She builds products used by 25M people with no tech degree | Mindy Eiermann, Culture Amp

My guest today is Mindy Earman, VP of Product and Design at CultureAmp, one of Australia's biggest tech success stories.

And her career story is amazing.

She had no formal technical training.

She studied Asian Studies and Mandarin and was heading to law school, but decided to join a startup instead.

And the rest is history.

Today, the products she brings to life help over 25 million employees worldwide measure and improve culture, performance, and employee experience.

And she got there without a single line of code on her CV.

I've been really looking forward to this one.

Mindy, welcome to the show.

Thank you.

I'm very excited to be here.

Great to have you.

You studied Asian Studies and Mandarin at UT Austin, Middlebury and Nanjing University in China.

So how did that path lead you to eventually heading up a product at a global tech company in Australia?

Yeah, it was definitely a roundabout path.

After uni, I thought I was going to go to law school and instead ended up working at a startup in Palo Alto.

But the through line that gets me from there to here is a passion for understanding what makes people tick.

what motivates people and how that's different across different cultures, backgrounds and experiences.

So that's both relevant in the ways that I work and I lead, but also in how I think about understanding and solving customer problems.

So I've been really lucky to work for global companies and in global roles where I get to partner with and support and learn from people all over the world in Australia, of course, my adopted home, but also the U.S., U.K., India, Mexico, Brazil, Southeast Asia.

And it's a real privilege to have that experience and exposure.

But specifically, how did I end up studying Chinese and living in Nanjing? I went on a high school trip my senior year to Beijing and I was fascinated and I wanted to learn more.

Tell us a little bit about that first job at the startup.

What did that experience teach you?

Everything.