Reinforcing Our Culture In Valle de Bravo - Cultivo's Global Team Summit
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Reinforcing Our Culture In Valle de Bravo - Cultivo's Global Team Summit

May 29, 2024

Culture can make or break any organization. In the new working world of distributed teams, that’s more true than ever.

But at Cultivo, our team’s shared passion for our mission to regenerate one percent of Earth’s land surface sows the seeds for powerful connections across countries, continents, and oceans.

And while the reality of our business is that these connections largely take place via video calls and messages, the strength of Cultivo’s culture and the passion of our employees is never more apparent than during our annual team summit, where our global workforce comes together in person for a week of face-to-face conversations, team-building activities, bonding in nature, and really good food.

Gathering in Valle de Bravo

In April, we gathered for our third annual summit in Mexico’s stunning Valle de Bravo municipality at Rodavento, a secluded hotel where we stayed in wooden bungalows suspended among the trees. From this comfortable base of operations, we talked, laughed, explored, and worked together to better our business and amplify our impact on regenerative projects around the world.

For Gaby Peña Fraga, Cultivo’s brand new VP of Product and – more importantly – mother to a brand new baby, the opportunity to meet her colleagues in person was too good to pass up.

“I love remote work,” says Gaby. “I think it’s fantastic. It allows me to have my sleeping child strapped against my chest while I'm writing strategy briefs. But knowing that this happened once a year, I just really wanted to meet everyone in person.”

Gathering in Mexico, home of many of Cutlivo’s diverse team members, also presented a special opportunity.

“A third of the group are Mexican. It’s part of our DNA,” says Cultivo’s Chief Growth and Sustainability Officer Caroline Missen. “So it's really lovely, being in their culture, eating the food, and learning a bit about the country.”

For Gaby, meeting the team in person immediately confirmed her decision to come aboard.

“It was just such a wonderful experience to come with a hypothesis in my head as to who I was going to be working with, and be validated and have that opportunity to not only meet these people I admire professionally, but also learn that they are incredibly beautiful humans who are complex, and interesting, and funny, and gracious, and all of these different things. I came away so impressed by the people who work here.”

Many startups feel like they’re rowing upstream. We do it blindfolded.

Team-building activities are designed to inspire trust, improve communication, and foster a more-cooperative working environment. And there may be no better way to quickly inspire trust and improve communication than relying on a colleague to shout coded verbal instructions on how to race your unstable kayak around floating obstacles… while blindfolded. And that’s exactly what we did on our hotel’s lake.

"It was a really fascinating exercise in communication,” says Raiza Rosales, Cultivo’s Finance Controller. “It made us think about the importance of precise communication and providing context, and how crucial it is to ensure everyone understands each other.”

And Raiza would know - she won.

The team also took advantage of the on-property zipline and swimming pool, and then embarked on an adventure to a Cultivo project site, a “parque ecoturístico” full of vibrant alpine meadows and towering rock formations, and a winter refuge for the beautiful and vulnerable monarch butterfly.

There, we hiked the short but steep “Los Pulmones” (The Lungs) – 1,200 feet in two miles – to the park’s highest summit ridge, and looked down on the Valle de Bravo as butterflies floated around us.

The hike was a highlight for our entire group, and for Daniela Olavarrieta, Senior Finance Analyst, spending time in this Cultivo project area brought home the importance of our work.

“For us to really see and be in a place that we work for every single day, it just reminded me that  we're actually helping to regenerate these ecosystems and that our work really matters.”

James Clifton, co-founder, agreed. “Seeing the Monarch butterflies was a personal highlight. I have written and spoken about them countless times, but finally seeing them in their natural habitat was awe inspiring. It’s what gets us out of bed every day”.

A diverse team solving problems together

The summit wasn’t all ziplines and scenic hikes, however. Our team also spent long meetings brainstorming how we ensure Cultivo’s success and do more to realize our vision of a nature-positive world.

And in line with our values of transparency, impartiality, kindness, and trust, all voices and opinions were welcomed.

“Everything at the Summit was done as a full company and team, and we got to work on some huge, meaty issues together,” recalls Growth Manager Luke Tercek. “(Co-founders) Manuel and James are open to discussing the biggest questions about our company as a full team, which obviously carries some risk. But I think it’s great that our leadership trusts us to do that, and it pays off with some great insights and ideas.”

At Cultivo, this type of forum is deliberate, and it reflects the choice made by co-founders Manuel Piñuela and James Clifton to be transparent and inclusive with their team as a whole.

“We wanted to lift the bonnet and talk about the toughest obstacles we’re facing as a company” laughs Manuel when recalling some of the summit meetings. “But I’ll never forget this; there was so much passion in that room that it went very quickly from ‘there are some obstacles’ to ‘here’s how can we overcome these obstacles together.’”

Not a normal job

“There's one big word that comes to mind when I think of the summit: ‘energizing,’” says VP of Investment Partnerships Marta Caballero. “It was the perfect mix between plenty of play and serious work. We really got to know each other as colleagues in a different way, and I think most of us would agree that it really solidified our culture. We talk about it a lot in our remote meetings, but It really comes to life really when we come together.”

Says Caroline, “It was also a great opportunity to have conversations with people you don’t necessarily work with on a day-to-day basis, and to have much broader conversations than we normally do. And it reinforced for me that we've been able to build a team where we have these incredible shared values. I came away inspired to dig in and keep fighting the good fight.”

Gaby left the Cultivo summit impressed, knowing she’d made the right decision to join the company.

“After those sessions where we talked about the biggest obstacles we’re facing as a company, James and Manuel came back the next day and said, ‘We hear you, and these are the decisions we’re making based on your feedback.’ And that felt great, having responsive leaders who received constructive feedback from their teams and acted upon it immediately.”

Rafa believes it’s Manuel’s and James’ genuine passion for creating a nature-positive future – a passion shared by everyone at the company – that cultivates this inclusive and open culture.

“Restoring nature is something we're all passionate about, and we get to be very creative about how we’re doing that,” he says. “Cutlivo is unique in that way, and I think that’s really what makes people want to work here.”

Luke agrees that a shared belief in Cultivo’s vision is what sets the company apart.

“It’s not a normal corporate job, where everyone’s just clocking in and clocking out. Everyone here genuinely wants us to succeed, so the company succeeds. Everyone’s tied to the mission and cares a ton. And that really comes through.”

And after four weeks with Cultivo, Gaby says the shared passion for that mission is already palpable and contagious.

“I came here because the company is made up of committed, passionate, and incredibly intelligent people, in a truly multidisciplinary way,” she says. “I wanted to work in an environment that was not focused on tech for tech’s sake, but was utilizing tech to enable a larger purpose, and I can't imagine many purposes that are more worthy of our attention.”

Learn more about our team and view open roles on our About Us page

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