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Ula Iwanska

Ula Iwanska

People and Culture, Coach

Talent Acquisition
HR Tech Stack
Performance Management
Engagement
Compensation
Madrid Spain
Available soon Available
"We build people and people build companies".

I am passionate about building-up workplaces based on principles trust, ownership and self-management.

www.ula-iwanska.com
Experiences

Head of People

Avea Life
Since May 2024
Part-time
Remote
  • Strategic input with focus on People Roadmap and hand-on implementation of high-impact initiatives:
    • Performance Management
    • Engagement and eNPS
    • Hiring & Onboarding
  • Tools: G Suite, 15five, Asana, Notion
  • Distributed Team
  • Fractional Opportunity

Head of People at Katanox

Katanox
March 2023
Part-time
Remote
  • I was working with Katanox on part-time basis focusing on hands-on (hiring) and strategic initiatives, Communication, Culture (self-management), Recruitment Proceses.
  • Tools: G Suite, Slack, Notion, Miro
  • Pre-series A, stand-alone role
  • Reporting to Founders
  • Reason to leave: Fractional Opportunity
Detailed Description
  • Led workshops with founders to explore foundational pillars for self management based on Holacracy and Teal Management
  • Restructuring engineering hiring process to scale.
  • Executing against day to day HR ops activities.
  • Qualifying and interviewing candidates.
Company Description
Hoteltech
Company website

Head of Talent and Culture

Awell Health
November 2021 to August 2022
Remote
  • Contributed to creation of values driven culture and delivered against hiring of critical roles: software developers, CISO, Compliance.
  • Performance coaching: Head of Engineering.
  • Stand-alone role, seed stage (pre-series A). Distributed team. Reported to CEO
  • Tools: Slack, G Suite, Confluence, Airtable, Miro.
  • Reason to leave: Redundancy - lack of sales.
Detailed Description
  • Partnered closely with CEO to create values and definition of expected behaviors and methods to enable them in day to day work.
  • Implemented performance based hiring methodology (aligned to org size and needs)
  • Set up principles for ESOP allocation, managed implementation (documentation, comms, tax advice).
  • Conducted in-depth workshops to facilitate better team alignment, clarity of responsibilities and autonomy within Operations.
  • Provided coaching sessions to Head of Eng to enable self-management and owenrship in the Dev team.
  • Hired against targets.

Head of People & Culture

Nextail Labs (SaaS)
September 2019 to November 2021
Remote
  • Built people function and created great working environment at Nextail Labs (geo: Spain, UK, Italy, Russia, US); eNPS increase from 6 to 45.
  • Designed and implemented people strategies:1.Growth: Career Path, Leadership, Internal mobility. 2. Infrastructure for scale: Compensation framework, Onboarding 3.Performance culture: Agile Performance Management.
  • Talent Acquisition: delivered against growth from 70 to 180 people.
  • Hired on a stand-alone role and built the team from scratch (team of 5 at the end of tenure). Remote.
  • Tools: Slack, G Suite, Factorial, Lattice, Trello, Recruitee.
  • Post-series A, reported to CEO
  • Reason to leave: Change in company strategy.
Detailed Description
  • Built Talent and People function: People Operations, L&D, Talent Management and Talent Acquisition.
  • Created and implemented a career growth framework enabling vertical (leveling up) and horizontal (lateral moves) development on individual contributor track and people manager track.
  • Designed Agile Performance Management framework and implemented Lattice (performance management platform) to enable continuous performance conversations and performance tracking.
  • Created compensation philosophy and structure (levels), enabling growth of the organization (hiring) and more transparency in promotions and salary reviews (including fixed salary, variable and equity).
  • Designed and launched Leadership development program under principle that leadership is part of every role and every level.
  • Talent Acquisition (growth up to 180 people). Created Headcount planning and hiring strategy to deliver on the roles. Directly recruited for 30% of the roles.
  • Led benefits implementation including trust-based expenses management framework (tech platform: Pleo).
  • Ensured day to day compliance at payroll and labour laws across Spain, UK, Italy and US .
  • Led ER cases.
  • Ensured smooth operational management of cultural onboarding and offboarding.

Head of People & TA - Spain

Deliveroo
July 2018 to August 2019
Madrid
  • Led People & TA function for Spain, nurturing culture and building day to day people processes while supporting company growth to 160 ppl.
  • Tools: Greenhouse, Slack, G Suite, Workday
  • Reported to MD
  • Reason to leave: Closing of Deliveroo business in Spain.
Detailed Description
  • Managed Headcount and hiring processes for Spain.
  • Led restructuring of Customer Service business unit (50% of the company HC).
  • Run annual performance management system.
  • Educated Leadership team about People and Culture agenda and how it impacts business.
  • Executed against Payroll and building admin processes locally.
  • Asissted with Workday implementation for Spain.

Head of People and Culture

Dommo (now Jungle21)
February 2017 to July 2018
Madrid
  • Enabled change in the company culture and ensured that we hire the best talent for the agency. Implemented: OKRs, Real Time Feedback, passive Talent Pool.
  • Reason to leave: Going back to tech sector.
Detailed Description
  • Implemented OKRs system in order to align organisation against common goals.
  • Implemented real-time feedback and performance management system (Impraise) to ensure employees continuous.development
  • Led strategic talent acquisition: implemented structured hiring process and ensured hiring for business growth.
  • Provided ongoing leadership guidance and coaching.
  • Executed against HRBP functions for 55 people when it comes to employee relations, holidays policies and benefits (e.g introduced flexible holidays scheme and tax exempt benefits).
Company Description
Creative agency

Senior Talent Manager EMEA, APAC

Medallia (SaaS)
October 2013 to August 2016
London
  • Created Talent Acquisition Strategy plan aligned with Medallia needs and business vision. Contributed to growth of business up to 120 people.
  • Reason to leave: Personal (moved back to Spain).
  • Tools: Greenhouse, Workday
Detailed Description
  • My role was to build Talent Strategy aligned with business needs. I partnered with BUs as a strategic and subject matter expert for talent acquisition while handling hands-on full cycle recruitment and sourcing.
  • My stakeholders were EMEA Management Board, ANZ Country Manager, BUs Leaders (APAC & EMEA), and my team consisted of a full-time coordinator and a sourcer (since 2016).
  • Talent Strategy: I created structured hiring approach starting from building competitive value proposition through designing of the optimal recruitment process, identifying addressable talent pools and defining outreach strategy.
  • Enabling business: I organised workshops with management team to identify and articulate what is Talent Profile for Medallia and ensured its alignment with functional performance indicators.
  • I created and facilitated recruitment training, during which I coached hiring managers on hiring and best practices within people development.
  • Hiring to time and deadline: 15 Hires Q3/16; 24 hires in 2015 with no support org [proactive search] and with utmost care for candidate experience.
  • I co-led initiative on Quality of Hire, which consisted of building framework for 90 day's followup on performance.
  • Ops: Contracting, on-boarding, immigration.
  • Organised quarterly branding events “Women in Tech” through creating partnerships with external organisation.
  • Side projects: Part of Core team to build EMEA vision, spearheaded organisation of EMEA All-Hands for Medallia EMEA business to foster culture and engagement.
Company Description
Medallia is SaaS Customer Experience Management company
  • Managed full-cycle recruitment process, continuously overachieved on hiring goals (110% of target). Note: Employed with Google on 2x contracts (2010/2011-2012/2013).
  • Reason to leave: Professional growth in start-up company.
Detailed Description
  • Managed end-to-end recruitment projects for Online Media Sales, Enterprise Sales, Business Operations and Channel Sales positions [regions: DACH, Southern and Eastern Europe, South Africa, Israel].
  • Owned recruitment process within allocated teams and decided on strategy and channels to attract candidates [direct sourcing, job boards, referrals].
  • Achieved 110% of hiring target for each quarter consecutively [average 10hires/Qtr].
  • Developed strategies for ethnic and gender diversity in hiring, organised first of series of Inspiring Black Talent Events [May 2013].
  • Participated in project on organisational effectiveness [mapping level of experience to internal levels at Google].
  • Multiple times awarded peer bonuses by internal clients for exceptional performance.
  • *Please note, within this period, I was employed with Google on 2x contracts with few months break in between. I was in Dublin 2010-2011, London 2012-2013. I run 2 months project with Vodafone in between my employment with Google.
Company Description
Google works to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

HR Responsible

Geci Ing
March 2008 to July 2009
Madrid
  • Managed hiring (engineers) and day to day HR Ops.
  • Reason to leave: Redundancy due to 2008 crisis.
Detailed Description
  • Managed recruitment process and training for Geci Ing.
  • Build up pipeline of suitable candidates (aeronautical, mechanical, design engineers) within aeronautical sector, using job boards, referrals and direct sourcing methods.
  • Conducted annual employee reviews and managed payrolls, contracts, labor unions.
Company Description
Geci is an engineering consulting company

Recruitment Consultant

W&BS
March 2006 to February 2008
Krakow
  • Managed clients and run international recruitment projects.
  • Reson to leave: Professional growth (international).
Detailed Description
  • I established and maintained customer relationship with ADMB and Randstad, and was responsible for recruitment projects for Belgium and Netherland Markets (high–volume recruitment of blue-collar profiles).