Leading Between the Lines

Leading Between the Lines

By alterniq inspired growthBusinessManagement
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Leading Between the Lines episodes

  • Never a dull day

    This week on Leading Between the Lines Rosanna Machado speaks to the Head of People at Rise at Seven, Daniella Dacey.

    Rise at Seven is an award-winning digital, social, content, and SEO specialist in the UK that was founded in 2019 by Carrie Rose and Stephen Kenwright. Carrie and Stephen have received many personal accolades for their achievements, and the organisation now has 100 staff across their offices in Sheffield, London, and Manchester, whilst the company is also expanding into New York.

    Danni explains the fantastic balance the team has struck between working hard and enjoying life, adding that the leadership at Rise at Seven really take a serious interest in the wellbeing of their people.

    Danni was inspired by her CEO Carrie Rose as a female leader and she really felt an affinity with her philosophy and the agency itself. She outlines how the organisation has prioritised diversity and inclusion, telling us about some of the initiatives they are developing to create a culture where people feel like they belong.

    She adds that “Culture” is not just a buzzword at Rise at Seven, and that it's something that really holds value. Daniella talks about the impact that the right culture can have on a company and explains the role HR plays in bringing that culture to life.

    Like any scale-up, change is inevitably happening very fast. Although she embraces change, Danni also addresses that this can be difficult and explains how she coaches her teams through any type of change, offering a nice insight into her leadership skills.

    And as always with Rosanna's episodes, we find out what Danni would change about her job if she could wave that magic wand!

    51 min
  • Spark Change

    It’s that time of the week again as we return with another episode of our Leading Between the Lines podcast! This week’s guest is Marie Krebs, the People Experience lead at Learnerbly. Founded in 2016 by Rajeeb Dey MBE, Learnerbly is a Performance Enablement Marketplace that puts learners in the driving seat for their own development so they get to upskill in what they need to perform.


    Marie moved country to start work at Learnerbly, and she discusses how the organisation is perceived as a disrupter in the L&D market. Marie delves into the ‘bottom up’ culture at the business and offers some insightful thoughts about what she believes Learnerbly’s true power is.

    According to Marie, Learnerbly provides an opportunity for people to take ownership of their growth and performance, and she knows that a learning culture paves the way for high-performance. She also encourages clear guidance from leaders within the organisation.

    Learnerbly recently revised their company values and Marie outlines exactly why this was necessary, speaking about the refreshing approach to constructive feedback they are cultivating.

    Aside from her role within Learnerbly, Marie has also co-founded an ever-growing online slack community called ’People Stories’. She tells us how this came about, where it is now, and what it means to her. To round off this fantastic episode, Marie talks to us about her values and provides her top takeaways, which we think are just fantastic!

    31 min
  • Be Curious

    It’s that time of the week again, and we’re back with a brand new episode of Leading Between the Lines. This week our executive coach at AIG, Rosanna Machado is chatting to Irma Dambrauskė, the Director of People at TransferGo. TransferGo is an international money transfer company that allows you to send money at high speeds, low costs and with no hassle.


    The company was founded by Daumantas Dvilinskas, Justinas Lasevicius, Edvinas Sersniovas, and Arnas Lukosius in 2012, and they now have over 300 employees in five main locations across Europe, with a number of people working remotely.

    When Irma joined TransferGo three years ago the people team only had 4 members. However, that team, and Irma’s role, have expanded and she now drives change and improves and builds the company culture. Irma talks about how she thrives within a fast growth organisation, explaining why these types of business are attractive to her as an individual and a leader.

    Speaking about her role, Irma explains how the organisation prioritises their people, enabling them to innovate and grow sustainably. The company’s reliance on trust, and its general people-first attitude, resonates strongly with Irma, as these values are extremely important to her as a leader. Irma outlines how these aspects of a company’s culture can unlock engagement and creativity in people, but she also warns us of the possible negative outcomes of this when not guided on an individual basis.

    Irma also touches on the importance of a strong learning culture, the future of hybrid businesses, and gives us her magic wand wish and her number one top tip for people directors.

    34 min
  • One year on

    Are you ready for another new episode of Leading Between the Lines? This week we chatted to Thomas Forstner, the People Director at contract automation platform Juro. Juro are an award-winning client of ours, and we're honoured to have worked with Thomas and their leadership team including their founders Richard and Pavel.


    Thomas was previously a guest on Series 2, and we wanted to catch up and see how the company has progressed in the last 12 months. We were delighted to hear that since he was last on the show, Juro has been named the best London start-up to work for by Tempo and they have since received £23 million in investment.

    Thomas has been promoted to People Director, and he offers up some truly fantastic insights into why Juro received such an accolade, so it's no surprise why investors are keen to jump on board.

    Thomas discusses the challenges of being promoted to the board from within, and also outlines the company’s core values - energy, clarity, and results. He goes on to explain what work needs to be done to execute these values, specifically with senior leaders.

    Thomas goes on to talk about dealing with conflict within teams and discusses the importance of "being more human".  We finished up the interview by asking Thomas about his top three takeaways. And when you consider he's the People Director for London's no.1 company to work for, we were as excited as you were to hear what he had to say.

    44 min
  • Supporting People

    We’re back with another brand new episode of our Leading Between the Lines podcast! And this week we’re talking to Lily Fisher, the Senior People Partner at Omnipresent. Founded in 2019 by Matthew Wilson and Guenther Eisinger, Omnipresent is a B2B SaaS platform that makes it quick, simple, and easy to hire and manage remote teams anywhere in the world. Omnipresent is a global company that employs around 300 people in over 50 countries.

    Finding her passion in HR, Lily is driven by supporting and helping people within the organisation. Having previously worked in start up and scale up businesses, Lily is right at home at Omnipresent, where she loves the responsibilities that come with working for a fast paced, rapidly growing company.

    Despite only being with Omnipresent for a few months, Lily is already dealing with management training, revamping the onboarding process, and working on the team’s health and wellbeing. She is very passionate about mental health in the workplace and in this episode she outlines the importance of talking to others if things get tough. Drawing on her own personal experiences, Lily believes that having a coach or a therapist is vital to mental health and she would love to see mental health first aiders operating within organisations.

    39 min
  • Pen to Paper

    It’s time for another brand new episode of the Leading Between the Lines podcast, and this week, Rosanna, our series co-host and executive coach at alterniq inspired growth, chats with Felicity Winkley, the People Director at online stationery company Papier. Founded in 2015 by Taymoor Atighetchi, the fast-growing London-based company, who opened a New York office this year, is an e-commerce brand whose stationery collections invite people to uncover the possibility of a blank page.


    Having worked in FinTech previously, Felicity enjoyed the change and the challenge when she joined Papier last year. Full of confidence and enthusiasm about her work, Felicity is open and honest about the challenges they’re facing as they scale beyond start-up and how these challenges are being met. Felicity is not shy about identifying areas where the company needs to improve, and outlines how having a strong brand identity and mission can impact company values and employee culture at work.

    Felicity also talks about being comfortable not knowing everything, which is very handy at a fast growing company where many people are learning as they go. She also feels that one of the most important factors to success in the workplace is the ability to provide and receive negative feedback in a constructive manner, finding the right balance of positive and negative. We then delve into what a “no blame culture” means at Papier, and why this is so important for the psychological safety of their people.

    But how does all this tie in with Gong Bath Meditation? Tune in to find out!

    42 min
  • A certain type of madness

    Leading Between The Lines is back with a brand new series! And to kick things off we’re chatting to Ben Francis, the People Operations and Infrastructure Lead at one of the UK’s best rated startups, Infogrid. The company was founded in 2018 and they now have approximately 200 employees. Infogrid provides end-to-end connected sensor solutions designed to make buildings smarter.


    Ben’s team deals with the systems and processes of the people experience, which is vital as their team is growing super-fast adding around 20% more people each month. Ben tells us that the company is investing a huge 20% of its financial resources in the people function to help the company continue to grow effectively. And despite some people being stretched, the needs of the team are being met. What’s more, each member of the team has equity in the business to help it scale and the CEO wants everyone to feel they have a true sense of ownership.

    Ben’s driven by leaving the world in a better place than the way he found it, and he states the importance of learning, saying that he believes people should “get better at learning”. He also stresses the importance of being driven by more than just money, saying that the senior team at Infogrid could be on the beach in the Bahamas already. So why aren’t they?

    Listen to today’s episode to find out.

    49 min
  • Doing things differently

    It’s time for another episode of the Leading Between the Lines podcast. This week we’re speaking to Brij Palicha, the Director of Learning & Development at Snyk. Snyk is an innovative tech business that was founded in 2015 by Guy Podjarny and has over 800 employees operating globally. They provide a developer-first cloud-native security tool that covers multiple areas of application security. Snyk’s value tripled in 2021, and the company was recently valued at 8 million dollars.


    Brij has worked at Snyk for two years. He has previous experience with larger public and private sector companies and has also worked in management consulting. In this episode he discusses the differences between working for a large corporate firm and a fast-growth startup business. He emphasises how important it is for fast-growth companies to employ people who have a hunger for change and are driven by doing things differently.

    As well as discussing how Snyk has coped during the pandemic, Brij also talks in-depth about learning and development within business both from a face-to-face and remote perspective. He also outlines how he believes learning and development should be approached and what it should aim to achieve for employees.

    On a personal level, Brij explains how working at different companies in a range of countries, whilst being surrounded by lots of smart people, has set him up well in his career. He ends by saying that he would be really proud if he could look back on his life and see that he had had a positive impact on someone's life.

    41 min
  • Better than Best

    This week’s episode of Leading Between the Lines brings us together with Michael Hamilton, founder of Hamilton Specialist Referrals, one of the UK and Europe’s leading veterinary hospitals.


    It’s special. Why? Because not only is Michael one of the best veterinary surgeons in the world, he also has a passion and a skillset around developing people that makes HSR an irresistible combination.

    Where technical excellence is a given, leadership and people management are valued and implemented to a level where the overall experience is off the scale.

    Michael talks openly about the development and opening of the hospital in 2018 with his wife Clare (“the Steve Jobs of the operation, she does things I can’t do”) and their attitude of “I don’t care what’s been done before, if we can do it better we will”.

    It’s highly unusual to find someone with such technical ability who has an equal passion for developing people - “my major thing is to help my guys achieve what they want to achieve in their careers”.

    Michael is humble, talented and passionate. If you don’t do anything else today listen to this, it’s, well, you decide how good it is…

    47 min
  • Agile Leadership

    In this week’s episode of the Leading Between the Lines podcast we sit down with the Head of People and Culture at Joint Academy, Sara Stjernquist. Founded in 2014 by father and son Leif and Jakob Dahlberg, Joint Academy is the world’s first successful digital osteoarthritis treatment app. The app connects patients with physiotherapists for one-to-one treatment, offering progress tracking, video exercises, and lifestyle guidance.


    Sara is an accredited “agile people coach” with 10 years of experience working in HR. She talks to us about how she operates within her current role and discusses her plans for the future, explaining what she feels are the most important things to keep hold of as a company grows.

    Like all businesses, Joint Academy faced its challenges throughout the pandemic. However, Sara believes that the company’s adaptability has been a key factor in helping them move forward and grow during that time. Sara also goes on to explain what attributes she feels a good leader needs.

    On a more personal note, Sara tells us that providing a sense of belonging and purpose in the workplace is what drives her in her role.

    42 min

About Leading Between the Lines

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We're delighted to bring you Series 3 of Leading Between the Lines.