Office Hours: I’m Stephanie Lara Bertmer, senior leadership and talent development leader with 17 years of experience in fast-paced companies. AMA!Featured

Posted in:People & HR Office Hours Management and Leadership

Hi Elphas! I’m Stephanie Lara Bertmer, the Head of Learning and Development at Pinterest.

Before Pinterest, I led the leadership development team at Twitter, where my team coached, developed, and grew leaders at all levels, from first-time managers to senior executives. My career in learning and HR spans several fast-growing tech, media, and advertising companies, including Snapchat and Hulu.

During my downtime, I enjoy planning trips and travel, trying out new coffee shops, spending time at the beach, and squeezing in some pilates wherever I can. As a first-gen college grad, I'm also passionate about connecting with and mentoring women and those looking to transition into tech.

Ask me anything about learning and development, leadership and career development, talent management, organizational development and effectiveness, leading teams, managing people, my day-to-day as an HR leader, or anything else!

ElphaStaff·Sep 16

Thanks so much for joining us @stephaniebertmer!Elphas – please ask @stephaniebertmer your questions before Friday, September 20th. @stephaniebertmer may not have time to answer every questions, so emoji upvote your favorites 🔥👍🏾➕

Tetiana·Sep 18

Hi Stephanie,Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions! I'd love to hear about your experience transitioning from HR to L&D. What was the best strategy that worked for you to make this transition successfully? I also have another practical question :) How do you make sure that the employees are not overwhelmed by all the training programs the company wants to offer them and actually have time to work and implement the new knowledge?

stephaniebertmer·Sep 22

Hi @Tetiana,My career started the other way around, where I began in L&D and broadened to general HR, and now I'm focused again on talent development. For those looking to get into L&D, I've seen people make this switch successfully by taking on L&D-like work in their role to get experience. For example, a recruiter might raise their hand to build an interviewer training or develop and deliver a functional onboarding program. Re: your practical question -- employees are busy, so when building training and learning strategies, it's important to make sure what you're putting out there is what employees want and need. I'm a big fan of using data to understand where employees need additional development and using tools other than training only to close those gaps. Thank you for the great questions!

ariannastucker·Sep 21

Hi Stephanie 👋🏽 Thank you for taking the time to answer questions! I’ve been so impressed by your career journey and would love your insight. As an L&D professional, I’m looking for ways to stand out in today’s job market. Are there any certifications or courses you’d recommend to elevate my skills? And are there specific ones that hiring managers look for in candidates?

chrissycallan·Sep 16

Hi Stephanie, Thank you for the generous offer of your time. I have been a film costume designer / production manager for over a decade and would now like to transition into design program management or creative ops-type roles to have more stability and growth potential. Before I am ready to apply for any jobs, I would love to have coffee-chat connections with various professionals in these types of roles, but my network is very narrow and specific to the film crew world. Do you have any recommendations for the best way to make these connections/find those open to donating 30-60mins of their time? I know there is a lot of noise out there and folks are busy. I have been sending cold-connections with notes on LinkedIn but understandably it's been hard to get a hit.

stephaniebertmer·Sep 21

Hi @chrissycallan, Exciting to hear about some of your goals! There are a few things I'd recommend here: 1. Make it easy for the person you're reaching out to to engage; for example, can you shorten the time commitment you're asking for? 15 minutes for a quick connect sounds much more doable than an hour. 2. Once you've started chatting with folks, ask them if they know anyone they'd be willing to introduce you to. Several years ago, a person I networked with asked me this, and it worked brilliantly. If someone else introduces you, that tends to open up more doors.3. Is there a different way to build your network to learn more? Are there talks, groups, or conferences you could join live and in-person?I hope some of these ideas help. The last thing I'll say is building your network tends to happen gradually over time, so keep working on it consistently and keep your interactions positive because you never know who might come into your orbit in the future.

chaumai·Sep 17

Hi Stephanie! There's often a lot of interest and advice around how to be a manager -- especially managers of individual contributors (ICs). What are your thoughts around managers of managers? What is required to make that special leap, and what skills do you see in those who do very well?Thank you so much for your insights.

stephaniebertmer·Sep 20

Hi @chaumai, great question.When you manage managers, you're one step further away from the day-to-day work, and the tools you used as a manager of individual team members has to evolve. Some of the managers I've seen make this transition well have found the right balance of oversight and autonomy, meaning they trust the managers on their team to do well but also have mechanisms in place to keep a pulse on how things are going throughout the team, this could be through skip level meetings, gathering ongoing feedback, and putting tools in place to make sure the work is on track. The other big piece is around mindset; managers who see how their role needs to evolve to get work done through others by coaching, developing, and enabling the managers on their team tend to have a more positive impact than managers who continue to see their role solely as the doer of all the work. Thanks again for the question!

chaumai·Sep 21

So insightful!! Thank you for taking the time to respond.

Patchara·Sep 20

Hi Stephanie, Thank you for your time. I'm a career development specialist at a non profit and was wondering about life in L&D at a for profit. What drew you to L&D in tech? How did you get your start? What's your favourite thing about your work and least favourite thing? What's one quality that you believe someone working in L&D should have?

madhuchavva·Sep 16

Hi Stephanie! What advice do you have for fostering leadership in technical teams while balancing rapid growth and innovation? Especially in fast-growing environments, leaders often face unique challenges in scaling teams, maintaining culture, and nurturing leadership at every level. I'm curious to learn the strategies/approaches you could share from your experiences.Thanks for your time sharing your experiences with us.

stephaniebertmer·Sep 22

Excellent question @madhuchavva. It is one I think about frequently. Having strong company values and leadership principles is incredibly helpful when maintaining culture and nurturing leadership in a fast-growing environment. Clearly articulating what's important and how people should show up helps new joiners onboard to the environment and reinforces the behaviors that contribute positively to the team. If this isn't something you have at your company, creating a team charter or ways of working document that outlines what's important and expected can also work. Maintaining culture and nurturing leadership also has to be an ongoing effort, even when it's busy. It doesn't have to be a significant time investment; it can be small moments over time, like including check-in questions at every team meeting or a monthly meetup with the managers on your team to discuss a leadership topic, but by carving out the time you are signaling that investing in the team, maintaining culture, and developing leadership skills is essential to the business.I'd also recommend a few books on this topic if you want to learn more: "Scaling Excellence" and "Scaling Teams: Strategies for Building Successful Teams and Organizations."Thanks again for the question!

madhuchavva·Sep 23

I really appreciate you sharing these strategies. I love the emphasis on carving out small, meaningful moments for leadership development—I'll be incorporating those into my team meetings. I’m definitely going to check out the books you recommended too. Thanks again.

Ila85·Sep 20

Hi Stephanie! How do you encourage employees to use L&D opportunities at work when they're managing many other responsibilities? Does that usually happen in their personal time or is it carved out into their work day?

beckyaldaz·Sep 17

Hi Stephanie! It’s wonderful to see how your career has evolved and the impact you’ve made across various companies. Given your extensive experience in leadership development, I’m curious about the strategies or techniques you’ve found most effective in coaching leaders at different levels. Also, how do you manage to balance your professional responsibilities with your love for travel/ staying active with pilates?

Jeanine171·Sep 17

Hi Stephanie, it’s nice to meet you 🤝I was wondering about scenario when the direct manager sets a goal for me to achieve. Should they help to achieve the goal or at least make sure that environment is set to achieve it? Or it’s kinda my problem?

Lidia47·Sep 17

Hi Stephanie, I'm seeing that some companies are putting together skills-based learning programs for their personnel. Can you please share your experience and success rate with skills-based learning programs?

lauraweldy·Sep 18

Hi Stephanie, so excited to learn from you! I'm also a pilates girlie!I got into the leadership development space as a solopreneur because the companies I worked at lacked talent development resources - especially ones that developed women leaders. I love the work I do 1:1 with women leaders as a coach, speaker and trainer/facilitator, and my next goal as an ambitious woman myself is to develop some strong partnerships with companies where I can offer leadership coaching support to their rising women leaders. I'm even currently studying for my CPTD certification to further my L&D knowledge.Do you have any advice for how I can authentically connect with L&D leaders like yourself and position my work to actually lessen their load and support their internal initiatives? I don't want to spam inboxes with cold emails as I know you all are probably inundated with those all the time! I so appreciate any thoughts you might have.

Ray8·Sep 20

Hi Stephanie, what does your day to day as an HR leader look like? What's the part you most enjoy? Are there any areas you wish you could spend less time on?

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