PROFILE
Mark is a seasoned globally minded Employee Experience Leader who has chosen to work for big-hearted companies and focus on how he and his team can unleash the talents and passions of a company’s employees. Early in his career, he worked with the likes of Best Buy, Levi Strauss & Company and Gap Inc. partnering with business leaders to support their HR needs including innovative ways to create a learning organization and ensure integration between work and life. Mark also spent two years living and working in Paris, France for Thomson/Technicolor.
Mark was the pioneer of designing the Employee Experience at Airbnb, which has since created significant changes in the way organizations globally are looking at expanding the HR function to focus on the entire employee journey. This group included traditional HR functions, in addition to broader teams focused on social impact, culture and workplace. Mark helped to further Airbnb’s mission “to create a world where you can belong anywhere,” by establishing the employee experience mission that employees feel they belong at Airbnb. Glassdoor recognized Mark and his team’s work by naming them the #1 Place to Work in 2016.
Most recently, Mark was the Employee Experience Leader of the flock at Allbirds, leading their global expansion to scale their people and culture while also taking his learnings to consult with companies, from startups to large global brands, to advise on how to evolve from HR to Employee Experience, how to create an integrated internal and external brand, how to bring the mission and values to life, and how to create a greater connection between the company and their employees, between employees, with the company’s customers, as well as the communities in which they operate. In addition, Mark is also working with Backstage Capital, a unique Venture Capital firm which is focused on securing funding and resources for underestimated founders- Women, LGBT and/or People of Color. He is helping them scale their organization, seek out like minded investors, as well as supporting their Founders to help them strategize and grow their businesses.
Mark has his JD/MBA from the University of Colorado after four formative years at Colorado College. Mark chose to leave the practice of law after one year to focus his career on helping organizations do the right thing and to attract, develop, engage and retain creative and diverse talent to drive business results, curate the culture and create community connections.
In addition, Mark has been actively involved in giving back, including helping organizations enable their employees to help those less fortunate through volunteering programs and community involvement. He served on the Gap Foundation Board of Directors, and is currently on the Board of First Graduate, a non profit which helps those who are first in their family to attend and graduate college.
SPEAKING TOPICS
Creating Belonging and Connections in the WFH/Remote Working Environment
Mark Levy, the pioneer of EX and former Head of Employee Experience at Airbnb will share how he scaled the culture through significant growth in headcount and scaling of the business. At Airbnb, there was a focus on preserving culture and driving a sense of belonging through that ascendancy. Mark will tell the stories, examples, and lessons learned on how he and his team shifted from traditional HR to Employee Experience by redesigning through a human-centric approach.
Now with COVID, we’re in a downward curve…but a lot of the principles we put in place to make this shift are even more important with employees working from home, social distancing and isolation. Mark will share the key considerations and give examples of acting with empathy in the new now. We need to address the hierarchy of employee’s needs depending on the context at the time, and it requires a new way of looking at managing, and believe this will also be a reset for the way we work going forward.
The Evolution from HR to Employee Experience
Mark will give context on how, at Airbnb, he pioneered the shift from a traditional HR mindset and organization to what is now emerging at the best practice of looking at the end to end employee journey through the creation of Employee Experience. This is a mindset, ways of working across the organization, as well as an important structural shift within the company.
Your Brand is Your Culture
Mark will share how Airbnb took it’s unique and authentic mission and values and translated them into a globally recognized culture. Mark will also explain the importance of integrating the external promise with the internal employee brand proposition. Mark and team designed a strategy of “Belong Here (at Airbnb)” based on their external mission of “Belong Anywhere” (creating a world where anyone can belong anywhere). The outcome was more engaged, and productive employees, with strong retention and an increased focus on meeting the needs of the customer/business.
Creating a Community Driven Superbrand
Mark will share how his work at Airbnb broke down the walls between employee, hosts, and guests (customers) to create community. This was about creating “belonging” part of which focused on Diversity and Belonging (inclusion) within the organization. Mark will address the importance of connecting the company and the employees, the employees with each other, the employees to the customers, as well as the employees in the communities in which they operate through volunteerism.
Growth By Design
Companies should be deliberate and intentional in how they think about scaling. Mark will share how he designed an Employee Experience strategy to ensure that the Company, the Employees, and the Culture grew by design to ensure that what was special and unique to Airbnb would evolve and scale as the company grew exponentially.
