We’re pleased to announce that Robin Andrulevich has joined Reverb as advisor. Robin is one of the smartest, most creative and credible people leaders around – with experience working with innovative companies including Amazon, Juno Therapeutics, and Madrona Venture Group, among others.
Robin is highly strategic (a word I don’t use lightly) and always has the respect and the ear of the leaders she works with. As an example, she partnered with Juno Therapeutics’ CEO Hans Bishop to make Juno one of the leading companies for women in science. Amazon’s Leadership Principles that she helped Jeff Bezos craft are the foundation of their culture even today. We couldn’t be happier to have Robin join the uHR team, helping us and our clients achieve continued success.
Robin cares deeply about her team, never hesitating to roll up her sleeves and help out. A great example is one night when we were working late getting ready to launch Juno’s first performance and compensation review. It was Robin who ran at out and came back at 1AM with Thai food, not leaving until the work was done and we were all ready to head home.
Below is a short Q&A with Robin where she discusses her new role as advisor:
Q: Tell us more about your background
A: I have over 25 years’ experience in people operations at high-growth companies in the tech and biotech industries, including 10 years in various senior leadership roles at Amazon back in the early days. There, I worked closely with Bezos and his senior leaders to create and implement worldwide people and recruiting practices/programs and Amazon’s original Leadership Principles.
Most recently, I was SVP of People at Juno Therapeutics, the pioneering cell therapy company that was recently sold to Celgene for $11B, where I was responsible for its people and recruiting functions. And, prior to that, I did a brief stint in venture capital, at Madrona Venture Group in Seattle and at Union Square Ventures in NYC, helping their startups such as Twitter, Etsy, Path and others with organizational development, recruiting and anything related to developing their businesses. I’ve also consulted for Google and other tech companies in the Bay Area and Seattle.
Q: What is your sweet spot?
A: Founders/CEOs, as well as public company leaders, are brave and amazing peeps and I have always enjoyed helping them scale their companies. My sweet spot is helping organizations prepare for growth, with a focus on creating strong and sustainable cultures, building management teams with top talent, and creating progressive people practices and programs. You can’t have a great company if you don’t hire the best talent and support them with a culture that provides them with opportunities to learn and build great things.
Q: Why did you decide to join uHR? Tell us more about your role as advisor.
A: UniquelyHR takes a bespoke approach to solving an organization’s needs. They are staffed with many progressive consultants who have deep experience from great companies such as Google and Amazon.
When starting Juno, I didn’t have a budget to hire a full HR team. Mikaela and her team worked closely with me to build and implement our policies and programs in talent management, compensation, leadership development, engagement, and also helped get all of our employment practices up and running. They helped implement our ATS and HRM systems. When we filed for IPO, we had everything in place and were poised to scale, thanks to the uHR team.
Mikaela’s vision is to provide her clients with flexible, customized, business-oriented advice and consultation. The hardest and most unique challenges were met with enthusiasm and “can-do” open mindedness from her team. And they are quick! I never felt like they wasted my time in useless meetings and their delivery was nearly flawless. To have this type of world class consultation and partnership in Seattle can be a game changer for our local companies.
Mikaela and I also have a shared passion for supporting women in leadership, diversifying tech, building strong cultures and supporting Seattle’s startup community and leaders. I love that uHR supports and lends their services to organizations they see potential in or whose mission they believe in, and I wanted to be a part of that.
