Our Leadership

Aimy has overseen Paradigm’s growth from its earliest stages to today. In that time, she has helped expand our footprint with clients and evolve our internal systems and processes to ensure we’re delivering impactful work in a sustainable way. As Head of Strategy & Operations, Aimy leads Paradigm’s finance, legal, people, and operations teams. She ensures company-wide alignment to Paradigm’s strategic goals, manages investment decisions, and is accountable for the success of developing and improving our internal operations.

Prior to joining Paradigm, Aimy specialized in growth and business development at startups, from early-stage education to high-growth tech. She developed her operational expertise as a strategy consultant at Accenture, working with Global 500 and FTSE 100 companies in the UK and delivering C-suite workshops as part of the Accenture London Innovation Centre’s founding team. Aimy holds a master’s degree in Political Philosophy from King’s College London.

Alex is the Senior Director of Paradigm’s Learning Services team. Alex and her team design impactful blended learning programs, using a mix of online and live learning experiences, that help foster inclusion and ultimately drive better collaboration and performance. She also helps clients plan, manage, and execute strategies to evolve organizational cultures and coaches executives on being effective leaders.

In Alex’s role, she has led Paradigm’s work with high-growth startups, global professional services firms, and Fortune 500 companies — she has partnered with organizations including Blackstone, Snap Inc., Kearney, DocuSign, Nike, Gibson Dunn, and Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She is passionate about evolving organizational cultures, developing leaders, and empowering professionals.

Prior to joining Paradigm, Alex spent almost a decade at Deloitte as a project manager and risk management consultant. She organized initiatives such as leadership development programs, succession planning, recruitment efforts, and designed other effective strategies and tools for helping organizations build high performing, inclusive cultures.

Annette brings more than 10 years of dynamic sales leadership experience to Paradigm, where she drives strategic initiatives and fosters a high-performance yet balanced sales culture. With a proven track record, Annette has successfully led teams across various industries for companies at  various stages. Her expertise lies in building strong client relationships, implementing innovative sales strategies, and leveraging data-driven insights to enhance performance.

Before joining Paradigm, Annette led the Commercial and Enterprise sales orgs at Udemy, where she played a pivotal role in building out the Denver hub and co-creating the women in sales Employee Resource Group. Known for her collaborative approach and commitment to skills development, Annette is passionate about empowering teams to achieve their fullest potential.

Outside of work, Annette enjoys spending time with her husband and two children.

Carissa is a Managing Director at Paradigm and leads the Learning team. As one of Paradigm’s Co-Founders, Carissa developed Paradigm’s philosophy around evidence-based culture and inclusion work. She has led Paradigm’s work with high-growth startups, leading media agencies, top law firms, and Fortune 500 companies — she has partnered with organizations including American Express, Anheuser-Busch InBev, Gap, Etsy, Lyft, The New York Times, and Zillow Group. Carissa’s team focuses on equipping individuals – from executive teams, employee resource groups, managers, and individual contributors – with practical strategies to contribute to high-performing, inclusive organizations. Her team’s work includes expert-led training, advising on how to create effective learning journeys, and the creation of tools to sustain and deepen learning.

Before coming to Paradigm, Carissa co-founded PERTS, a research center created at Stanford University focused on the practical application of behavioral science themes like belonging and growth mindset. Carissa was named to Forbes 30 under 30 list for her innovative work on growth mindset at PERTS, where she currently serves as chair of the board.

Carissa’s work has been featured in dozens of media outlets, including The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, and The Wall Street Journal, and she has published her academic research in publications like Nature, Psychological Science, and Emotion. She has spoken at various conferences, including AtlanticLIVE, TechCrunch Disrupt, and SXSW. Carissa holds a doctorate in Psychology from Stanford University.

Joseph Lee is SVP of Marketing at Paradigm. He is responsible for leading all aspects of marketing, including growth marketing, product marketing, brand marketing, and communications.

Prior to Paradigm, Joseph held several senior marketing leadership roles within high-growth tech unicorns, most recently at Ontra, People.ai, and Checkr, where he helped grow the valuation of the company from $350 million to $4.6 billion.

He has long been an advocate and ally for workplace diversity in every role he has held, and at Ontra he helped launch the company’s first Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander employee resource group, All Kinds of Asians (AKA), as executive sponsor. He is also an executive member of Pavilion and regularly serves as a marketing thought leader and advisor for early-stage startups.  

Joseph holds an M.Div. from Bethel University and a B.A. from the University of California San Diego. Based in San Francisco, Joseph enjoys traveling, trying new restaurants, listening to business and sci-fi audiobooks, and going on urban hikes with his wife and their mini labradoodle, Muddy.

Joelle partners with leaders of some of the world’s most innovative companies to consult and advise on diversity and inclusion strategies. She has written extensively about diversity, inclusion, and unconscious bias, and her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, The Harvard Business Review, Fortune, and on the cover of The Atlantic. She has been named to Recode’s list of the 100 most influential people in business, Marie Claire’s “New Guard” list of 50 women changing the world, and The New York Times’ Groundbreakers.

Before founding Paradigm, Joelle was a civil rights lawyer. Joelle’s legal background highlighted the consequences that can result from companies failing to consider diversity and inclusion early, and inspired her to found Paradigm. Joelle is a graduate of Stanford Law School.

Melanie is passionate about building technologies to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion. As the business and product leader of Paradigm REACH, she helps companies deliver world-class, ongoing learning to their employees.

Prior to Paradigm, Melanie developed products using natural language processing and artificial intelligence to help the world’s leading companies quantify and understand emotions, experiences, diversity, inclusion, and unconscious bias in their workplaces. She has been invited to speak about her innovative work at Stanford Business School and national conferences, and has partnered with AnitaB.org  to incorporate workplace experience data into their Top Companies for Women Technologists program. 

Melanie received her masters from Stanford Business School and master’s and bachelor’s degrees from Stanford University, studying technology, entrepreneurship, and music. She was a Mayfield Fellow and a Fulbright Scholar in Italy, where she served as co-principal cellist of an orchestra. 

Natalie is Paradigm’s Co-Founder and the Managing Director of our Strategy team. Natalie’s team of data scientists, qualitative researchers, and strategy consultants is dedicated to helping clients assess, design, implement, and benchmark their diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies through long-term partnerships. Natalie focuses her time on developing new products and services, including Paradigm’s workplace culture strategy product, Blueprint, and delivering impactful work with a focus on research, data, and impact. In addition to currently leading Paradigm’s strategy team, Natalie previously led and helped scale the firm’s Training team. In this role, she helped develop Paradigm’s training offerings and delivered impactful training to thousands of employees and executives globally.

Natalie has led Paradigm’s engagements with dozens of companies across industries and across the world, and has partnered with executives at innovative companies including Airbnb, Box, Capital One, GE, IDEO, NerdWallet, Lyft, Amazon, American Express, Greenhouse, Paramount, and Stripe.

Before co-founding Paradigm, Natalie was a part of Google’s People Analytics team, developing and analyzing a wide range of diversity and inclusion initiatives. During her time at Google, Natalie was one of the original facilitators of Google’s Unconscious Bias training where she helped deliver hundreds of training sessions across the United States and Europe. Natalie received an impact award for her meaningful work with Gayglers—Google’s LGBTQ+ employee resource group– where she organized an effort to bring a group of Gayglers from across the world to celebrate Global Pride in India. Natalie holds a master’s degree in Organizational Psychology from Columbia University’s Teachers College.

As a marketing leader, Nicole helps Paradigm extend its impact and amplify awareness around important diversity, equity, and inclusion topics.

Prior to joining Paradigm, Nicole led communications for mission-driven healthcare and financial inclusion companies, and spearheaded global PR programs for Fortune 50 companies. Throughout her career, Nicole has had the opportunity to promote equality for women in business and the interests of underrepresented groups—she’s had the opportunity to work with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the NAACP, Fortune’s Most Powerful Women, the Clinton Global Initiative, and the World Economic Forum.

After more than a decade in the technology industry, Nicole is passionate about diversity and inclusion’s role in creating more companies, products, and ultimately a more equitable world. Outside of work, she volunteers for political and civic causes, and enjoys seeing as much of the world as possible.

Nicole holds a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from California State University, Chico.

Ryan is a Director on Paradigm’s Strategy team and brings 15 years of strategy development, consulting, and HR management experience to Paradigm. Ryan focuses his time on strengthening Paradigm’s strategy service delivery, which includes refining Paradigm’s approach to in-depth consulting work, organizational assessments, and advisory partnerships. Ryan was also one of the lead architects behind the development and launch of Blueprint, Paradigm’s workplace culture strategy product.

Ryan leads consulting teams dedicated to helping clients build, assess, design, implement, and benchmark their workplace culture strategies through long-term partnerships. Ryan personally advises clients on a wide variety of topics, including implementing effective diversity and inclusion strategies, equitable performance and talent management processes, sustainable DEI committees, change management approaches, and more. Ryan has led Paradigm’s engagements with 50+ clients of all sizes and industries, including private equity firms, global professional services firms, tech startups, non-profits, retailers, law firms, and manufacturers. Examples include: GE, Advent International, ZS, Rue Gilt Groupe, Origin Materials, Vuori, Financial Health Network, Hologram, and Recursion Pharmaceuticals.

Prior to joining Paradigm, Ryan worked for the global HR consulting firm Mercer, where he held both consulting and internal roles and partnered with executives to develop and lead organizational redesign efforts. Ryan also served as a Veterans ERG leader and DEI committee chair, coordinating efforts across global employee resource chapters and ensuring alignment to the company’s people strategy. Ryan served in the United States Navy as a Sonar Technician and Intelligence Analyst, and he holds a master’s degree in Organizational Leadership from Quinnipiac University.

Soyini brings a decade of administrative and sales operations experience to Paradigm’s Business Operations team. In her previous roles at Thomson Reuters and Refinitiv, Soyini supported large revenue, high-volume sales organizations that provided solutions to clients in the financial and corporate sector. Soyini has served as a primary resource for Sales and Account Management, Commercial, and Operations teams to understand order processing and contractual terms, and also help streamline the sales operations and reporting process. Soyini is driven by process improvement, and as an Operations Associate her focus is on contract management and partnering with other team members to support the sales process.

Through life experiences, Soyini has developed a passion for maternal health. She desires to bring awareness to the inequalities in maternal health, specifically as it pertains to the Black community. She believes that unmasking these systemic inequities, implicit biases, and racial disparities will build stronger and better families.  

Steve brings more than 15 years of experience in finance, accounting, and business advisory to his role as Senior Director of Finance at Paradigm. He is responsible for the financial strategy and operations of the company, overseeing budgeting, financial planning, financial reporting, controllership, and finops functions. Much like Paradigm’s important work, Steve utilizes a data-driven approach to make sustainable, responsible, and impactful decisions for the business.

Prior to joining Paradigm, Steve held various positions in a range of organizations, from high-growth tech startups to Fortune 500 companies. Most recently, he served as Director of Finance at an HR Tech company that focused on Compensation Intelligence to address Pay Equity and Pay Transparency issues. Steve holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Management and Economics from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Tess has spent years managing experienced hire and executive recruiting initiatives in the professional services, technology, healthcare, and finance industries. Her talent acquisition experience spans startup, mid-sized, and Fortune 100 organizations throughout the U.S. She has specific expertise in designing recruitment strategies that reduce bias through evidence-based feedback models and inclusive assessment approaches.

Prior to joining Paradigm, Tess managed talent acquisition for Slalom San Francisco’s business consulting practice. She developed and implemented new recruitment strategies, led recruitment process redesigns, and designed and facilitated interviewer training. While at Slalom, Tess co-founded an affinity group focusing on diversity, inclusion, and belonging – a group that was launched globally across Slalom’s 27 markets –  and co-led Slalom’s LGBTQ+ affinity group. Additionally, Tess has facilitated unconscious bias workshops and led forums on gender, race, and identity in the workplace.