DesignOps Global Conference 2022

Presenter Profile: Erin Figueroa is Senior Director of Program Management at Slack, where she’s built the Program Management Office from the ground up, growing a team of program managers from one to 38 over the last four years and establishing a global PMO infrastructure to successfully support the company’s dramatic growth.

Erin is responsible for scaling Slack through people and processes while executing on the company’s most strategic initiatives. She is an expert in building high functioning teams during hyper growth and scaling organizations to be more efficient and effective. Erin’s most recent accomplishment was successfully program managing Slack’s public company readiness program over the last three years, resulting in Slack’s direct listing in June of 2019.

Prior to joining Slack, Erin worked at Apple and Gap Inc., where she led Program Management teams at varying levels of scale, including program support for new brands and teams within these larger organizations. Erin earned a B.A. in Speech and Communication Studies from San Francisco State University and an M.A. in International Relations from the University of San Diego. She lives in the Bay Area with her wife and their three kids.

Presentation Title: Scaling in Hyper-Growth – Lessons from Slack

Outline: Scaling organizations and teams of people during hyper-growth is challenging. This talk will share some of the critical lessons Erin has learned from over four years at Slack. Going from just 80 people when she joined to over 2000, Erin has seen scale and hyper-growth front and center and will share her experiences and lessons learned. In this talk she will go deep on operating frameworks, traits of successful projects at scale, designing operating systems that grow with the company and how to lead large teams of people through rapid change.

Company Website: Slack.com