Zendesk Legal Counsel

Zendesk offers software that helps its 160,000+ paid customer accounts in more than 150 countries and territories create the best customer experiences. Zendesk Legal is seeking a VP, Associate General Counsel, Compliance, a compliance policy executive who will be responsible for legal advice on compliance and regulatory matters, as well as strategic oversight of Zendesk`s global compliance program. She has over 20 years of international experience working with high-growth companies and is a pro bono lawyer. Prior to Zendesk, Ms. Ariker was Assistant General Counsel at Twilio Inc. Ms. Ariker also served as General Counsel at Salesforce.org and held other leadership positions at Salesforce.com, Inc. and Autodesk, Inc. She began her career in private practice. Ms. Ariker holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Massachusetts and a J.D. from the University of Virginia.

She is an aspiring writer who is currently working on her memoirs. sent me my resume and I was quickly hired for this position, which was the only one they advertised in Canada. And then, over time, I built a team and I had about a third of the business legal team in the Mair area under me. So are you focusing on both Canada in the central U.S. and me, and what has that done? What did this time actually do gradually, what was the number of this time? At the time, I do not remember exactly what it was like when I was in Canada, but I went back to the United States and we divided the United States, latan and Canada between the two of us. And so I had about twelve people at that time. Thus, from a single contributor to twelve people in a team. And you know, when I went back to CELESTICA, I was a contract administrator. So going from a contract manager to someone who leads a team of twelve people, you know, hard, great performance, a lot of work and you know, I think you know, selling really gave me a great chance to prove myself after being unemployed for several years and raising a family.

Yes. And what do you learn about yourself when you essentially walk through an individual so that you start building and growing. Far too much to say. What do you learn about yourself at this stage of your creation, because it seems that Southforce has experienced it for the first time that you have done so. I would be interested in some of these initial conclusions. Yes, I had a paralegal who contacted me early, but you know, it`s very, very different when you have a much larger team. I think I remember when I first hired the first person to work with me in the field, and she was the superstar. It is still there. Stay in touch, yes, and I thought, well, management is really easy because you know when you`re having a time full of superstars. Yes, it usually works very similarly in many ways, and so it was easy. But when you`re building a team, and I remember my manager saying that you expect to have more than one workforce, and it`s true, there`s a lot more to balance, especially as a middle management position, you still often do your own work, not just on escalation.

So you are very busy juggling. You know, I`m a young family at this point, so sometimes it was impossible to go home for dinner. Yes, and then it`s also hard to make sure that I would try to prioritize the escalations my team has done with all the work I`ve done. I think over time I`ve learned how important it is to build a culture, you know, transparency, to really show how much you rely on people, not micromanagement, but you still want to win, you want to earn their trust, you want them to earn your trust. You know, it`s certainly a no-brainer, and I think it`s a lot about really understanding what you know. We love the first stories of what Litigaida is because many of my guests, like Jasay, start their lives as Litigaida and I think I`ve gotten a little caught up in the past, I always call for great skill to start, and here`s your other example of those early days as Lytti Gaida and then becoming a transitional transaction law. Tell us a little more about it and how it Somehow, she played a role in the journey, as she has been there for quite some time. It distorts what I say twilli.