Well before joining connected fitness disruptor, Peloton, Mariana Garavaglia, Chief People & Business Operations Officer, had what she calls her “light bulb moment” regarding the company after purchasing her Peloton Bike. Like many others, she was struggling to get to the workout classes she loved, while balancing busy work and life demands. Joining the Peloton community introduced her to immersive, challenging, and premium quality workouts that were more engaging, affordable, and efficient; all available on demand to accommodate her full and constantly changing schedule. She immediately recognized the customer need and opportunity that Peloton was addressing. “I discovered this incredible company that is using a combination of technology, content, music, social and best-in-class instructors to empower our millions-strong community through fitness – and felt that the Peloton team had tapped into something really special.”
While Peloton has seen tremendous growth over the two years since Garavaglia joined, she believes the company is still in the early stages of its journey: “the value to our members – a suite of products and experiences that allows people to connect with a community that shares their passion, without having to leave the comfort and convenience of their own home – that’s very powerful, and the opportunity to continuously improve upon those products and experiences is what drives us every day.”
A ROAD LESS TAKEN
The tale of Garavaglia’s non-traditional career path is inspiring throughout. A first-generation American who grew up in her parents’ native Argentina, she was the oldest of five children living in a country still reeling from a bad bout of hyperinflation in the 80s and early 90s. Ultimately, her family moved to the United States where she went on to study international relations at the University of Oklahoma and started her career as a bilingual teacher in an at-risk school near Dallas. As a teacher, she discovered her passion for engaging people of all ages to reach their fullest potential. “Learning, teaching, seeing others grow and shine – this has always been core to what drives me.”
After going to business school and deciding to make a career switch, she sought out a role in the technology sector, drawn by the power of technology to create value, disrupt inefficient processes and drive new ways of operating.
“I became fascinated with this idea of being able to provide customers with experiences that are better than those to which they are accustomed – to surprise and delight, and to generate products and services that are more convenient, more inspiring, more efficient, more effective,” she says.
It was this spirit of disruption and passion for innovating that led her to take a role with Amazon, where she would spend the next 11 years of her career. At Amazon, a company that experienced incredible growth during her tenure, she learned first-hand what is required not only to scale a function, a business, and an organization but to scale oneself as a leader. She took on roles in Operations, HR, and General Management during that span. “It was about embracing a growth mindset and rejecting the idea that you’re not capable of doing something simply because you haven’t done it before,” she says.
That same spirit of disruption she saw at Amazon also drew her to Peloton, which she joined in 2019. She saw the potential to help shape how Peloton is transforming the fitness industry. Though it was just two years ago, Peloton was a much smaller company than the connected fitness disruptor that we know today in 2021. “I loved the company first as a customer. And so, when I had the opportunity to join (Peloton Co-Founder & CEO) John Foley’s team in building out his vision, I jumped at the chance to be a part of this special company.”
She calls the opportunity to accompany Peloton through hyper-growth and see the organization transform first-hand “a privilege and incredible journey.”
INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL DISRUPTION
At Peloton, Garavaglia says she immediately recognized that the same spirit of care and investment the company places in its members, extends to all its people throughout the organization. Peloton is committed to creating a workplace where people can thrive, grow and do their best work.
In her role, Garavaglia is responsible for scaling Peloton through Systems and People. “Scalability is about capacity and capability across each of the key areas that power our business. We think about this a lot across the various teams in my organization – it’s what drives us. We focus on the people, systems, tools, processes, and functional requirements that it takes to execute and continuously improve upon what we do here. Because what we do here is really, really hard! It’s software, it’s hardware, it’s music, it’s live production, it’s engineering, it’s finance, I could go on. And we need to do all these things exceedingly well for an increasingly complex, distributed, and large business and member base.”
In her role as mentor and advisor to other leaders at fast-growing organizations, Garavaglia says she focuses on the same spirit of disruption on a functional level. Focusing on the People function as an example: “The focus of what a CPO has to think about today is vastly different than what it was just 10 years ago,” she says. “There’s a much higher bar on thinking about people programs holistically – using data and analytics, to design your approach – and really thinking about systems and technology as a way to enhance engagement and augment thoughtful programs that really attract and retain the best talent; enabling all employees to maximize their potential and career growth.”
WORKING BACKWARD
Garavaglia says one key element is working backward from the needs of the team, even if that means creating unique programs like Peloton’s Equity Choice program, which lets all company employees participate in equity and choose their own equity vehicle based on preference and risk appetite. Among other innovations regarding compensation, Peloton also holds six-month equity refreshes rather than an annual review – another example of a process that may be industry standard thanks to familiarity rather than necessity or practicality. “It’s a reflection of how quickly roles and responsibilities change in a hyper-growth environment,” Garavaglia says of the equity review. “The process of annual review is backward-looking even though what we’re talking about with equity is a forward-looking investment in personal and business growth. We just felt that the old model didn’t make sense for how we operate.”
She adds that such internal decisions are less about meeting industry norms and benchmarks, and more about figuring out what exactly Peloton is trying to elicit in terms of impact and engagement internally…and then working backward from that end goal.
CORE VALUES
Peloton’s core values were not written just by the founders in isolation but in fact, were forged from a collaboration of team members from all levels of the organization in an effort to define what the company truly stood for. This, Garavaglia says, is an invaluable test of whether the culture being promoted at the top is truly organically present throughout the company. And, she says, “it allows you to really recognize what those shared values and shared motivators and incentives that bring us all together are.”
The company values arrived at via that process are:
● Put Members First
● Operate with a Bias for Action
● Empower Teams of Smart Creatives
● Together We Go Far
Asked about the main qualities she looks for in new talent, Garavaglia underlines two of those values:
“In terms of being biased for action, at Peloton you have the autonomy and the freedom to be able to go out and make things happen, to make decisions,” she says. “And then, regarding this idea of ‘together we go far,’ it is very important for us to have team members who look at ‘everybody wins’ as the best possible outcome of any given scenario. The idea of one plus one equals three is ultimately the goal we work towards and the attitude we look for in our talent.”
THE MOST JOY
Looking back at her career so far, Garavaglia offers two pieces of sage advice:
1) Minimize regrets as you make decisions: “We regret things that we don’t try and we don’t go after, much more than the things we go after that don’t work out. Even when you are scared to take a leap, and I do think that fear gets in the way often, think about what you will regret most – an opportunity not taken or an opportunity taken that didn’t pan out.”
2) You are not incapable of doing something simply because you have not done it before. “Keeping this in mind gives you the freedom to try something else. I think this is a guiding principle that is also really important for managers to think about; because when you break those self-imposed barriers – either for yourself or for your team – you start to open up opportunities that may not have been there before…not only for you but for others, for hiring people that might have more diverse backgrounds or experiences that are different than your own.”
When asked, Garavaglia said it is way too early to think of legacies, but she is ultimately most proud about one element above all: “I have been fortunate in my career, that I have had a number of phenomenal people work for me,” she says. “And I’ve been fortunate to be in the position of impacting and influencing the career trajectory for some of these amazing people. Seeing them take on more, seeing them and their teams scale – take a program that I built and drive it far beyond what I envisioned – that is the most rewarding thing as a leader. Ultimately, and in the end – your legacy is who you hire and how your team operates, succeeds, and thrives – not just while you are there, but even more importantly, when you have handed the reins to the next person. That is definitely what brings me the most joy,” she says.
