A new role at Understood.org
I’m thrilled to share that in October, I officially joined the non-profit Understood as their new VP People & Operations.
This is my quick announcement to the world.
About Understood
Understood is a non-profit dedicated to serving those with learning and thinking differences who are part of the neurodiverse community. Understood provides free resources — including daily access to experts, private community forums, and expert-vetted content—for individuals, caregivers, educators, and employers.
Learning and thinking differences affect 1 in 5 people in the United States, and I’m proud to be supporting an organization with such a widespread mission and scope.
Why I joined
I was fortunate to be introduced to Understood by my friend and Stanford Business classmate Jake Poses. Jake knew I was starting to think about joining a company full-time, and, well, the timing was right. It was a quick decision, and here’s why:
- I loved the mission
- I loved the expansiveness of the vision
- The team’s ways of operating resonated with me: agile, data-driven, impact-focused, big thinking yet structured, people-centric
- I clicked with everyone I met, and felt I had a lot to learn from each
- I was SUPER excited about the role
- Strong gut intuition that told me this was a great idea :)
What I’m helping with at Understood
I’m about 2 months in at Understood, and it’s been such a rewarding experience already. My role is to help grow and develop our talent — new and existing — plus own the financial, strategic planning, and operational systems at Understood.
It’s been a big role, and I love it so far. If you have any lessons learned from building amazing agile, cross-functional teams, drop me a note.
“Wait, what about Topo?!”
In 2016, I started a consulting company, Topo Group, to help growth stage companies build best in class workforces through consulting, custom management training, and executive coaching.
I learned so much from building and growing Topo. I am incredibly grateful to my wonderful clients for entrusting me with developing their people and helping them to build better ways of working. And I am incredibly grateful to learning much more about myself and my own grit and hustle.
Saying goodbye to Topo felt tough, which is why I see this more as putting Topo “on a shelf.” I started Topo because I care deeply about building amazing work places, and my work at Understood is a continuation of that.
Stay in touch!
Thanks for reading! If you’d like to stay in touch, drop me a note or follow me for more.
▪️▪️▪️ RadicalLivingProject.org | twitter @marialambert | newsletter ▪️▪️▪️
