? Because it's one thing to know and understand the law and the potential acts, legislation, enforcement. You need to understand how to translate that to the businesses that you work with. And so it's super important to have that partnership and to be seen as partners with the business. Whether you're in the product space, whether you're working on customer terms and conditions that all goes with it, like explaining to our customers what's happening and what they're signing up for is incredibly important. Or you're in the privacy AI world. You need to be able to translate all of that complex information and put it in a simplified format so then that you can help your business know how to apply it. And so what we have here is we work closely with our product development and Product teams to understand what are we doing, what do we want to do, what are the business needs, what are the customer needs right at the end of the day? So that we can translate all of the stuff that's going legal rove to the actual thing that we're trying to solve for our customers. And you know, what I found is whenever we're trying to solve for our customers and do it in the right way, then all of the things that are going on from a legal perspective, whether it's. We need to be transparent. You need to make sure that there is some choice. You need to make sure that you're doing things that reduce or eliminate bias. All of those things kind of, I don't want to say solve themselves, but they're connected, right? When you start off thinking about what you're trying to solve and do for your customers, then you can translate all of the rules and regulations into something that's actually going to be simplified and makes sense for customers at the end of the day. But it really has to be in partnership with the product team.

Are you finding that you have to juggle different customer requirements and needs? Are they all coming up with kind of like their own set of rules and how they want you to play?

We're global, right? So, and I'm gonna. We're in more than 14 countries. We have a very great split of customers who are here domestically in the United States, then throughout the world. Right. You have to understand what the needs are, what the expectations are for those customers on a global perspective, because it's not the same everywhere. You know, we have folks in the United States who have an idea and thought about, you know, how in their relationship to AI and privacy. You have people who are in Europe, you know, where things can tend to be a little bit more sensitive and rightfully so. And you have to make sure you're meeting those needs. And then, you know, we have our JPEG region where it's the same. What we need to do and understand is, and be able to then translate into clear policies and terms and conditions is what are the needs of those customers? What are the expectations of those customers? What when they come to us to provide marketing, sales, customer support services, are they expecting for that to do for them? And is our product fulfilling it with what it is that we ultimately do? So while we're not custom, we are making sure that we're solving the wealth of problems for a whole swath of customers, mail, hundreds of thousands of them.

What I find so interesting about what you're Telling me is definitely kind of the trend that I've been seeing over the past few years in the changing role of legal leaders in house like General Counsel and CLOs, where what you're telling me is absolutely, you need to understand the complexity of the laws and every country and gosh, the legal landscape has gotten so much more complex and thorny in recent years. But it's not just that, you know, you're talking about understanding the customer needs and the product needs of your company and how does that all align and what's important to your company for their growth, what's important to your customers. There's so much more than just being, you know, the smartest lawyer in the room, the one who understands the legal interpretation. Right. And so as you think about that, I see you as much more like this trusted advisor to the business. And you know, one of the things that I find so interesting about coming to the law firm side now is that the outside counsel absolutely needs to change their role in becoming a trusted advisor to in house teams and their clients. So how are you thinking about working with these thorny issues? How do you work with outside counsel? And tell me, what do you look for in, in finding a trusted advisor?

It's along those lines. It's the same. It's somebody who can be pragmatic, somebody who understands how to simplify the complex and apply it to a business that's trying to do something, somebody who's going to be able to, and I don't expect for somebody to kind of know our business as intimately as our product team or my product council do, but they should have and want to have the ability to understand enough so that they can distill the complexity into something that's actionable, that is practical, that helps the business move forward in a smart, risk balanced way on behalf of their customers. Gone are the days, at least from my perspective, where you're going to go to tinsel, please give me a legal memo. And that's the end of the task, right? You need something that's actionable. You need something that you can hang on to, that's translatable, that can then move things forward. Because at the end of the day, what are we trying to do? I'm trying to help my customers grow better. I'm trying to help my customers solve hard problems. I need to do that in a complex regime and I need to remove complexity and make it more simple. And I need counsel that understands that mindset so that they can deliver to me a work product that enables that to happen.

Yeah. And do you agree, I mean, do you feel that shift you've been leader?

Well, I've been doing this, yeah. I mean, I've been fortunate to be at places that from my perspective, always have the mindset that like when you're in the legal department, you are a part of the business. You need to understand the strategy. You need to sort of be looking ahead and around corners and ultimately understanding how the business is trying to solve for the customer needs.

Right.

Because that is where the value add is, that's where the impact is. I definitely though have seen it shift more and more over time where that's the de facto model for the ability to be successful in a role. You know, nobody wants a law degree necessarily and I worked with super curious people. So I do have people who are interested in understanding what the ins and outs of the law are. But it's in service of something, right? It's in service of the problem that we're trying to solve. And that's what you always have to keep in mind. And anytime that happens, yeah, I do think it's going to shift. Absolutely.

And so many leaders are seeing that and they, you know, they come and they ask like, how do you get close to the business? How do you get yourself in those meetings? Was that ever a struggle? Was that door just opened for you? Did you have to open it for yourself? How did that happen?

It's both all and right. You know, sometimes it depends on the level of the company, sometimes it depends on the sophistication of the company. You know, let's talk a little bit about my journey. Being at a place like Autodesk. I walked in, there were already council there. Marcia and her team had really established a very good and strong presence that enabled us to have that platform to grow off of. And then I think they built a very beautiful model of that partnership. And it wasn't just legal. It was like across the board with all cross functional teams as you move and get more sophisticated or go to different types of business models. You know, when I entered at Netflix, we were trying to solve a critical problem like we weren't building. And so it was all hands on deck. Even though the philosophy and the DC told me this. He said, David Hyman said, no one has to work with legal. You have to show value. You have to show that your being in the room is going to matter to what people are trying to solve for. And Netflix, as people already know, has a very unique culture and culture code. But that was the thing and it Was literally, it wasn't just legal. No one had to check the box and be like, I work with so and so. Like you worked with folks who are actually providing the value. And so when you talk about did you have to find your way in, it wasn't about let me in your meeting. It was about, you know, let me understand what you're trying to solve for. Oh, is there something that I have in my toolkit to help you solve for it? Awesome. Here I am. If not, then you know, I don't need to be there. Right. And that was like a great lesson that I, that I learned because I then tried to translate that into the other companies that I've been to. Because it's not about just saying, hello Tab, I need to be in your room. It's hello, I want to understand what you're trying to solve for. And then let me talk about, and let us talk together about what are the best ways to solve for that for this company. And so that's really the model and what I like to tell my team, when you're building up as a legal business partner, you're really getting deep in understanding it and you can solve the problem multiple different ways. Usually it's with more information, more context, more learning and understanding. And there's no one way to get that. So let's do it in the best way that makes works for your company and the people that you're trying to serve.

Yeah, and that's exactly right. I mean, you mentioned earlier, you know, when you go to a law firm, you don't just ask for a memo and there's, that's the end of it. And I remember back in the day when we were coaching kind of our in house associates, you want outside counsel to ask you what is the problem you're trying to solve? Okay, I can do the memo, I can do what you're asking me. I can answer any of the questions you bring. Tell me what is actually going on in your business. Like why are you, why is this an issue that you want to better and then start that conversation. So you're actually getting into understanding the problems that the business is actually trying to solve.

Right. And I also found that it really helps to sharpen your legal analysis. Right. Of what the potential solutions are. You know, we should be in trying to solve a problem mode. Right. And trying to help the company make smart, risk based decisions in service of solving that problem. When you have a better understanding of what is trying to be achieved, then you can hit at things in lots of different ways. Sometimes the lack of context leads you to something that's a little bit more standard, hey, the best practices. But it's not actually applicable if you don't get to the underneath and you peel back the layers. And so to me, that's really the value of being able to peel back those layers is because it gives you something that's a little bit more relevant to what the people are trying to solve. And you might be able to get at something maybe you wanted, people want to go straight at it. And that's not always possible with the law, but you can probably get there another way. But you've got to know what people are trying to solve for. That's the key, important part to be able to get there.

I agree. I find this whole shift so interesting, so fascinating, so important and such a driver of the change that we're seeing in our industry, from the way we work to the way that young associates are going to need to be because of the skill set that, that they're.

Going to need to 100%.

I mean, you know, we've talked about ingraining yourself in the business. Business judgment is obviously going to be so critical to being a gc, being outside counsel. How do you think about, you know, I mean, you've got a department that you run now that I assume is fairly large. You know, how do we teach that to the young folks? How, how can that be learned?

Oh, Mary, I knew you knew that.

You know, it starts with funny you say this. So I'm actually later today I head to our, one of our offices in Cambridge and it's for my all team meeting. So I'm getting the entire team together for the first time since I've been here. And the whole theme of our meeting is grow together. And it's about that first, it's about both of the things that you're saying. It's about enabling people to understand and understand how, what are the business needs, what are we trying to solve for and how do we do that? And so we have sessions where we're bringing in members of the business to talk to us about what it is that we're doing, what it is that they see and need from legal. So that's the product team, that's the team from our sales and marketing organization, that's the team from our customer success, our engineering. They're coming in because they're our clients. Right? They're, they're the customers. And so it's getting the team up close and personal to make sure that you understand the problem that we're trying to solve and how that dynamic works. We're also bringing in experts externally. Right. Who are at the forefront of some of the critical laws and regulations, AI being one of them, that are going to be relevant and they're going to talk about what they're seeing and then we're going to try to apply that knowledge and understanding to what our business says we're trying to solve for our customers.

What.

So that you're combining the two. And then the other thing that we're doing is we're connecting people to our strategic objectives. So as a company, and every company has them, there are things that you as a company are marching towards. We want to make sure that everything that our team is doing, everything that our team is focused on, is critically tied to and aligned with those objectives. So that at the end of the day, that's again, what you're solving for. It's not some other person's problem, it's the problem that the company has identified. And, and so when you say, how can you help the teams understand that? I think you have to ingrain them in the business. I think you have to kind of keep iterating and give them opportunities to listen, to learn from and understand so that when they go back, you know, now we're fully distributed. When they go back to their offices, their home office, wherever it is that they, that they're doing work, they have that to hold on to and to be able to take that forward. When they're doing their daily day, when they're getting the slacks or the inbounds or the emails or the tickets or being in the meeting that they're able to sort of always put that in the right context. And then the second thing that we're doing is so first it's about, you know, that internal and external factors that impact how we do our work. Then the second day is about how you grow, Right. How you use that information to continue to grow in your profession and your careers and then have that connection with others across the company. And so, so that's the next two days for me. So I think that's one way of helping your team members figure that out is to give them that opportunity to get those key learnings.

Yeah.

And to take the time to do it. Right. To take the time away because we're all busy, but to prioritize that type of training, learning and development so that they can grow in that way.

Well, and you mentioned, especially when you're hybrid or remote, bringing people together and Doing it in person is so much more important, and that just becomes yet another challenge in today's environment. How do you build a team? How do you row in the same direction? How do you get people to be curious and to ask the questions that get us all aligned? I know when you and I chatted, kind of to prep for this call, you also mentioned navigating one's career. And you told me a little bit of a story about you and your nephew. Can you share that with us? Because I thought it was so telling.

My nephew is a third year at Notre Dame Law School. I'm super proud of you.

Yeah. You're Irish.

They had a tough weekend this week. They'll be back. They'll be back. And so he talks about wanting to be incorporated. Intellectual property law, which are areas that I practice in. And it was. I want to do what you did. And I was just like, I don't have a roadmap for what I do.

Okay. I think he expects me to sit down and be like, okay, here's. Here's the way.

This is the way, you know, then do this.

Like the Mandalorian, right? What I found. And I've been doing this for a while. I graduated in 96 from law school. What I found, if there is a path, it's doing things that are interesting, doing things that you think will have impact, and not just to you, than in. On others. And that's certainly what I've been following as much as I can throughout my career, but certainly tired of in this latter half. I'm like, is it something that I think I can enjoy? Is it something where I think what this company is trying to do, what the people in the company care about doing, is actually going to have value and impact to others? And then ultimately, thirdly, it's also the people. You're in the round, right? I only. I feel like I only grew. I only learned. I was only able to have opportunities with being around really some great people and not perfect people. Right. I don't even know what that is. I don't even know what that is.

I. I agree with you. It's so important. If you look around and you're like, wow, there are people I can really learn from here, what a good environment.

To be in and that. I mean, and every place I've been able to find people in and around me that I can learn and grow from. And so I'm like, I literally don't know if that's going to help my nephew.

That's.

To me, go for what you care about. Go for where you think you make an impact. And be around good people. Be around people that you know are learners. There's a phrase we have here called grid getters. Be around. No, Scopes, because I feel like you can never fail.

What about the idea of the mentor thing? You know, people are always asking, how do I find a mentor? I have tons of mentors. I have people I mentor. But it all kind of, for me, happened very naturally. There you meet people who are like, wow, you really care about my career. And when I tell you things, you're internalizing it and giving me great advice because you want the best for me. And so I kept going back to them.

No, I'm 100% with you. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's not to say I'm against formal mentorship programs, because I do know that there's value in them. And sometimes it's hard to find that person or persons. They're organic ones, so, like, they're just gold.

Yeah.

Because it's formed through. I would say it's formed through that relationship. Right. It's formed through that connection that you have. And you said something so key there someone having that interest in you.

Right.

Because that's just the foundation for it. And so, again, I do feel fortunate. I've been able to find and have mentors at each of my jobs. And you don't need a thousand. Sometimes you just need one. One to, you know, to be there to help guide you and tell you what you need to hear. Like, not what you want to hear always, but tell you what you need to hear. I have a call later this week with one of my mentors and from Sidewalk Labs. And, you know, it's almost the most unnatural of mentors because we're. I think we're very different people stylistically, but through space, spending time and spending time learning about who he is, and I could tell that he had an interest in learning about who worked in and around him. We were able to form, you know, a bond and a connection that, you know, grew me. And quite honestly, learning from somebody who can be very different from you is just so powerful. Right. You don't have to emulate somebody, but you can learn from somebody who has a different style, different, you know, way of working. That that's super powerful. So I try to keep those relationships going even after I'm no longer with or at a company because I can support and personally as well.

And when I look at your career, you've done, like I said in the Beginning, you've done so many different things. Big companies, small company, solo dc, big department, growing, scaling, all the different, you know, aspects. So that now if someone's looking for a hire, it's like, oh, Elisa looks amazing. She's done everything. Of course, I'm putting, I'm guessing because as I look in my own career, you know, people say, oh, all paths led to where you are today. It's such a. You were so thoughtful and all this. But as you're going through it, you know, for me it's no, you have no idea if this next thing is going to be right. But it seems interesting. There's bright people, there's a good challenge, I can have impact. Right. And so there is no sort of obvious path. My question for you that I also get a lot is when do you know that the next opportunity is the right one? You talked about it a little bit, but also maybe the harder question, when do you know when it's time to walk away from something?

Yeah, that's a great question. I believe in filling myself up, not depleting it. So when I know it's time to walk away, when the balance isn't there. Right. When it's taking more of the time to fill your cup than it should, that, that to me, and that's a sense, that's an instinct, but also a feeling that you get. And you know, I've been, I'm in my 50s, like I said, I've been doing this for a bit of time. I value my family, my friends.

Yeah.

You know, I got a 14 year old son who's rapidly growing. I want to be there in a good present way and when you can't be there for your family and your friends and the positive way that you know you can and should be and that's at all tied to kind of like where you're spending your time because you spend a lot of time at work.

Right.

That's an easy sign. You need to figure out another path that's either going to change. Right. And if there's a way to change it, then do so. But it's not, you know, I'm no longer in that. I got to devote all my time and effort to like making something work because we only have so much time on this world, on this planet, and you should do it in things that are filling your cup and not taking away from it. So that's philosophically how I think about it. Is there a more structured way? I'd love to say there was. I'd love to Say there was. And yes, I will write pros and cons, list and I will, you know, evaluate where I am and what I want to do. I've done all that stuff, too. Yeah, I've done all that stuff, too. But the gut. The gut, yeah.

And part of it's, you know, being willing to take a risk. Right. Take a chance.

Yeah, totally.

Totally know that change is constant and change is okay.

Yeah. And, you know, and that is definitely something that I told my team because I have been in different places. I have been at really ambitious places. Right. I've been in places that are trying to make a difference and are willing to disrupt, willing to innovate where nobody else has. At HubSpot, we talked about zigging where others are zagging. Or is it zagging where they're zigging? You know what I mean? And that means you're out there, right? And sometimes that works and sometimes that doesn't work, but you learn from it each and every time. And I can't think of that. I've made work out, not work out. Everyone characterize it where I haven't learned from it. And then I'm not so afraid of it at the end of the day.

And even when you're inside, I mean, sure, there's the change and the big move piece, but even within your organization, I'm sure all day we're zigzagging, right? We're constantly moving, constantly moving, changing environment and changing.

Right. And so you have to be adaptable, right? You have to be, you know, you and flexible. That's another thing that, you know, we'll be talking about, right, at my team meeting, is that agility, the importance of it, I mean, Jen and I, who was talking about it in the same way, right. Like a year and a half ago, then it just came and it was impactful and we knew this is going to be important to our customers. We can't wait. We can't sit on the sidelines until this all gets figured out. And so my team as well had a role to play in helping the company realize how we were going to be responsive to that. Like, you can only do that if you're wanting to sort of move on a dime.

Right. Because the day before that all happened, I'm sure you had other priorities. Right?

There were.

All of a sudden the rug gets flipped you. And it's. Now we got to focus on this because it's, you know, existential for a lot of companies in the left.

It really is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, I love It. My team's gonna be spending a day as teams focusing on prioritization. Right. Because, you know, some of. Not all things are created equally. And you have to decide where we're gonna spend our time and what's the biggest, you know, where's the biggest and most important thing to do on behalf of our company and what we're trying to achieve and make sure we're spending our time there and then appropriately weighing and balancing those risks. Cause we. We always are striving to do things in the right way, too, but, yeah, so we're spending time on that, too.

It's so fascinating, all the skills. And, you know, as I think about your conversation with your nephew and your sons, like, the skills that are so necessary to be successful in today and tomorrow are a lot of these things like adaptability and flexibility and natural curiosity and the ability to listen and to learn and have a, you know, growth mindset. You know, we look at schools and books, and you're like, where can I. What class can I take? Like, how do I learn this stuff? Stuff. And that's the secret sauce, right? That's the stuff that makes people really successful.

And I am praying that some of what I say gets to my son's ears and sticks, like, sometimes driving him to school every morning. And part of that is just to be able to spend that time with him, you know, before he goes off. Every now and then, I'm like, I'm hoping that these, like, little purrings are dropping in and he's catching on to something. I think a thousand times with my mom and dad, where I remember today that I don't know that I recognize as much until it's like, oh, so they met, like. And so I'm hoping that some of this is seeing through.

I was just saying to my husband yesterday, do you remember all the people who are older and saying, if I knew at your age, you know, what I knew now that I'm 50, like, I'd be so pro. And then, of course, the 20 somethings don't want to listen to any advice that the older people give them. But if I could rewind, it'd be so great, right?

Yes.

Okay. So I also know that you had a little bit of history in improv. Is that okay? Yes. Tell me about that. That sounds fun.

Oh, it was. It was great. So I came to the Bay Area. I didn't really know anyone. There were a few people from school who graduated, but they were close friends of mine, and I was determined to have some type of work, life balance or outside activity that didn't cause me to, like, work 3,000 hours a year. And I was. I'm a corp associate and I've always loved acting. And so I was looking up acting classes and I came across an ad for Bay Area theater sports called bats, which has. I don't even. Have you heard of bats?

Yeah, yeah, they're.

Yeah, they're mesa. Yeah. Yeah. So they were having, you know, beginning one classes, and I was like, this is cool. It's probably easier for me to do this because I don't have to learn lines. Like, my day's gonna be busy. I'm a, you know, associate, a new firm. So I'll just go in and if it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. But I'll have one day a week where I am, like, gonna leave work to do something for me. And it just blew me away. The openness, the vulnerability, the creativity, the little camaraderie, the skills. You talked about listening. Improv only works if you're listening and paying attention and you're staying in the moment like that. Yes. And mentality is. It was life changing. Like the community of people and things and experiences that I was able to get from being in and around that, you know, just. I couldn't have rejected it. But yeah, so it went from one class to the next to the next. And suddenly I'm performing on stage and. And working with different improv groups in San Francisco. And it continued up until I was actually. My last play was an improvised musical, improvised holiday musical called Let it Snow. I was pregnant with my son and I haven't done it since, but that was my last one where I was pregnant with Alex. And so we then moved back to the east coast. And I said, one day, I'm going to go back to it. But I also did other plays, like, I did regular theater as well a little bit. And it was just great to have something that was so different from my legal day to day, you know, more regimented world just to be free.

Yeah. But improv in particular, I just think is so interesting. And, you know, I had the luxury of being at Google, which had so many, like, professional development training courses that you can sign up for here and there. And there was. I don't think it was about improv. I think it was a leadership class that I took that had an improv section in it. You know, like, probably for an hour. We did some training on improv. It's exactly what you and I are talking about. Right. The ability to listen and to pivot and to basically drop everything, what you were doing two seconds ago and go all in on that new direction. And that's. Yeah, it translates really well.

It really does. It really does. And, you know, and some of the best improv, like you said, is sort of like staying in that moment and then pivoting, understanding where the story is going and letting it take you there. Right. And not resisting it. There's a lesson there. Right? There's a lesson there.

Exactly right. So as you're thinking about your career now and your. Your role at HubSpot, kind of what's next or what's the big focus for you these days?

The big focus is landing this team meeting. Okay. It's about, you know, it's about growing a team. It's about making sure that the team is set up to do what we need to do to enable our customers and our company. You know, we've got big ambitions as a company. We have customers who I would say are counting on us to help them grow better. And so my team has a role to play in that. Whether it's, you know, making sure that people understand they can trust AI, they can trust us with their data and information and insights and that we can provide them value because of that. That's important. And so we're going to do the best that we can to put ourselves in the position to enable that. That's what I think about.

And how long have you been there now?

I'll be going on two years and. Yeah, couple weeks.

Excellent. Good. Well, any final thoughts? Any words of wisdom? You've already shared so many. I don't know if you've got any other nuggets to share for others who are out there.

No, just be present, be agile, be ready. Be ready for anything. You know, you can't plan everything out as I try to tell my nephew. So just be ready and open.

Well, thank you. Yeah. You've had an amazing career. Thank you for sharing your story, your experience, and your advice with all of us today. I think we've all learned a ton, so appreciate your time.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much. Good conversation. This is fun.

This was fun. And to all the folks listening, thanks so much for being here.