Cathy Hawley
Former Chief People Officer of Return Path and co-founder of Bolster. People operations leader focused on intentional remote culture and treating knowledge workers as humans.
Between Two COOs episodes featuring Cathy Hawley
About Cathy Hawley
Cathy Hawley is co-founder of Bolster, the on-demand executive talent marketplace, and was Chief People Officer at Return Path. She has spent roughly two decades building people functions inside technology companies, with earlier stops including DoubleClick, which was later acquired by Google.
Hawley studied HR as an undergraduate and began her career as an HR manager at a truck stop, handling workers' comp, payroll, benefits, and EEO issues. A detour to the UK, where she worked as a counselor for victims of domestic violence, shaped how she approached the field when she returned to the US. Her view is that traditional HR, which started as personnel and risk management, has to evolve in tech companies into people operations focused on culture, retention, and treating knowledge workers as humans rather than headcount. She argues the function should be intentional about culture and aligned with what employees actually need to do their best work.
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