It’s a Chimed Life: Meet Beth Steinberg, our VP of People and Talent

“My whole life, I thought I’d be a clinical psychologist,” says Beth Steinberg. “But when I was offered a position to open a new region of Nordstrom as part of their Human Resources team, I left my Master’s/PhD program and moved from San Diego to Chicago in the middle of winter to truly start my career — in what we now call people operations.”

Beth was great at problem-solving and had a great eye for talent, according to her manager, and that’s why they wanted her to lead their new midwest region. But her promotion gave her far more than a pay raise and a new set of responsibilities. “Moving to Chicago for that role really helped me understand the importance of people ops to the scaling of a company,” Beth explains. She was with Nordstrom for 12 years, hired over 10,000 people, and opened a number of stores for the company — no small feat. During that time, she learned the fundamentals of growing a team and what matters to achieve scale.

“It’s truly those closest to customers who are most valuable to a company and it’s invaluable to trust people — they will do the right thing 99% of the time, so don’t create systems or rules for the 1% who might not,” she says.

The evolution of People Operations

Beth cut her teeth in People Operations before they were even called that — and the change in name from Human Resources to People Operations is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how much the function has evolved. “Even though we’ve evolved a ton, we’ve still got a long way to go,” Beth says.

The first area that People Ops has made strides in is in how valued it is by organizations. The way Beth sees it — especially in the tech industry — a company’s number one asset is its people. “When you’re building software, your product is in fact the intellect and work of your people,” she says. “So if you’re not making sure people are given the tools, systems, feedback, and support to best do their jobs, you won’t realize the potential of your company.”

And though many posit that company culture will happen on its own, Beth believes it’s no accident. According to her, being deliberate about culture is another one of the biggest ways People Ops has evolved. “All of these things that happen in the background at companies are actually adding tremendous value — and financial value, too,” she says. “It’s much more difficult to make the leap that culture creates financial returns, but it does — and it’s an area that organizations ought to focus on deliberately.”

Her path to Chime

Beth has been an HR leader at Nordstrom, EA, Facebook, Nike, Sunrun, and Zenefits, as well as an advisor to Reddit, Greenhouse, and Molekule — to name a few. When choosing a company, she looks for four things:

• The mission: “In my personal life and work-life, I’m values and mission-driven, so any company I’m involved with must be aligned with that.”
• The quality of leaders: “The most important thing I look for on a leadership team is self-awareness: do they understand that they don’t have all answers and need a team to accomplish their goals?”
• Her ability to make an impact: “I’m motivated by helping people succeed, so it’s important to be somewhere I can help people learn, grow, and achieve their potential on a regular basis.”

When Beth met Chime, she was compelled by our mission, leaders, and her ability to build out the People Operations function. “I’m a builder, so I see all the dots and connect them,” she explains. “I could immediately see the possibilities of turning this 200 person company into a 2500 person company with a great culture, well-developed leaders, and practices we’re proud of,” she adds.

And that’s how Beth became our Vice President of People and Talent in November of 2019.

Laying the foundations and scaling People Ops at Chime

“The team was small when I joined and we have more than doubled since then,” says Beth of her time at Chime. “We went from being a team of generalists doing it all to specialists focusing on areas where each individual will excel — and help the organization scale.”

Because People Operations and Talent are critical to the success of the business, Beth makes sure that people functions partner closely with business functions. For example, the Talent team works in lockstep with every team across the organization to bring in the right Chimers. “It’s Talent’s job to propel the business by bringing new hires in,” she explains. “So they need to partner extremely closely with their hiring teams and develop a deep understanding of the business and the levers that drive our organization’s success.”

In the past year, People Operations has focused on building the infrastructure necessary to scale the function within Chime. “With the foundations laid, it’s time to start growing and further specializing so that we’re finding the best people to join Chime and making this the place for their careers to flourish,” says Beth.

A year without a playbook: 2020

2020 was a challenging year to grow any company, and people operations definitely felt the pains that a global pandemic and economic collapse caused. But Beth is proudest of her team for everything they accomplished last year — especially given how rough it was.

“My team’s ability to go from doing everything in person to everything remotely, including interviewing, onboarding, and providing the Chime employee experience was so impressive,” Beth says. “Not to mention, we hired over 400 people during 2020 — a feat that was outstanding to me.” In 2020, the team also built comprehensive learning and development offerings for all Chimers, hired a Head of Diversity, Equity, and Belonging, developed a package of benefits to help people take care of themselves and their families at home, and refreshed the performance review cycle to make managing performance helpful, not dreaded.

All of this happened without a playbook, guidelines, or best practices on how to adapt. “ My belief that leaders should always admit when they don’t have the answers was truly put to the test,” Beth admits. “There were many times last year when we all said, ‘I have no idea what to do right now.’”

Without a playbook, Beth — alongside her team and Chime’s other leaders — started by grounding themselves in our values. “Being Human led me in so many of my responses last year,” she says. “I put myself in the shoes of Chimers living alone, or managing at homeschooling and childcare, to understand how people might be feeling.” At such an unpredictable time, Beth would have loved to draw on data, but it just wasn’t available. So she trusted her gut and her humanity to respond and support the people at Chime instead — remembering, first and foremost, that we are all human.

The importance of self-awareness

Beth’s ability to recognize her own humanity and encouraging other leaders to do the same is fundamental to her belief in self-awareness. “The importance of self-awareness often gets overlooked in leadership,” she says. “But as I’ve advanced in my career I’ve learned that it’s a critical component to achieving success for myself and for others.”

But becoming self-aware didn’t happen overnight for Beth — it’s been a journey. It took personal maturity, lots of feedback, and self-understanding as a person before it translated into her career. “Luckily, for me, finding authenticity in how I carry myself as a person carried over naturally to my career and the companies I’ve chosen to work with,” she says. “Finding self-awareness has been a huge step towards aligning myself with my work — and is a place I see many leaders trip up. If you’re showing up inauthentically at work, you’re at the wrong company.”

Being self-aware and aligned with Chime helps Beth achieve her personal goals, reach business objectives, and serve her team. Ultimately, her success is measured by whether the business is accomplishing its objectives, and that comes down to people: “If we don’t have the right people, if they can’t perform to their highest potential, or if they aren’t supported and engaged, we simply won’t achieve our business objectives,” she says. “If the business isn’t succeeding, I start by looking in the mirror,” she adds. By starting with her own awareness, she’s able to understand how she impacts her team and how they affect the broader organization.

To help Chime and, more specifically, our People Operations and Talent teams, thrive in 2021 and beyond, Beth is looking forward to doing what she does best: coaching and developing self-aware leaders. “One of the best uses of my experience and skillset at Chime is to help develop our leaders to support the organization’s growth,” she says.

Grow we will, and into a better team, thanks to Beth. We can’t wait.

Interested in joining our team and working with Beth? Check out our open positions here.