I Am Erika Galos Alioto, Human Resources Manager at Opendoor, and I Am a Parent.
Erika Galos Alioto is a retired lawyer who changed careers and joined Yelp when she only had 15 employees. Over the course of ten years, she has helped expand the sales team to over 2,200 employees. She currently works at real estate startup Opendoor, where she oversees human resources, talent, training and development. These are her parents.
Name: Erica Galos Alioto. Location : San Francisco, California. Job: Head of Human Resources and Development at Opendur. Family: Her husband Joseph; 10-year-old son Dominic; 7-year-old daughter Athena; and Elvis, the house lizard
Tell us a little about your family and your career. Was life mostly according to plan, or were there any surprises?
This is a funny question, because if you asked me 20 years ago what my life would be like in 20 years, it would be completely different than it is now. This taught me not to plan my life too far in advance, because if you do, you will not be open to all the great opportunities that are presented to you.
Since childhood, I have planned to go to law school and become a lawyer. I did it and hated it. I went to my dream law school, got a job at my dream law firm and realized that this was not at all what I wanted. What I imagined was very different from what it really was. I spent too much time on things that didn’t energize me, and not enough time on things that really energized me, and that left me feeling drained and depressed.
Luckily, in law school, I met a great guy that I married and who was my biggest advocate, and he advised me to quit my job and find something that suits me better. I left and decided to join a startup I was passionate about in the mission, Yelp. It was a small company at the time (less than 15 employees) and I approached them and asked them to join. They said they were hiring a salesperson, so I took on the role (the base was 90% lower than what I had done before) and I put all my energy into helping her succeed.
As the team grew, I began to manage, and my responsibility continued to grow. I was asked to move to Phoenix to run the office there, which I hadn’t planned, but we jumped at the opportunity. We originally planned to spend a maximum of 18 months in Phoenix, but we made good friends, fell in love with this lifestyle and gave birth to our second child there. My husband ended up getting his dream job (as an Assistant U.S. Attorney at the Department of Justice), so we ended up staying there for four years.
When it came time for our kids to go to school, we returned to San Francisco to be with our family, and I took over the entire local Yelp sales team, which ended up with over 2,200 people. After 11 years at Yelp, I was ready for a new challenge (and hiatus), so I took a little break, spent time with my kids, and started work on the book I wanted to write. I also started consulting for several great startups and realized how much I missed working with companies at an earlier stage of development.
Shortly thereafter, the CEO of Opendoor reached out to us and asked if I would be interested in leading the People team there. I’ve already thought about this path. I liked the mission of the company – to give everyone the opportunity to move, and the team, so I joined the company and have been working here for over a year.
As Head of Human Resources and Development, I oversee the entire recruitment, human resources, training and development, HRBP and jobs at the company, and have helped the company expand its team from 400 to over 1,300 people.
As for the family, everything turned out exactly as expected. I married a great guy who understands the sacrifices and responsibilities involved in marrying someone who is making an active career. He is an amazing partner and my biggest fan. We have two wonderful children who make us laugh all the time. I was very lucky.
Has becoming a parent changed the way you work?
Definitely. This made me more efficient. I don’t spend a lot of time chatting and interacting with others because I know that every minute I lose during the day is time that I could spend with my children. My children are at the age where they hold me responsible for spending enough time with them. They create problems for me if I’m not home for lunch, and they introduced a rule that I am allowed to leave for work only once every three weeks.
How do you relax?
I love to exercise. I enjoy running, power walking, yoga and weights. I also just bought a Peloton which makes it a lot easier to workout at any time of the day. I’m a big fan of mindfulness and meditation, so I try to find time to meditate before starting the day. I also find time with friends or outdoors with children to relax.
Tell us about the family ritual.
One of our rituals is to ask everyone at dinner to talk about the best part of their day or how they helped someone that day. We also have a thing in our house called FSN (Family Snuggle Night) where everyone sleeps in our bed (although as the kids get bigger and get kicked in the middle of the night it gets harder, it gets less common). We are a rather energetic group, so at home they sing, dance and play a lot of musical instruments.
What are you most proud of as a parent?
We put a lot of emphasis on gratitude and try to help our kids see perspective, which is sometimes difficult in the Bay Area. For my son’s birthday last year, he asked for a few things – an electric skateboard, a scooter, etc. In the morning we gave him some small gifts (book, map, etc.), but not big ones. the gifts he asked for. He was grateful to all of them and never complained that he did not get what he wanted. In the evening we gave him another gift – the scooter he wanted. He was thrilled but surprised and told us that he thought the gifts in the morning were his gifts and that he didn’t expect or need anything else. It was great to see how all our work of teaching them gratitude pays off.
What moment are you least proud of?
There are a lot of them, but let’s just say I don’t deal well with stress in the morning. When I try to leave the house to get to an appointment on time and the kids move slowly and I need to drop them off and then get to work, I can become a different person. For my kids, this is a bad example of how to deal with stress, so I make sure to apologize for my behavior and explain to them that I am trying to get better.
What do you want your children to learn from your example?
I want them to learn that it’s important to do what they love and prioritize their time. I don’t care if my kids are the smartest in their class or go to the best colleges. I just want them to be passionate about their work and find joy in it.
Has anyone ever given you parenting advice that you really liked?
I got a lot of advice on parenting, but one of them stuck with me. It’s about perspective. As a parent who works full time, it can sometimes be difficult to feel that I can give my children the same experience as many other children and stay on top of everything that happens. My kids’ dinners aren’t always that special, and I could buy something at the bakery for a bake sale instead of baking it myself. But every parent makes mistakes sometimes – some mistakes are worse than others. Even with our mistakes, we are great parents, so we should focus more on this. Looking at it this way has helped me be kinder to myself when I drop my daughter to school the day before pajamas.
What gadgets, apps, charts, or tools do you rely on?
For my personal well-being, I use Calm and Headspace for meditation. I use Instacart for grocery delivery when I don’t have time to go to the store, and DoorDash for food delivery when I don’t have the time (or desire) to cook. I use Duolingo to learn new languages. And of course, living in San Francisco, where we are surrounded by technology, one of the parents at school for our children created an app called ZoomX , which is designed to plan and coordinate school transfers , parking and extracurricular activities.
How to balance fast-paced career and parenting?
Parents have had many times when parental requirements prevented them from continuing to work full time. I remember when my daughter was about four months old, my worries about the children did not materialize, so I put her in the Baby Bjorn and brought her to work, and during the meetings I walked around, jumping up and down so that she would calm down.
As Head of Human Resources at Opendoor, I want to help working parents find ways to integrate the two, which is why we have activities with children involved and our team members know they can bring their children to work whenever they need to. Last year, we had several people injured when schools were unexpectedly closed due to a teacher strike in Arizona and air quality in San Francisco (as a result of wildfires). In both cases, we invited parents to bring their children to work and arranged films, art stations and pizza for them. We have had other cases where people brought their children because they did not have babysitting and in each case the team welcomed the children with open arms. When things go wrong, a lot of pressure is released from parents.
The only thing I would like to say to other parents who are pursuing a career:
There are ups and downs. There are times when it seems erratic, but you will get over it. My mom was a single parent, worked three jobs with three children, and received little or no help with childcare, so I always think that if she could get through it, I have nothing to complain about.
It is also important to prioritize and communicate what is important to you. I often think that we are afraid to set boundaries because we worry that people think that we are not committed, even though it is usually only in our heads. Communicating openly about what is important to you as a working parent and taking the time to do it makes it more sustainable.
It’s also worth mentioning that I understand that this depends entirely on your workplace and some people don’t have this flexibility or other options. In this case, my advice is to just try to take some time for yourself every day, even if it’s 5-10 minutes, to breathe deeply and be present.