Jul 22, 2024

Like wolves and ravens, these leaders have found a perfect match and are leading their team down new trails. Photo: Shutterstock For the first time in nearly 100 years, a Colorado hiker just might see a gray wolf cross their path. And it’s all because in December 2023, Colorado Parks and Wildlife experts captured 10 gray wolves in Oregon and released them on state-owned public land in Colorado. The idea is to grow the once-depleted wolf population, which will help the ecosystem that relies on wolves to regenerate. Wolves not only control the population of herbivores in an area, they also cause those herbivores to change their foraging and grazing patterns — helping diverse flora and fauna to thrive and rebuilding ecosystems from the bottom up. But wolves don’t do this alone. It’s well documented that wolves thrive when they work side-by-side with ravens. The birds will fly overhead while wolves are hunting and spot potential prey, alerting wolves to the location and allowing both species to enjoy the spoils. The relationship between wolves and ravens extends beyond hunting, though. Wolf pups will often be “adopted” by ravens — who live nearby and often bring wolf pups sticks to play tug-of-war with them, or will fly low with small branches to tease the pups so they jump and play with each fly-by. Ravens will even follow their adopted wolf if it leaves the pack. The connection between wolves and ravens is nature’s teamwork at its best. The two groups work in tandem, playing to their strengths, to make their daily work a little bit easier. Built In Colorado took a pause from hiking to speak with two product leaders — both of whom have recently joined new “packs” and are in the process of cultivating their own symbiotic relationships. Red Canary is a cybersecurity company that analyzes and responds to endpoint telemetry, manages alerts across the network and provides cloud environment runtime threat detection. Why were you brought on to lead this team? I’m a proud cybersecurity veteran with two decades of experience. I’ve had an exhilarating career where I’ve traveled the world, written patents, hacked into banks (ethically), helped ring the bell at an IPO, sat in boardrooms and led teams of rockstars. I was brought into my current team at Red Canary to build a durable product strategy and to deliver innovative and valuable cybersecurity products to the market. How would you describe your approach to leadership, and how do you plan on building team culture at Red Canary? When I think about a leadership style, I am always balancing two things — in my heart of hearts, I know that we are all humans on planet Earth just doing our best, and in that way, I’m human first. But I also believe we are employed to do an important job for the company and so, in that way, I am task/goal first. I lead with clear goals and measures to push a team hard to accomplish extraordinary outcomes, while also building a fabric of humanity so that we feel like a team, and so that when a human moment happens, we have the ability to take care of each other. How do you develop your team rhythm and team culture? When I think about team culture and team building, for me it starts by spending time together in meatspace — real, in-person stuff. I work to be the first to be vulnerable, so the rest of the teams feel safe sharing information, and then as a group, our culture starts to emerge. If I find a part of our culture is harming us, I will think of a rallying cry, motto or unbreakable principle to introduce to the team. In that way, a culture takes on a life of its own. “When I think about team culture and team building, for me it starts by spending time together in meatspace — real, in-person stuff.” Where is your focus for Red Canary’s product future? As a product leader, my world exists in the future, and I get really excited about new technologies that unlock novel ways to solve problems in the world. I work in the space of defending enterprises from cyber attacks, and so lately I’m really excited about how generative AI can be leveraged by cyber defenders. It frees up the world’s smartest human brains to spend more time looking at the overall puzzle rather than going out and assembling puzzle pieces. It’s already causing a step-change in our efficiency metrics. How did your career path bring you to SonderMind? My career path has been both unconventional and rewarding. I began as an entrepreneur, spending over a decade at two companies I co-founded in Brazil. After moving to the United States for business school at Stanford University, I transitioned into venture capital at an early-stage fund in Silicon Valley. Although fulfilling, I missed the hands-on nature of being an operator and returned to it. For the past five years, I have been leading product teams in the mental health space — initially at Ginger, the first integrated mental health solution, which later merged with Headspace. During this time, I contributed to the evolution of our care model and launched several strategic initiatives, including a self-guided care modality and a behavioral health service geared towards teens. The merger with Headspace brought new challenges and opportunities, placing me at the forefront of a two-year journey to integrate our products and realize the combined vision of both companies. Leveraging my experience in creating mental health products that have impacted over 100 million lives, I joined SonderMind to lead the next evolution of our product and foster continued growth and innovation within our team. How do you work alongside your team and spot potential opportunities? I believe in setting up systems and empowering people to do their jobs, while diving into areas that need additional support. This involves aligning vision and strategy, helping the team set targets, navigating uncertainties, providing context and showing a clear path forward. My leadership style often feels like a partnership, where I support team members in overcoming challenges rather than a traditional boss-manager role — though I will step into the manager role when needed. I strive to lead with compassion, curiosity, warmth and kindness to foster a sense of humanity within our team. My goal is for the time my team and I spend together to be the years in which they learn and grow the most. To build a strong team culture, I focus on fostering collaboration, ensuring good decision-making and encouraging thoughtful debate. By promoting open dialogue and embracing diverse perspectives, I can enable the team to make informed decisions that drive our success. Thoughtful debate challenges assumptions, sparks new ideas and enhances our approach. These elements together nurture a culture of mutual respect, innovation and high performance. What project are you most excited to tackle, and why? I am most excited about the SonderMind Care project because it represents the next step in our product’s evolution, allowing me to apply my previous learnings and experience to redesign mental health care from the ground up and create a world-class mental health solution. Currently, SonderMind connects clients with therapists, leaving the care journey primarily to the therapist. Clients have expressed a need for a 24/7 platform with self-care resources to support them throughout their mental health journey. SonderMind Care will fulfill this by providing a holistic mental health destination, designed to cater to clients across a spectrum of needs. I am particularly enthusiastic about our personalized pathways, which will provide a range of resources, including educational content and wellness tools for those with lower acuity needs, alongside an AI-powered chatbot and direct human-based therapeutic or psychiatric support for those needing more intensive care. This personalized approach fosters a deeper connection between clients and the therapeutic process, leading to improved engagement, satisfaction and therapeutic outcomes — ultimately allowing clients to get better faster.