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 🔥👍🏾➕

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?

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.