Entire Universes

Jul 30, 2025
Katelyn Reilly
Newsletter

Hello from Steyer,

As the tsunami warnings sounded yesterday, we were worrying about our team members living in Hawaii and on the coast. This morning, so far, all seems okay—but it wasn’t clear yesterday how disastrous this particular disaster might be. While we don’t use the word “family” to talk about our employees (more about that here), we do deeply care about their well-being, both for practical reasons and for reasons more related to heart than mind.

nasa-rTZW4f02zY8-unsplash

The practical: We’re a services company, so the human beings actually providing the services to our clients are of paramount importance. We want super-talented people (who could be working anywhere) to choose to work with us, and thirty years of company lived experience has taught us that caring, customized, easily accessible support is an essential ingredient in attracting and retaining those super-talented people. We want our talent to have as little admin work as possible, unless administration is part of their job description. That’s part of our value proposition to content professionals and related experts: we’ll handle the “stuff around the work” (like finding new opportunities, withholding taxes, and ensuring regular paychecks without having to wait for clients to pay for deliverables) so they can focus on the work itself.

The heart-felt: Humans matter! People matter. Every single person lives an entire universe. Caring about other humans and their universes is—for me and other Steyer leadership, at work and at home—central to our purpose. So it’s a problem to me if someone at Steyer feels alone in navigating the logistics of an upcoming parental leave, or understanding why their paycheck looks the way it does, or—heaven forbid—facing down an actual factual tsunami.

All this to say, I’m grateful to work at a company where caring about people and doing good business are in harmony. We may not be able to prevent disaster (or the massive forces of the market and what it means for work), but we can check in when disaster strikes and make sure no one feels like they’re going it alone.

Thanks,
Katelyn

P.S. don’t miss our virtual book club event on August 14th! This time, we’re discussing The AI Con by Emily Bender and Alex Hanna. RSVP here!

Photo by NASA on Unsplash