Lena Reinhard (CircleCI)

Episode 61 · February 11th, 2021 · 49 mins 3 secs

About this Episode

In this episode, Kendall, rachel, and Lena talk about:

  • Starting out in finance, the arts, classic cars journalism, and more...
  • Uses (appropriate or not) for creativity in leadership
  • Realizing that a potential lifelong career in banking would be...boring
  • First startup experience as a web copywriter
  • First formal leadership experience as a bootstrapped startup CEO
  • Ebola outbreak response...no biggie, right?!
  • Becoming more intentional as a leader, learning about leadership frameworks
  • Growing out of the 'relationship' as a cofounder, wanting different things
  • Big, International, Complicated :)
  • Becoming a regular old Engineering Manager, and...immediately becoming a VP of Engineering
  • Twitter as a source of leadership learning, despite the trashfire
  • Managing in all directions, 360 degree leadership
  • Acknowledging that leadership successes depend on the quality of the team
  • Hiring tenets, "value add" vs "culture fit"
  • Finding the right role at CircleCI
  • Authority and how to swing it, understanding power distance
  • Maintaining a list of hobbies to take up as a hobby
  • A strong desire for "really good fries"
  • A recommendation for poetry books by Omar Sakr, more books recommended below
  • Working on dialing back the tendency to take charge in non-work life (such a familiar struggle :))

More books Lena recommends:

You can find Lena on the internet at:

Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3