HappyFunPeople: Lauren Griffin on her life and advocacy for all HFCpeople

HappyFunPeople is a series where we talk with HFCers about their life experience, what motivates them, and what it’s like to work at HFC. Lauren is a former lawyer and product manager, a midwestern traveler, and caring champion for all HFCers in her role as Director of People.

Robb: So, where are you joining us from?

Lauren: From Brooklyn. I’m here for only a few more days and then off to Europe to work remotely for the rest of the summer.

Robb: Awesome. So you’ve got a fun remote — well, I mean, everybody is remote, but a not-sticking-around-in-one-city sort of summer planned.

Lauren: Yeah. I figured rents were high in New York and my lease went up, so why not use that as an excuse to travel a bit? Last summer I spent a few months in Paris, Spain, Ireland, and the UK. And then I decided to skip winter this year and spend January through March in Mexico. Next stop, Budapest, and then Italy.

Robb: Oh wow. People do tend to get out of New York for the summer. Getting out in that particular way sounds like it’s crossing off some bucket list items.

Lauren: Yeah, definitely. I feel like with the pandemic I didn’t get to travel for a while, and when I did it in November 2021 the bug came back. So, I thought: Why not, let’s do it.

Just getting used to the time change is a little bit challenging as I’ll be 6 hours ahead of New York.

Robb: That’s something I was going to ask you, because obviously, we’ve been remote-friendly for a long time and do have folks who have even a bigger time difference, but there’s definitely diminishing returns. I mean, you were just saying you’ve been on calls all morning, and a lot of your role is helping people get into HFC: onboarding and helping us grow our team.

My sincere hope is that you’re not burned out on working later into the evening.

Lauren: I think honestly it’s had the opposite effect, because I was burned out in New York and I really needed the shift up. I didn’t realize how burned out I was until I left.

When I work from Europe, I wake up. I can go for a nice walk in the morning, get lunch, go explore part of the city, and get my exercise in. It’s been beautiful.

I get all that in, so I feel very satisfied with my day, and then around 2:00 pm my time–8:00 in the morning New York time–I’m ready to go. Plus, our company gets a little bit slower started, a lot of folks, I can usually get a ton done in those first two hours or so. And then my normal day commences with calls and everything like that, and I log off around 11:00 pm or midnight, depending on the day.

But so far it hasn’t been an issue, because I feel like all the stuff that a lot of people do in the evening, I’m just doing in the morning. It’s just reversed.

Robb: It’s almost like you have an evening shift. You have second shift.

I’m excited for you; this sounds like a good adventure, a necessary one. I think we’re all kind of, as I keep describing it, finding a new gear, getting through late pandemic fatigue. Especially those of us who were mostly in the city for a lot of that.

Lauren: Yeah, for the majority of the pandemic I stayed in New York City in my studio apartment. It was one of those things that, once again, I think you don’t realize completely until you pull yourself out of it. I didn’t feel miserable; I definitely felt low-energy and those kind of side effects. But I didn’t think I was unhappy. Now I’m like, “Wow, I feel way different, and more energized, and just in better moods, and, like–, you don’t realize it sometimes until you’re out of it.

It’s not to say I don’t love New York, because I do love New York. I love a lot about New York; New York has given me a lot. I’m not sure it’s a breakup; it may just be a break with New York and then, you know, kind of come back. But I just needed the space. We needed a little break. Like Friends, like Ross and Rachel, we’re on a break [laughs].

Robb: Well, it’ll be here for you. It asks a lot, but it gives a lot.

Lauren: It does.

Robb: So you’re not originally from New York; as many of us, you’re a transplant. Tell us about where you grew up and what that was like.

Lauren: I grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana. It’s northeast Indiana, the second-largest town in Indiana. It’s not a small town, but it’s not a big town. I think there’s 250,000 people or so.

I was raised Catholic, so I went to Catholic schools from preschool all the way to high school. We had a lake home, so all of our summers, every weekend, we’d drive about an hour or so up north and spend it on the lake. So I grew up very active outdoors: a lot of skiing, wakeboarding, all that stuff that comes with growing up on a lake, barefoot in grass. I did a lot of that growing up. It was a great childhood, very suburban, and all that.

Then I went to Indiana University for undergrad, so I stayed in Indiana for college. After that, I went to law school up in Michigan, and then from there, I went back to Fort Wayne.

My first job was working at the Allen County prosecuting attorney’s office, which in New York is like the DA’s office. That was my first job, and I did that for about three and a half years. The good thing when you become a prosecutor right out of law school is you do a lot of trial work that you normally wouldn’t do as an attorney anywhere else. Most attorneys, in general, barely even see a courtroom. So this, right when you start work you start right in; they throw you right into the fire.

So, I started doing trials, mostly with juvenile work and then misdemeanors. And then I transitioned and started specializing in sex crimes. So happy topic, that [laughs].

Robb: Yeah, let’s tap the brakes here: that’s a lot of information. I’m curious about Fort Wayne and what that was like as a place, culturally. What is it known for, is there a history there? Just context.

Fort Wayne: like a lot of Indiana, it’s flat and there’s a lot of big farming industries, soybeans and corn. The city originally grew because of an older–I think it was called International Harvester. They’re no longer around, but that’s what got the Fort Wayne boom post WWII.

Robb: So it was producing farm machinery?

Lauren: Yeah, they designed and engineered medium- and heavy-duty trucks, staffed a high-rise parts warehouse, and ran the truck reliability center. Fort Wayne has an extensive manufacturing history with companies like GM, BEA systems, and Superior Essex which is where my dad worked when I was growing up.

Robb: So your dad, was he an engineer?

Lauren: No, my dad is in sales. He’s a real talkative guy and great at building relationships. He still does that to this day: he’s about to retire in another year or so. He works for a different company now, and he lives in Chicago. But he did sales with them for years and years and years, and my mom is a dental hygienist. I’ve only had one person, my mom, in my entire life clean my teeth: fun fact.

Robb: Clearly she knew her stuff.

Lauren: Thanks. Orthodontics too, had a lot of that, but yeah. She’s now married to my stepdad, who is a dentist, and I have two stepbrothers, one of whom is also a dentist. So I’ve got the tooth thing covered.

Robb: Do you have other siblings?

Lauren: I have one younger brother. So I’m the oldest — I’m four and a half years older than my brother. He is married, and I have a niece and nephew. They live in Indianapolis.

He is in the army. He did Special Forces for about seven, eight years, where he was basically part of a crew for the little helicopters called “little birds”. He has since finished flight school for Black Hawk helicopter and flies for the National Guard.

Robb: It sounds very wholesome, heartland.

Lauren: It’s very wholesome, heartland stuff, yes. When you think, Leave it to Beaver a little bit. But of course, my family wasn’t always, we were not a “Leave it to Beaver” family.

Robb: Well, no one really is.

Lauren: Yeah, but, you know — my dad’s gay, he came out when I was 14. And, then my parents obviously separated thereafter. But to this day we’re all very close. My dad and my stepdad get along very well. We all do family functions together. We spend Christmases together. And we all get along very well. So it’s actually really lovely, but, growing up in Indiana, as you can imagine, with that wholesome background, that was a little tough for a bit there.

Especially going to private Catholic schools.

Robb: Yeah, I was gonna say, I could see how being a teenager at a Catholic high school, that could be tough.

Lauren: Yeah, it wasn’t easy. It was a secret for a while as it wasn’t something we really talked about in Indiana. I think people, especially younger generations, don’t really remember, or know, because they weren’t around, or even our generation, we forget what it was like in 2002, you know?

We came from the AIDS pandemic, and unfortunately, most of the people in my community had that as their only exposure to the queer community. So being out, especially with a family, wasn’t something that was widely accepted like it is, thank God, today.

Having this experience in that environment shifted me as a human completely. And because I had to deal with adversity at that stage in my life, it feels like I’m able to have empathy for others more easily, because of that adversity. I try to make it my default to not jump to conclusions when someone meets you with anger or hostility because I’m a prime example of not knowing what’s going on behind closed doors, and not knowing what someone is having to deal with.

Robb: I’m glad to hear that everybody gets along now — that’s one of the sweeter things I’ve heard in a while. I can also see a bit more why you strike me as somebody who is very comfortable as a New Yorker. I’m curious about how that shaped you as an undergrad and beyond — what kind of person were you like, what was driving you at that time? Did you know what you wanted to do?

Lauren: So I did want to be a lawyer when I was younger, and a lot of that was because I’ve always had this sense about injustice. And as I got older, and I saw a lot of things that my dad and my family experienced, that drive to correct those injustices only grew.

And I saw at a younger age, power matters. And it’s not a power hunger, it’s more like I wanted the ability to affect change, and law is a tool that you can use to do that.

Robb: It’s also about fixing injustice specifically.

Lauren: I think injustice is a big trigger for me. It’s always been one. I remember kids would get bullied at school, I’d be the one who would step in physically. That wasn’t the right way to deal with it, but, like, it’s something I’ve been triggered by my whole life. And law made sense as a way to help out with that. And then also, I’m a bit of a nerd, and I like the study of law. I found it fascinating.

And also, I did struggle as a kid, and probably into my early adult life, with confidence. I have learning disabilities — I’m slightly dyslexic, and I have short term memory loss. So learning traditionally in school was difficult for me. I didn’t always get the best grades.

And, because especially then, they didn’t always know how to educate people with those kinds of learning disabilities. So, even in high school, at my private high school, they’re supposed to be helping you with this stuff. I remember telling my guidance counselor, “I want to be a lawyer,” she’s like, “no, you’re not smart enough to be a lawyer.”

So I went into undergrad thinking I don’t know if I’m smart enough to do this. So I struggled a lot with being able to pick the right major. I was an econ major at one point (laughs). There was this really great school at IU called SPEA which is the School of Public Environmental Affairs, and it’s one of the top in the US for that type of school.

And I really liked it, found a home there, and ended up with a public policy degree from them. And that helped. I took a couple courses there about public policy law, and that kind of reignited my interest in law and my confidence, and I was, like, “well, why not? Let’s try it.” So I remember my senior year, I was interviewing and then also applying to law school.

And so, I had a job offer, and I had a law school acceptance, and I literally was, like, what do I do? And I chose law.

Robb: So, on that road, it sounds like you found a home in that school. What helped you get the confidence to pursue it?

Lauren: I think that school showed non-traditional routes to get to places. So it didn’t make me feel like I had to have this certain, exact background to make it as something. And I saw a lot of the adjunct professors were just doing all these different things and not following a traditional formula.

And I didn’t see any alternatives or non-traditional paths up until then, and then, like, oh, that’s interesting. They did that, I could do that. And then the exposure to that gave me the confidence — that this is the possibility.

Robb: I feel like that’s the kind of thing that people maybe get that from college, but I feel like you get that in spades once you live in a city like New York, where, like, yes — there are people who chose a path and stuck with it, but by and large, the diversity of experience is amazing.

Lauren: Yeah, and I think it’s a generational thing too with us, versus our parents’ generation, where you go to one job and you were there for your whole career. It’s very common now for us to have multiple careers, let alone multiple jobs.

Robb: I think we’re similar in age and I graduated college like, right around the financial crisis.

Lauren: I graduated in ’08 from college, yeah, and it was right at that time. And I graduated law school in 2011 which was when the law industry really hit a negative dip. I was very fortunate that I had a legal job right out of law school, because a lot of my cohort members did not, and it took them a while to get there.

Because not only were the big firms not hiring, they were laying off. And, then, you were competing fresh out of law school with people that had five, seven years’ experience, and they were willing to make the same money of a first year associate.

Robb: Why do you think your luck was different? I think luck is earned to an extent.

Lauren: Yeah, it definitely wasn’t given to me, it was earned plus a bit of luck in choosing a path. I went back to my hometown the summer before my last year of law school and I did an internship with the prosecutor’s office. I worked hard and did my best to prove I could do the job and before graduation I had a job offer.

Robb: The fact that you also had that specific human connection with someone is important.

Lauren: It helps.

Robb: So, you got thrown in the fire immediately as a lawyer, and then you were like, hmm, this isn’t enough fire, let me work on sex crimes, which I understand — SVU, very popular show. But, clearly, I mean, and you could talk about it as much or as little as you want, but that’s something that there probably aren’t many more difficult subject matters to work on in that profession, just from an emotional perspective.

Lauren: Yes, it’s definitely a difficult subject matter to work with day in and day out. Part of the job is that you receive training to understand physical, sexual, physiological, and emotional abuse cycles. This provides an incredible amount of perspective and insight to how things can go a certain way. So, yeah that type of work you are exposed to is not representative of the best side of humanity. But, I will say, with all this, one of the biggest things it’s given me is a really good understanding of what constitutes an emergency, and what is a priority, and I think that’s my frame with work now and with life.

So it’s a good context, sometimes, even for myself, when I find myself being facing high anxiety, or high stress

Robb: Yeah. It reminds me of the hearing people who served in the military when they talk about their perspective, like, “yeah, this really would have bothered me before, and now…”

Lauren: Not that big a deal. But eventually it does weigh, and I did make the decision to leave. It’s a great place to start a law career, because you get a lot of trial experience. I did jury trials which was really fun. I really enjoyed doing jury trials. It’s like acting. And you’re up there on stage, kind of, in a way.

And my favorite part was voir dire, which is the jury selection, where you get to talk to people and ask them questions. You get to the psychology of things, which I think translates a lot to what I do now, and understanding how people act — behavioral science has really always been fascinating to me and understanding why people do the things that they do, what motivates them.

Robb: So now you’re starting to cross into the world that you occupy now. So, what was the connective tissue? What brought you to New York?

Lauren: So, yeah, how did I transition out of law? So, real quick, after prosecutor life, I did private practice. I was in a litigation firm for about a year and a half, and that basically sealed the deal for me not wanting to do law anymore.

Robb: It was the workload?

Lauren: The ugliness of it. The lifestyle. And then I think the big key of it was I figured out that I didn’t care about hitting the ultimate goal which would be to become a partner in the firm. That’s the goal and I wanted nothing to do with it. I was, like, “uh-oh, if that’s the career goal and I don’t want it, that’s a sign.” And I started to think of ways to transition out of law.

So I started researching and doing informational interviews of a lot of former lawyers and what they were doing. I was, like, what are they doing? What sounds good?

Tech was always very interesting to me so I started to focus on former lawyers in tech and what they were doing, and a lot of them were product managers or project managers. So I liked that.

And then what got me to New York was a boy. I moved out with a former partner of mine, and at that time I basically just took that opportunity to completely shake up the snow globe. So new city, new partner, and new job. And two of the three worked out [laughs].

Robb: I can see that, sure.

Lauren: So I knew I didn’t know much about tech and building digital products so I went to GA — General Assembly — and did one of their immersive product management courses. At the same time I started doing a ton of networking, freelance stuff and then eventually got hired by Jakt [note: acquired by HappyFunCorp].

I started doing product management there for like a year and a half. While at the same time I started to see operational holes, and just started filling them. And the CEO was, like, you’re good at this, do you just want to do ops? Or do you want to do product work? I’m, like, honestly, I kind of like ops better.

And then I transitioned into more of a people ops role. And then, that’s kind of how I got into where I’m at now. Doing the product management work was really great for me in this role that I have now because I understand how digital products are built. I understand what makes a good PM, I understand good engineers, good designers, general concepts of what it takes for them to be successful and I understand that process.

So, yeah, anyways, that’s the transition in a nutshell.

Robb: And I didn’t realize you had that specific experience. It does make sense. Both that you did it, and that you stopped doing it in favor of what you’re doing now.

Lauren: Yeah, it wasn’t my thing [laughs].

Robb: You have a strength, and it seems like the value that you want to bring has to do with people. The appeal of building a team and then making sure that it functions well, it gets to the heart of something more valuable to you.

Lauren: Definitely. I’ve found that I much prefer the building and improving the personal experience of my team members than the digital product itself. I wasn’t passionate about the product. I was more interested in why we, the company, were operating the ways we were and the overall experience each team member had during the project.

It’s funny how all these dots, these decisions, they do line up, and I think it’s what helps me with this job now, is all these past experiences. I’m really glad my path to get here took the route it did because I don’t think I’d be able to do this job as well without having this diverse experience.

Robb: Well, I’m glad you’re in the role that you’re in now.

Lauren: Me too. I used to struggle a bit with leaving law and advocacy work behind but then I shifted my view and realized that I’m still serving that role. It’s just now I advocate for the people at HFC and try to be there to help and support them in their respective roles.

Robb: I’m curious about your experience at HFC and how your first were introduced to the company and what your takeaways have been.

Obviously, the way that you came in is unorthodox compared to the norm, because you did not apply for a job and get interviewed — HFC essentially acquired JAKT.

Lauren: Yeah, definitely non-traditional. I remember when — because I was also involved in the acquisition — there were a bunch of folks who came on right away. I did not.

I did my own thing for a couple months, and then Will reached out to me and asked if I’d be interested in joining, and I was, like, well, maybe on a contractor basis for a couple hours per week kind of thing. And that was originally how I came on.

So then, of course, it progressed into full time contract work, and then eventually full time hire. So yeah, definitely not traditional. But I remember thinking after meeting everyone that I liked the HFC culture as it was different from a lot of other startup-y environments. I would never call HFC a startup, but I feel like in that space we sometimes work in, it’s very hectic.

Robb: A lot of ambiguity.

Lauren: Yeah, right. And there is that. But I just felt like it was more of a sense of calm. And maybe it was because of the more grown up thing we always talk about in that we hire grownups. And it didn’t feel as immature as some of the other organizations I’ve come into, and that was where I was really hesitant about, because I didn’t know if it was gonna be like that. I didn’t want to work in an environment where the CEO is a petulant child, and I have to deal with their tantrums all the time.

I didn’t want to deal with that, and that’s not HFC. It felt like there was a lot of mutual respect, a lot of autonomy, which usually isn’t the case in that type of an environment. Usually it’s a lot more hands on and micromanagement because of the lack of maturity and trust in the team members, a lot of times that happens. I did not see that, which was a big deal.

And I like the way that Ben and Will talked to you and Holly — it was with this respect and this collaboration versus like a dictation down. So I thought that was one of the big takeaways I saw at first. And it made me think, “this is interesting. I like these folks. These look like nice people to work with. Like, good people to work with.”

And that’s something that I value very highly. And I think a lot of people do too, but I really do because of my last work environment. Working at the litigation firm was not pleasant by any means, and the prosecutor’s office had its politics, so I know what a toxic and unhealthy work environment looks like, and I’m very sensitive to that. And I saw none of those flags really, at HFC, and that was a big deal for me.

Robb: Well, I’m glad you stuck around. It’s hard to think about where we’d be right now without your help. Especially, I mean through the pandemic has been kind of wild.

Lauren: Yeah, didn’t see that coming [laughs].

Robb: Part of your role is you’re trying to convince people who we’ve already vetted as having the skills to be here and positioning “here’s why you should come on board,” and that’s useful in that you’ve had the experience of being skeptical [of HFC].

Lauren: Yeah, and it’s twofold. It’s that, and it’s also protecting it too, to not let in people that don’t align with the ethos.

Robb: That’s true. That’s really important. It’s always been important. But, in terms of how you’re thinking about the future, what are the things that you want to do more of at HFC that you want to see from a people perspective, what we should be improving on?

Lauren: We have such great talent at HFC, and people that are so smart. I mean this in the best way possible but I’m continually surprised by how smart everyone is. When you have these conversations, people are multi-faceted at HFC. They have all these different interest levels, they come from all these different backgrounds.

Robb: They’re also low key and humble, I think.

Lauren: Very humble. I think that’s it. I’m, like, whoa, you just kept that under the radar. Didn’t know about that. And, it’s really cool, and I think a lot of the big commonality is curiosity. And I think as a company I’d like to see us do more to cultivate this. How do we encourage and how do we help satisfy some of that curiosity by either implementing new skills, or learning up — how do we get folks to do that?

Because I think in general, the interest is 100% there, because our folks are so curious, and so intelligent that they want to learn more. They’re hungry for it. So how do we as an organization get better at feeding them that? So that’s something that I really want to focus more on.

Robb: And what advice would you give somebody who’s, they’re thinking about joining HFC or about to start?

Lauren: Hmm be OK with ambiguity, it’s gonna happen [laughs].

Robb: Expect the unexpected.

Lauren: Yeah, I mean, know that, there is gonna be ambiguity, but also know that we are culturally a very supportive team. We expect questions. We expect to help you. But also expect the uncomfortableness that comes with ambiguity and lean right into it.

But know that everyone on the team is a resource available to you, and that everyone on this team is happy to help, and to work with you.

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