My Lyft Journey: Kaia Klissner

At Lyft, we believe that internal mobility is an important part of our employees career development and our company's success. Internal mobility is a chance for team members to explore new opportunities, develop their skills, and advance their careers without having to leave the company.

Read more about the inspiring journey of Kaia Klissner, Senior Communications Manager, who has navigated various roles during her 8 years spent at Lyft.

What was your path to Lyft?

My path to Lyft started behind the wheel, believe it or not. I began driving in 2013 to supplement my full-time job as an Office Manager at a San Francisco start-up, back when Lyft was still known for giant pink mustaches. After a year of hustling, I saved enough to fund a 5-month sabbatical in Europe with my best friend. 12 countries and exponentially more memories later, I landed back in San Francisco in need of a new 9-to-5. I found my way to Lyft's Careers Page, where I saw that they were looking for a coordinator to support their new hire onboarding program. This seemed like a great match for my corporate experience, understanding of Lyft's brand and product from the customer side, and natural extroversion - and the rest is history.

What roles have you held at Lyft?

Even I, a professional communicator, struggle to condense four different jobs (seven, if you include promotions) into an elevator pitch about my career journey - but I will try my best.

My job as an Onboarding Coordinator evolved into a Team Member Experience Program Lead, where I supported big company initiatives like Fortnight (our all-team meeting), our Recognition program, and Lyft's IPO, in addition to facilitating new hire orientation and managing the onboarding program. Three years in, I joined our Real Estate & Workplace Ops team. When Covid-19 hit, sharing workplace operations updates with team members became an urgent, frequent occurrence, and I immediately raised my hand to spearhead. It was my first time supporting crisis communications, and I realized that if I thrived in that environment, a career in internal comms might just be for me.

From there, I springboarded onto our People PMO team as a Communications Program Manager, moonlighting as an internal comms business partner to our Chief People Officer. Between collaborating on team member engagement-centric projects and helping her pen her weekly emails to the People org, it was an invaluable opportunity to partner closely with an executive and gain experience developing and executing an internal narrative, end-to-end. With the endorsement of my frequent cross-functional partner (and future manager) on the Internal Comms team, I jumped at the chance to interview for an Internal Comms Manager role one year later, which I remain in today.

What are the benefits of internal mobility within a company?

Internal mobility gives you the chance to explore different verticals and build new skills, while realizing what transferable skills you have to apply to various roles in a company. Lyft's emphasis on internal mobility is absolutely the reason I've stayed for as long as I have.

If I hadn't sat alongside the Internal Comms team while leading Onboarding, and been given the chance to flex my writing skills when the team needed an extra set of hands, I may not have made the pivots that led me to the role I'm in now. Having the space and encouragement to make those moves helped me realize the aspects of my work that I loved and wanted more of, and - just as important - what I wanted to ditch, without having to leave the comfort and familiarity of a place where I love to work.

What inspires you to log on and work at Lyft every day?

Let's be real, after 8 years, I don't log on feeling inspired every day; even Tony Robbins would struggle to find that level of inspiration. I love working at Lyft because I'm surrounded by people who make it feel ok to have those uninspired days, and make them way more enjoyable.

Lyft is special in that way; it fosters an environment where people feel encouraged to show up every day as their authentic selves, and hires people whose authentic selves are genuinely kind and supportive, not to mention supremely talented. I've been lucky to find lifelong friends and once-in-a-career mentorship here, and it's hard to imagine recreating that experience anywhere else.

What advice do you have for job seekers looking to join Lyft?

The best career advice I've gotten comes from my skip-level manager, Denise Bertuccelli, who leads Lyft's Team Member Experience team and is one of those once-in-a-career mentors I mentioned. She shared that to enjoy your job, three things need to be true: (1) you need to find the work interesting, (2) you need to be good at it, and (3) you need to feel like you're contributing. If you're at an impasse in your career or just not loving your current gig, identifying which of those elements is missing for you is a good starting point.

If you've already narrowed in on your next move and it happens to be at Lyft (woo hoo!), my advice is to get really clear on who your customer is; articulate in your resume how you've served them in the past, and be prepared to explain the same in your interview(s). One of Lyft's core values is "We are customer-obsessed" - an ethos that guides everything we do, from our company priorities down to our day-to-day decisions. Approaching your Lyft application with the customer in mind will help the recruiter and hiring manager envision you at Lyft.

Last question, dead or alive, who would you like to share a Lyft with?

To end on a sappy note, I'll say my grandmother, who passed away when I was in high school. She was my #1 cheerleader and the most badass woman I've ever known. I would give anything for a few minutes to catch her up on life and, inevitably, be reprimanded for the tattoo I got in her honor.

Interested in starting your Lyft journey? Check out our open roles!

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