In this Employee Spotlight, we sat down with Stephanie Han to learn about her tenure at Cloudera, her journey from accounting to leading diversity, equality & inclusion (DEI) programs, and her impressive volunteer work.
Meet Stephanie Han
Stephanie is a Senior Program Manager in the HR team at Cloudera. She’s been with the company since 2019 and plays a key role in a variety of employee-centric initiatives including Cloudera’s employee volunteering program, talent management program, and both its DEI and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) efforts. She exudes enthusiasm about all the work she’s involved in, is thankful for the variety of initiatives she gets to work on and the diverse perspectives she works alongside.
“Building a diverse team is so important because it allows us to learn from one another,” Stephanie said. “That is very true with my team. We all come from different backgrounds – both professional and lived experiences. It’s been so amazing to be able to grow with my team and learn from our different ways of thinking, ways of doing, and ways of being.”
Making the Switch from Accounting to HR – A Unique Opportunity at Cloudera
When Stephanie first joined Cloudera, she found herself in a role doing what she had always done – finance and accounting. During her time as senior operations revenue manager, Stephanie worked on revenue close processes, financial reporting, and more. However, after she started managing employees, she found her passion for professional development and the opportunity to help teammates grow and advance their careers. She wanted to do more than just help “close the books,” and this inspired her to seek a career change to HR.
She knew switching from a 12-year accounting career to HR would be difficult, but she remained persistent, conducting as many informal interviews with HR professionals as she could. Fortunately, those calls led her back to Cloudera.
“The right opportunity at the right time came up,” Stephanie said. “All the skill sets I gained in my previous role in accounting and revenue operations helped me to seamlessly hit the ground running in HR and program management. I’m a big believer that building skill sets is more important than actual job titles, and I was thankful that the leaders at Cloudera recognized that too.”
Stephanie took a consultancy position on Cloudera’s DEI team in October 2020 before earning a full-time role in April 2021. The team later became part of the HR department and Stephanie welcomed the opportunity to further integrate into areas of interest.
Growing Cloudera’s DEI Programs
After joining Cloudera’s DEI team, Stephanie helped to build the company’s Teen Accelerator Program, which has a partnership with the Boys and Girls Club of America in both Tennessee and the San Francisco Bay Area. This program facilitates opportunities in corporate America for high school students in under-resourced communities. The Teen Accelerator program offers students a six-week paid internship program at Cloudera and 1:1 employee mentorship. Managing this group of employee mentors inspired Stephanie to begin volunteering alongside colleagues as well.
In 2022, Stephanie joined Cloudera’s Ambassador Network, the company’s global network of philanthropic champions, dedicated to planning and executing giving and volunteering initiatives. After serving in this role for two years, Stephanie expressed interest and subsequently expanded her professional responsibilities to include the management of this critical culture initiative. Under Stephanie’s management, the Ambassador Network is wrapping up its inaugural Summer of Service campaign, which supplements Cloudera’s existing annual Week of Giving campaign. Both initiatives consist of philanthropic events and global volunteer opportunities.
“It was somuch fun working with my team to plan our first Summer of Service and seeing Clouderans so excited to plan events giving back to their local communities and beyond,” Stephanie said.
Her interest in expanding her expertise and impact did not stop there. Now, Stephanie’s scope also includes Cloudera’s ESG and talent management programs as well.
“I feel very privileged to be a part of this team,” Stephanie said. “Volunteering as an ambassador for several years was really rewarding. It’s really unique to now have the opportunity to expand my scope and work on this initiative – as well as others of interest, like ESG and Talent Management – as part of my formal responsibilities too. Having the support of our HR Leadership to continue to build my experience and expertise is invaluable.”
One of the other areas of interest Stephanie has taken on is talent management. She serves as a member of the talent management team, which is made up of employees from various HR groups who are incredibly passionate about helping people grow their careers. The team works on succession planning, development plans, and maps out ways to help employees grow within Cloudera.
“Talent management is an area I’m grateful for during my time at Cloudera,” Stephanie said. “It’s an area I took great interest in before this role, and it’s one of the reasons I pursued a career change. I wanted to work with people and help them improve and succeed professionally, and now I get to do that through various unique and impactful initiatives at Cloudera.”
Empowering Professional Development Around the Globe
After the 2015 earthquake devastated much of Nepal, Stephanie, who lives in the Bay Area, visited the country to see the landscape, talk to locals, and try to address widespread needs. Now, Stephanie devotes a great amount of her free time to helping people in Nepal through group volunteer work. Recently, she helped start the Institute of Higher Learning (IHL), which aims to equip the Nepali people with skills to help them pursue a better life.
“We realized there’s very little that wecan do living halfway across the world, but one way we could really make an impact is by setting up a learning institute,” Stephanie said. “There’s a wealth of resources here in the Bay Area and many people are trained in various transferable fields including IT and Engineering. Nepal is quickly developing, so there will be jobs needed in the IT space, for example. We have people in my group who come from various professional backgrounds, and it is our mission to teach and mentor students to help open the door to greater economic opportunities.”
The institute is starting its first English class and hopes to launch technology classes and coding camps in the future.
Following Passions of Helping People Grow
Career changes are not always easy, but after a 12-year career in accounting, Stephanie managed to find a role she was truly passionate about – empowering others to grow and thrive at work while bringing people together through DEI and HR initiatives. In parallel, she continues to focus her free time on her philanthropic work to help students in Nepal and appreciates the ability to weave that passion for impact into her work here at Cloudera.
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