In conversation with AirBnb & Etsy: Talking diversity, inclusion and creating more human workplaces

I had the honour of hosting and facilitating a fascinating conversation between AirBnb’s Mark Levy (Global Head of Employee Experience) and Etsy’s Carissa Menendez (VP of People and Workplace) at LiveGrey’s Life@Work conference. The title of this conversation was “Your culture is your brand”; both Etsy and AirBnB are well known for having built brands around quite distinctive workplace and customer cultures which emphasize ensuring that employees and customers truly enjoy and love their experiences.

They were super insightful and honest, not to mention inspiring about their ideas around workplace cultures especially diversity and inclusion, making work more human and enjoyable for employees and customers, and the role that companies with new visions play in moulding and shaping society at large.

Mark and Carissa (who have been at AirBnb and Etsy since the early days) delved into their experiences of building strong human-centered workplace cultures at their respective organizations, the challenges that come with doing so especially as the companies grow and scale, and the values that drive and motivate them in their approaches to, and implementation of, their work.

It was really inspiring, and gave myself and the audience great hope about the future.