HR Changes Lives: A Conversation with Sarah Steinbach
Working In HR At A Mission-Driven Organization: A One-on-One Interview With Sarah Steinbach at Progyny
What if I told you that your job in HR has the potential to change someone’s life, not only at work, but in their own family?
Sarah Steinbach knows all about that.
Sarah began her journey in HR at fashion/beauty retail companies, acting as the HR Coordinator (and admin to the Head of HR for retail) at Ralph Lauren, an HR Coordinator and Recruiter for Revlon, an HR Generalist at Boots, and at an HR role at West Elm. She learned in these roles how to work within big companies with large team sizes (up to 4 people for just the recruiting team!).
While Sarah used to recruit and hire designers for specific projects, she has since moved on from retail to other HR endeavors, and at her current company, Progyny, Sarah recruits and hires the team of people to provide care and expertise on fertility and family building options for anyone who needs the support to parenthood.
Sarah is the current Director of Recruitment and People for Progyny, a fertility benefits company that provides the fertility and family building care for employees at large companies, located in New York. Here is a little background on Progyny:
Progyny launched its fertility benefits in 2016 with five clients, and today it has grown to 180 clients, covering 2.7M lives. This means people have access to the necessary family building care they need in order to fulfill their dream of parenthood.
Their mission is to make any member’s dream of parenthood come true through a healthy, timely, and supported fertility and family building journey.
As the Director of Recruitment and People, Sarah is responsible for recruiting Patient Care Advocates, who are experts on fertility and customer service, as well as the rest of the Progyny team. These positions require not only technical skills, but communication skills, since much of their job connects people with their fertility and family building options in a friendly, comforting manner. Beyond the advocates, Sarah has also hired the Finance team, Sales team, Marketing team, Legal team, and more. The roles that run the Progyny machine.
When Sarah started at Progyny, there were 60-65 employees. Now, there are 220-225 people working hard to give families a chance to start or continue their own growth.
I think about the work that Sarah does to recruit her employees, in order for Progyny to impact as many families as possible. I also often associate HR work with people operations and making sure that the internal employee team runs smoothly. What I hadn’t thought of before our conversation was the sheer importance of a quality HR team to hire the company culture and make a mission-driven company accessible to people.
I see so much power in the responsibility to build a company that offers support to people and families. Sarah gets to be the first person who looks at candidates to see if they fit into the Progyny culture and overall employee team. As someone who is looking into the world of HR, but needs to feel fulfilled and like I’m making a difference, I see Sarah’s job as a wake-up call to where I want to work in the future: I want to recruit and hire people who will fit into an organization that I believe in and admire. I want to be an active part of redesigning company culture, just by making decisions on who to hire.
I want to make a true difference in my work, whether that be for my employees at a company or being the catalyst for impactful change in people’s lives.
This brings me back to the constant question in my head: What is the difference between a job and a calling?
1. When you are close to the mission of the company, the work feels more important.
With each person Sarah hires and onboards, the greater the chance that someone’s family has the ability to grow. At her past roles, much of her work was more distant than her current job, since she was part of a larger, strictly organized, more corporate structure without as much ability to ask for new roles and suggest new ideas. Now, Sarah actively sees how Progyny can thrive in the employees she recruits and hires, and she can act on those visions with the support of her supervisor. In my future work, I want to be able to rely on a mission of the company to remind me why I do what I do, even when the actual work may be administrative or repetitive at times. Having that mission can always bring me back into perspective of the greater purpose of my role.
2. The impact of your work extends beyond what you think it can in a smaller, mission-driven organization.
Sarah can see the impact she’s making whenever she hires a new salesperson to sell Progyny’s service, and when she hears how well the employees she hired are doing, it feels really special to her. In recruiting salespeople, Sarah has been able to bring in fresh perspectives and people from different backgrounds to elevate the Progyny voice and experience.
This brings me back to my earlier statement of power. As a recruiter, I would have the privilege, responsibility, and authority to bring diversity of thought, experience, and background to a workspace, which Sarah works very hard to do as well. As an HR representative, I would be the stepping stone for any change in an organization, which at a mission-driven company, is necessary for growth.
3. When you get that “aha,” validating moment, you know you’re doing something right for the world.
Sarah has had people tell her employees, and especially the Patient Care Advocates,
“Thanks for changing my life, I named my kid after you.” That is INCREDIBLE. Sarah hires the people who will transform someone’s life for the better, all within the realms of HR. I want to have that moment, and my efforts come to life by witnessing the emotion and joy that my work would bring out in people.
Since Sarah sees the impact she can make on others through her direct recruitment work, she wants to continue this, but on a more strategic level. She wants to expand the company, as I mentioned earlier, and make the Progyny experience special for not only her clients, but her employees throughout their time working at the organization. These aspirations include an internal mobility program, where employees have a system to find promotions and growth within the company. She also wants to improve Progyny’s onboarding process to elevate the training experience, as well as spend more time on Progyny’s diversity, equity, and inclusion programming for a proactive, welcoming environment. Sarah wants to elevate her mission-driven company by making the internal team just as valued and celebrated as her clients do.
Sarah wants to continue changing lives, both outside of her company, and within it for the people she hired.
Since Sarah has hired the majority of the company, she is proud of the work they do and how it has grown so much. She loves knowing everyone at the company, but as Progyny continues to expand, she knows that this familiarity might not always be the case. And that is alright, since the work of HR is to grow the talent for the company, even if that means hiring another recruitment coordinator to help her.
My conversation with Sarah reminded me that my future, no matter what it is, should involve my passions and a greater mission. And her current role is an example for how HR work can and will have lasting impacts on people’s lives, whether that be the employees she hires, the clients she serves, or her own family.
Progyny is lucky to have someone as thoughtful as Sarah on their team.
If you are interested in Progyny and the services they provide, you can access their website here, and if you are interested in working at Progyny, the job posting can be found here.
