Our Story — How We Met
The story of this book began with a spark that has travelled across continents.
It started when a tenacious and visionary New Zealander tuned into a podcast featuring a leader at a rapidly growing American company who was pioneering a new concept: shifting from HR to Employee Experience at Airbnb. That single episode transformed the way she led her own organisation and inspired her to gather some of the world’s boldest thinkers in Austin, Texas to co-create a Manifesto for the future of Employee Experience Design.
Her first call was to the podcast guest who had unknowingly changed the course of her career. His response, “hell yes” set the first connection in motion.
Across the ocean in Santa Barbara, the former CHRO of Patagonia was sifting through his LinkedIn messages. Among the usual noise, one stood out: an enthusiastic invitation from that same New Zealander to join the Employee Experience summit. What she didn’t know was that he was preparing for cancer surgery at the time.
By pure serendipity, she happened to be in New York while he was recovering nearby. They met for lunch at Balthazar and recognised instantly that they were meant to walk a shared path, one filled with purpose, possibility, and impact. Even more surprising was what they discovered next: the Patagonia and Airbnb executives had unknowingly walked their dogs in the same park every day, living just a block apart, yet had never met.
That series of coincidences became a convergence.
It brought the three of us together as stewards of what would become the EX Manifesto, and the foundation of a lifelong friendship. It also planted the seeds of this book: a shared belief that work can be transformational, and that when we design with people, extraordinary things happen.
.jpg)
.png)
.png)
