How Twitch Connects Culture, AI, and Community Across Teams
In this episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, we’re joined by Lauren Nunes, Chief People Officer at Twitch. Lauren breaks down how Twitch is intentionally building a mission-driven culture while supporting employees and streamers alike.
From Amazon-powered AI tools to flash mentoring programs and creator-employee connections, Lauren shares how Twitch is shaping the future of work with empathy, innovation, and purpose. This episode is a masterclass on blending community, business impact, and scalable support at one of the world’s most iconic platforms.
🎓 In this episode, Lauren discusses:
The role of weekly all-hands and employee-led guilds in reinforcing culture
Using Amazon’s AI tools to remove admin and support employees at scale
How Twitch connects creators with internal teams to strengthen community
Why HR should build culture like a product—intentional, tested, and evolving
How Twitch empowers employees through flash mentoring and self-service systems
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Lauren Nunes 0:00
So many people go into this job because they say, I love working with people. I think the reality of this job is it's really hard. It's it is about the people, but you make some really hard decisions, and my advice and guidance would be to never forget it's actually about the people and the business and helping the business do better through their people. How do you do that? Authentically and empathetically is really important, and I think sometimes, as you stay in this role, it's easy to forget exactly why you're doing this work and why it's so important. And so always stay true to what you're doing, but also remember, it's to help drive the business forward, and there's a tension in that and how you do this work the right way, supporting people and also supporting the business.
Chris Rainey 1:02
The Lauren,
Chris Rainey 1:10
welcome to the show. How are
Lauren Nunes 1:11
you? I'm great. Hi Chris, nice to see you. My My
Chris Rainey 1:15
daughter is going to freak out and my friends when they find out you're on the show, because we're such big fans and gamers, and I love that, yeah, and most people don't know this, but there wouldn't be no HR leaders studio without Twitch, because I taught myself how to video edit and live stream from gaming and live streaming like that was the genesis of this growing up so by so when we had to pivot the entire business in in COVID when, you know, all of our revenue was from physical HR events we did around the world. I was, Oh, I've got this great skill set that I've never really used of how to build live stream. It led to live stream, create the graphics, build the audience. You know, it's not just about the stream. It's also about, then, how you build and grow it through social media, marketing and all of that is such a skill set that people don't really relate that to gaming. You know, understand the skills that people are developing to be a successful streamer,
Lauren Nunes 2:12
right, to engage the audience and keep keep it interesting. It's, it's a true skill set. So that's amazing. I love hearing
Chris Rainey 2:20
that. Yeah, what were you how familiar? I just really ran the question. I know he didn't plan asking, how familiar were you with Twitch before?
Lauren Nunes 2:29
So I joined twitch in the midst of COVID in 2020, and at the time, my side of one son, who was 13 at the time, and he was really, really into Fortnite and watching ninja all the time on Twitch. And so I was very familiar with Twitch through him, because he he was obsessed with with Twitch at the time. He still is. He's moved from Fortnite over to valorant now, but yeah,
Chris Rainey 2:55
of course, now he's following the trend Exactly. Well, really, the fact that you know who Ninja is, is cool. Because what, growing up, I played with Ninja quite a few times, because he started out in Halo, so I also, yeah, so he, so I used to play, and there was a couple of different teams I played in with, with before he was famous, you know, playing, yeah, but then and he, but he was super early adopter of Twitch, which is why he grew as well as his great personality and the fact he's amazing. So and then he moved over, obviously, to fortnight, and then just absolutely skyrocketed to to where he where he is now. So that's cool. So, so, so what was the reaction from your son when you mentioned twitch?
Lauren Nunes 3:38
Well, so the story I always tell is that when I got a reach out from Twitch about a role over here, and so I went to him and said, Oh my gosh, you know, guess, guess who called me today to ask about a job? It was twitch. And he goes, Well, you have to go, Well, I have to interview. They have to accept me, so we'll see. And so the day of my interview, right before I came on for my first interview, he came in the room and said, Please don't screw this up.
Chris Rainey 4:11
Okay, that's amazing. That is amazing. Have you taken him to the office? Of you yet? Yo,
Lauren Nunes 4:17
yes. Our office, yes, yes. We have a we have a streaming room. I'm jealous. We have a whole area with all the old video games, and it's just, it's heaven for him.
Chris Rainey 4:31
Yeah, we should probably mention for people listening, who Twitch is, in case there's a few people out there that aren't aware I was kind of being biased, given my passion for it. But the people ask you, what is tWitch? What's yours? Yeah, so
Lauren Nunes 4:46
I think that the best way to describe Twitch is, we're a live streaming service. We're a subsidiary of Amazon. We were acquired by Amazon in 2014 we have we started out, as you mentioned, with gaming, that's how we became really popular. But. Now we have all sorts of content. Literally anything you want is on Twitch. So if, if you're into cooking, travel, any, any content, aren't we have a new that's doing quite well, emerging area of DJs. So DJs is doing,
Chris Rainey 5:16
by the way, I am doing DJ live streams to your channel. Oh, yeah. So, yeah, I didn't, I didn't tell you, because last time we spoke, we had just done our first one. And so yeah, we but we're not, we haven't got enough cred on there yet where it kind of keeps you on demand replays, because, you know, you have to build up a certain amount of streaming out before it lets you have the on demand. And I think DJ is the only, only a segment that it doesn't allow you to do on demand after right right on for, obviously, music licensing purposes as well. But we've been this exact same studio that you're seeing right now. We have a DJ set up here, and we did, if we do like four different DJs, and we live stream it to twitch and to other platforms that I won't mention. Yes, I'm really excited. You're
Lauren Nunes 6:03
a, you're a walking ad for me, this is
Chris Rainey 6:05
great. When I first saw you launched that with the partnerships, I was like, oh my god, this is incredible. You know, it's,
Lauren Nunes 6:10
it is, it's a, a great area. So it's, we have 105 million people that tune in at any point during a month, and at any point that you come onto Twitch, there's about two and a half million people on so it's, it's huge, yeah, and it's global. Of course,
Chris Rainey 6:28
my wife still doesn't understand it. She's like, so you sit there watching other people play games,
Lauren Nunes 6:38
I feel like anything that you are trying to become really good at. It's just so interesting to watch other people who are good at it too. And so if it's yes, you appreciate like, there's there's another, there's a woman that I watched that her name is Kelly cakes, and she decorates cakes. And it's just fascinating to watch her do her art and see how she can do things. So it's just It depends what you're into. So it makes sense once you find the person doing the thing that you like doing, yeah,
Chris Rainey 7:09
how do you bring that internally in terms of your culture? Because I know your mission is to create belonging by enabling streamers to build community. How does that influence how you build and sustain culture internally to represent, you know, all of the users who use the platform,
Lauren Nunes 7:27
right? That's so. So that's what I focus on, day in and day out. And it's what, what is really important to me is that we build that culture internally, of building community for our employees. So, so what we are always trying to do within my team is just trying to make sure that all of our people are supported, that there's, you know, no matter who you are, you can find your people at Twitch, internally as a company, and so we do a lot of work to bring people together, especially post COVID, as we've been navigating the post COVID life, just trying to think through, how do we get our teams together? What? What do we do within the office to just make sure that it's creating an environment where employees are collaborating and coming together? And so one of the things that we do that's pretty unique at Twitch is every week we have an all hands, and it's every Thursday afternoon, and it's run almost like a Twitch stream. So it's live. All the exacts are on, and we bring employees on to talk about current initiatives and different projects that we're running. And then on the side, we have a whole chat going where employees can support their their co workers that are up on stage and and just sort of tease them or whatever, whatever you want to do. But it creates this weekly reinforcement of this sense of community within Twitch, and it's got a product edge to it as well. So, you know, people can sort of appreciate what it is we do every day at
Chris Rainey 9:07
Twitch. Yeah, no, I really love that. I mean, it makes sense. That's kind of what you do externally. So create that community, because that's really part of Twitch is creating community, right? Community of gamers all over the world that can connect through a shared passion. You know, regardless of any other race, ethnicity, religion, we can connect through the love of gaming,
Lauren Nunes 9:30
right, exactly, or your love of whatever, yeah, so
Chris Rainey 9:34
Oh yes, or whatever it might be, yeah, exactly, or whatever, is right? I love that one of the questions that we spoke about, which I've always wondered about this, is, what steps have you taken to create a collaborative approach from your users and connecting them internally?
Lauren Nunes 9:55
Oh yeah. So we've, we've, actually,
Chris Rainey 9:58
I was gonna say your game is by. Can't keep saying it now, what do you what do you refer to as a broader term, just creators? Creators, okay, yes, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, how do you connect creators and sort of what you do internally to make sure there's alignment?
Lauren Nunes 10:13
Yeah, that's a great question. So we, we've been really focused on this recently, actually, just to make sure that there is that connection, and that our employees have sort of a deep appreciation for the work that they're doing. And so what you were saying about how you started out, and just it's hard, you know, it's hard to figure out how to do this, how to be engaging, how to keep your viewers, grow viewers. And so we've been doing a lot of work to bring streamers in. So as we're doing events in the office, we bring streamers in, and that we've done sessions like we'll bring them in for all hands. Well, they'll where they'll talk to employees, and employees can ask them questions. But then we do other little things, where we invite them into our happy hours, and different social events where there's just a constant connection and reinforcement of this is who we are here for. Let's get their feedback. Let's make sure they feel like they're very much a part of twitch in every way, and that they're meeting the employees behind the scenes working really hard to support them. So we've just done a lot of work on that, and our CEO, Dan Clancy has done a ton of work of just globally, getting out there, meeting with creators, getting feedback from them.
Chris Rainey 11:29
I see him on streams all the time. Yeah, he literally just everyone listen. He's on he's on the streams, sitting on the so far as well. I honestly, I don't know how he keeps, keeps up when he has the energy, because I always, I always say streaming. I'm like, oh, that's actually the CEO streaming right now.
Lauren Nunes 11:49
Yes, exactly. And he's done a phenomenal job of just doing that. And so then he has a real appreciation for where, where we may need to make tweaks, or, you know, invest further and things. So it's been a really helpful thing to have this push across the company of everybody please start doing this. And we're encouraging our own employees to be streamers and figure it out. So it just, it's this constant push to just drive that connection. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 12:21
would you say that one of the biggest things that lessons you've taken away from that feedback from those creators that you've then kind of used to make some changes, because they obviously interact in every single day they live and bereave the product, right? So there's no one close, there's no one closer to it than them, right? So what some of the things you've taken away?
Lauren Nunes 12:39
I think there's an appreciation for just the fact that it's a lot of work. So behind the scenes, as you're you know, once you've done a stream, you're not done. You need like you want clips, you want to then go to Instagram and other places to just make sure you're driving viewers to the content going to twitch. And so we've been leaning in a lot, trying to help that sort of the back end piece and make it easier to pull your clips, to to do things, to drive people to your Twitch channel. So I think a lot of that feedback on that work can be very time consuming and hard. And so we're working hard on on that as well.
Chris Rainey 13:20
And I've seen that approve improve over the years, because when I start, when I started, you didn't have what's the name of the back end tool? It's not streaming labs. Oh yes, yeah. But streaming Labs is your Is it your platform, streaming labs, or is it because I know you have OBS, but then you also have your own version for the premium, right? But anyway, I just know that back in the day, I use OBS the day, but now you have your own platform which makes it seamless to integrate everything into it. And that's that's come so far. Like, now, like, it was really technical to, how do you grab the RTMP link? How do you go live? Now, I've got to do all different platforms, and I've got to have my little, you know, like chat moderators. There's just so much that go into it that people don't realize. And you've made that really easy. Like, I kind of took a, probably, like, a eight year hiatus whilst building HR leaders, and I came back and I was like, wow, these streamers are living the dream. Now, this is really, this is a lot, this is, this is a lot easier. Yeah, you're removing the friction, right, right for them to be able to go live as well. What about in terms of, of course, you've pandemic, I'm assuming was huge for Twitch, right? In terms
Lauren Nunes 14:40
we're home. They had a lot of time, right? Yeah.
Chris Rainey 14:44
How did that impact the business? Because, like, I again, what everyone was online, everyone was gaming. What impact did that have internally?
Lauren Nunes 14:51
I mean, it was, it was amazing for us, because we, we really had this, this massive uptick in. Folks that either were streaming or learning to stream and spending time doing that, or people like my son is a great example, who just had a heck of a lot of time to to watch their favorite streamers and to spend time on Twitch. So it was really great for us and and for us, it got a lot of people to find twitch. And so what we've been focused on is like, how do we now, you know, of course, we're, you know, many years out of pandemic, like, the height of it, but how are we keeping them here, and what are we doing to keep them engaged? And it's, you know, you it's good to have a regular schedule, as I'm sure, you know, as a streamer, so that people know, oh, Chris is going to be on at, you know, five o'clock, and I know when I can catch him. So just doing that, as people are now back to school, back to work, doing doing all their sort of normal things.
Chris Rainey 15:52
Yeah. Have you ever thought about doing, like a, this is really random, but like an internal employee brand Twitch channel,
Lauren Nunes 16:01
so we have a Twitch channel, but in what we and Dan actually has been doing is is getting more and more employees on with him when he's drinking and so so we are. We do have some efforts underway. We actually also, just this year, launched a streamer club for employees, and we're going to do some things with it, where we have leaderboards on who streamed the most and different things. So yes, like that. We we very much are thinking about that and leaning
Chris Rainey 16:31
into that. I just feel like it's such an incredible employee brand tool. Right Right stream into the platform and imagine, imagine the skills and the talent that you
Lauren Nunes 16:42
already have, talented employees. It's truly incredible.
Chris Rainey 16:47
Yeah, that would be super fun to be able to we should have done this episode with us gaming. That's that would be fun. I've never done that before. I mean, that's what we should do. When I think I said to you when we first met, I was like, I have to come and do that. As part two, I'll come to twitch to the office, and we'll film something together, because I would love to, also love to
Lauren Nunes 17:08
have to give me a lot of notice. I need to, I need to train. Do
Chris Rainey 17:12
you actually game? Do you actually play any games? Or
Lauren Nunes 17:14
no. I before I was at Twitch, I was over at Niantic, which
Chris Rainey 17:18
is famous, yeah. So,
Lauren Nunes 17:22
yeah. So I do pokemon go still.
Chris Rainey 17:25
Oh, my god, that's amazing. Oh, that's a whole nother craze we can get into as well. Obviously, all the jokes to one side. There's been a lot of change transformation. Things are moving pretty rapidly. I'd love to understand more about how you're supporting both your employees and your manager as we kind of navigate the evolving demands of work and their career growth at Twitch.
Lauren Nunes 17:50
No, exactly. It's been. It's been a crazy ebb and flow of things for years now, quite frankly, yeah, and so we've been really, really focused on exactly what you just said, of how do we support our employees through all of this? And then how do we support our managers? I think there's never been a harder time to be a manager, quite frankly, because you really have to. You're navigating things internally. You're also trying to figure out all this external stuff that's going on, and how do I support employees through it in the right way? And it looks very different for every employee, obviously, what they need. And so on the manager front, we really tried to super focus on, okay, how? How can we support them in the right way? And so some of the things we've been doing are are sort of the obvious things in this in this era of, how can we leverage more self service, AI, various things that just make things simpler. So Chris has an employee that wants to relocate. In the olden days, we would have, you know, you'd send an email and there would be Google Sheets tracking things, all of that we've tried to automate as best we can for our managers and for our employees, so that everything is is through automated systems that you can just more quickly get answers to things and using chat bots and things like that. Of you know, what are the holidays this year? Just some simple things that you used to have to go to your internal internet site to go figure all these things out. And so we're trying to just make, on that level, things much easier and much more seamless to get information. And then sort of on the harder front in terms of, how do we actually support employees with what they need? We've really leaned into just making sure, and this is sort of our push for community at Twitch, having we have a really robust mentoring program, and so making sure that we have the ability for employees to pair up with other people who they can learn from. Um, and we used to do that in sort of six month segments. And now we've launched a flash mentoring program where, let's say you're going on a stream, and you need to learn how to do that very quickly. You don't need six months of mentoring. You need three hours of someone how
Chris Rainey 20:17
that's how fast things are moving, right as well, right,
Lauren Nunes 20:19
right? And so now you can we have flash mentoring for employees. Anyone managers, you know, non managers, all can be a part of flash mentoring, and they just say what they need and who can help them. So we're trying to connect people that way. And then we we have guilds. We have eight guilds which are employee led groups. So like, for instance, veterans, parents, women, black employees, Latinx employees. So there's eight of those groups. And so that is another way that we're sort of building community for people to just make sure that they're supported. They can help each other, and then I'm the exact sponsor of all of those. So leaning into those two to just reinforce, you know, whatever support you might need, please let us know, and let us figure out how we can, how we can better help you.
Chris Rainey 21:17
I love that you just, you just given me about 1000 more questions from the AI side, are you leveraging some of the technology from Amazon that they've already built?
Lauren Nunes 21:29
Very, very so, so that that's the beauty of being a subsidiary of Amazon, is the AI tools are truly phenomenal. And so we, very much are leveraging those tools. And was actually just talking with my direct reports last week of how do we do this in a way that we get all of the employees to appreciate these tools and sort of never start with a blank piece of paper anymore, and you can just go on to these tools and say, I need to write a paper about X, help me start this draft, and then you can iterate from it. So we're the tools are just so good now and trying to figure out, how do we leverage all of these things to help our employees just make their lives a little bit easier?
Chris Rainey 22:18
Where are you on the journey. Have you integrated that into the flow of work, like with things like Slack and teams? Is it integrated that way? Is that curiosity?
Lauren Nunes 22:27
Yes, we so it's very much into Slack. We've integrated into Slack. And then it's, it's integrated. We we use behind the scenes at Twitch. We use service now. So there's a lot of their AI tools are
Chris Rainey 22:44
unbelievable. Yeah, it's
Lauren Nunes 22:47
really good. So from from a people team perspective, for like, what I was saying with tracking tickets and things like that, all of that,
Chris Rainey 22:54
so they can that's when you mentioned about asking all those questions that connect straight to service. Now I can draw all of that, which would take 1000s of hours that you just freed up for your team to focus and managers to focus on more strategic tasks and spending more time with their people, right,
Lauren Nunes 23:11
right, right. Exactly even. Even last week, I was I'm planning an off site for my my team, and I was thinking, Oh, it'd be really good to do a finance master class for them on just the things they need to know about the financial sheets and what should they pay attention to in the annual report. Normally, that would have taken me hours to and I was able just to go on to Amazon's AI tools, and in two seconds, I had a really great overview of what I could do, how I could set this up, and it just, it just makes life so much easier on a, like, an hourly basis. It's great
Chris Rainey 23:46
for the mentoring part. Is that something you built internally, or is that external? Because I think that's super interesting, that flash mentoring concept all
Lauren Nunes 23:56
internal. Yeah, we did it internal. I have a very good team of people, and they have figured out how to pair
Chris Rainey 24:04
up by the say, does it identify based on skills? How is it? Is it skills based in terms? So
Lauren Nunes 24:10
you would, as you sign up, you would say, either what you're good at or what you need help with. And then we use tools to then pair that up. So if you went onto the platform and said, I need help with the speaking engagement I'm doing, it would recommend the different mentors for you. So it's, it's a game
Chris Rainey 24:31
changer, and then how does it work? Practically? Does that person get a notification and they can choose whoever to accept to do it like? What is that right? What does that part look
Lauren Nunes 24:39
like? Right? Exactly. So it would, it would normally say, Hey, Chris, you know, Johnny can can help you. And then you would, you would then connect through there, but yes, it would give you recommendations of people that have that skill set
Chris Rainey 24:55
that's so interesting. I think that's also part of like, if you have a is it hybrid? All in office is combination. We are generally hybrid. Yes, amazing. So I think one of the things that you're doing there is that cross pollination of diversity of thought and skills and perspective for people that wouldn't normally connect, right? I think that's so interesting. You get to meet people from different parts of the business that perhaps you wouldn't have before, and I can say I've mentored in the past, I get just as much back, right? Yeah, I just
Lauren Nunes 25:31
want to put that
Chris Rainey 25:34
out there, because it sounds like a one whenever you when I first came I heard of mentoring. I thought, oh, it's going to take a lot of my time and energy. I thought, actually, I'm learning a lot from this journey,
Lauren Nunes 25:45
right, right? I know, selfishly, I love doing it, because it gives me so much insight into what people are thinking about, what they're struggling with. It's, you know, I learn a ton about jobs I don't like what you were saying that I don't have exposure to normally. So I yeah, I think it's great as a mentor.
Chris Rainey 26:03
Yeah. What are you most excited about as we look forward for the next six or 12 months? Because you got so many great
Lauren Nunes 26:11
things. I mean, there's so many things going on. The first thing is, what you touched on at the beginning? I love this connection that we have that's stronger with our creators, and just making sure that that's really, really strong, both internally and externally, and that that's happening. And then I think the other thing, and you probably hear this all the time that so I don't want to sound cliche, but I am really excited about AI. I think just the ability for it to make people's lives better and easier, and to focus on the things they really want to be focusing on. I just think it has so much potential. I just feel like as I think about my career and some of the changes I've seen, you know, this will age me, but going back to the internet days and seeing how that grew, and you don't even think twice about using it now. I think we are living through this really incredible period of work where it's, it's just going to be a complete and total game changer. And we're, we're living through it and getting to lead through it, which I think is really exciting, yeah,
Chris Rainey 27:19
like, you're right. We're like, almost at the beginning of, kind of like when you when the internet first came out, and we kind of lived through that, and it was crazy to see this is to see that happen, I feel like AI is going to be even more impactful than the even the the internet was, and how it's going to re shape the way we work and live, and every single there's not one thing isn't going to be impacted by AI, right? And that's and that's kind of the the interesting part of it. I had a funny moment last night with my six year old daughter. She came into the the into my office, and said, Daddy, what's this? And she gave me a CD, a DVD. She didn't know where. She didn't know what it was. It was in one of her books. So at the back of one of her books, it was like, Oh, here's like, a CD so you can listen to the book. And she was like, it was an old book that we had, right? And she had no idea what a CD was. And I just one, I felt really old in that moment, right? But secondly, I was like, wow. Like, she's gonna grow up within the AI era where that's just expected. Like, what makes
Lauren Nunes 28:32
you not gonna know anything different? Right? Yeah, right. She's not gonna
Chris Rainey 28:35
know any different. She's not gonna remember cassette tapes and CDs. I couldn't I thought she was joking. She had no idea what's this thing like. And I was like, that's a CD. She's like, what's that? I was like, Oh, my God, what does that do? Yeah, because we haven't had one, yeah. So funny.
Lauren Nunes 28:53
I was, I was, we were on a vacation several, many years ago, I guess now, with my son when he was, I don't know, eight or so, and we were in a taxi, and the taxi to roll down the window, you had to roll,
Chris Rainey 29:08
oh, the handle, the handle, yeah.
Lauren Nunes 29:10
Then my son did sort of the same thing, like, how do I get the window down? It's the thing. And he said, Where's the he said, what is that? Physically roll those, yeah, but he had ever been in a car that didn't have the electric.
Chris Rainey 29:27
That's what I love about kids, right? Because they don't have that, those backpacks of beliefs yet, like you know, that we picked up along the way. So a similar example related to our conversation around work, probably, like a month ago, my daughter asked me, Why do you go to work? As in, why is work a place that you go to? Uh huh? And I was like, What do you mean? She's like, Well, why do you why do you do Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and then Saturday, Sunday, you don't shut up. Why? Right, right. I'm just like. Why does work need a place that you go to? It makes sense, right? From her perspective, she's like, she doesn't understand that it was shaped by the Industrial Revolution, and this is kind of how it happened and like, so she's kind of just like, sees work as a set of tasks and as opposed to a location, right? All right,
Lauren Nunes 30:21
go somewhere.
Chris Rainey 30:23
She was really genuinely so confused, of like, why is work somewhere you go? And I was like, wow. Like, that's true. Like, when I think by the time she grows up, that's going to be so foreign that, so you're telling me, Dad, when you were you used to have to go to a physical place, and then you had this hierarchy in the business. You know, definitely weren't talking about skills based organizations back when we started. Imagine how foreign that's going to be to our kids when they're really a lot. I know right?
Lauren Nunes 30:53
Take being around kids sometimes to go, Yeah, great question. I don't know.
Chris Rainey 30:57
And that's what I said, by the way. I was like, Danny needs to be in the studios because it's quiet. That was my that was my very Yeah. That was my response on Yeah, and on the AI piece where, where do you see this in terms of how it's going to enhance your, your culture moving forward, and also your your creators.
Lauren Nunes 31:19
I from a culture perspective. I just think it will enable people to share more easily. You can get information more easily. So I think all the things we were just talking about with the ability to get information quickly and easily, and you don't have to have as much sort of, I've been around and so I know these things, kind of knowledge,
Chris Rainey 31:45
knowledge hoarders,
Lauren Nunes 31:47
yes, I think it frees up everybody. I think things a lot more just accessible, no matter who you
Chris Rainey 31:55
are. Democratizes it, right? Access to information and it's equitable,
Lauren Nunes 32:00
right, right? So I think in that sense, it it helps culturally with just having all that information accessible. And then I think also culturally, it gets people focused on the tasks that they want to be focused on, and enables them to spend the time on doing value added things that they want to be doing, and, yeah, working on. So I think that helps. And then for creators, it's, it's a whole new, you know, who knows? I just think it's fascinating to see what people are doing with it and how they're experimenting. And I just, we're seeing a lot more V tubers and that we
Chris Rainey 32:41
have to probably explain to people what V tubers are. I doubt anyone listening right now. I know what that is, but maybe explain that very
Lauren Nunes 32:50
quickly. Now you're gonna this is my very bad explanation of what a V tuber is, but it's essentially the engineers will kill me if they hear this. But it's my version is. It's just like a cartoon version of whoever you want to be talking and doing the stream, and so you and I could be having the same conversation as you know, yeah.
Chris Rainey 33:14
Hats, yeah, exactly. Yeah,
Lauren Nunes 33:16
right. And just using that to to do your
Chris Rainey 33:23
stream is amazing. Now, right like, if anyone like, use Zoom, or even Apple, when you do like a FaceTime, you can put cat ears on yourself. Or, right now, with AI, you can create an entire background persona and and sitting, sitting there in your, you know, how streaming, but you've created an entire AI character, and there are huge streamers on Twitch that I've done that, and no one knows who they are, and they've created these huge brands and profiles, and it's leveraging AI to generate that in real time whilst they're live, which is unbelievable to even think that's that's even a thing, and even it's even integrated into the chat, so someone says a certain thing, or someone subscribes, then the character does a certain thing, and things happen on the screen. So and that's just the beginning, right? So I know
Lauren Nunes 34:16
that, that's why I say it's just who knows you and I could be talking next year, and it'll
Chris Rainey 34:21
be two avatars, two of AI, it just be your agent and my agent having a chat on the show. You won't know. You won't you have no I mean, that's kind of I think the interesting thing is, where do the lines blur? Right? Because, you know, right now it's gotten so good, you don't know if it's actually the person talking. I've created my own AI avatar, and it's based on a freed scan of me, and it's got my voice, yeah, HR leaders and I could put content out every day and just feed the feed. It scripts, it does, and it also does all the editing, right? So, like, what will take hours I can do in session? Tokens and but I just don't feel comfortable putting that I just, I think until platforms like LinkedIn and others have, like, an AI disclaimer or some type of like some platforms do, I think Facebook already has it, Instagram and others like, there needs to be some distinction, because someone could just clone my voice, and it's very easy. I could take your voice from this conversation and clone a complete avatar of you, and you people have no idea so that. So until that gets a bit, until we get a bit further, I'm not comfortable. My team's like, we could create amazing content, Chris, I'm like, not yet. We're not there. We actually, I actually I actually created one the other day with David that ever his voice. He was my favorite. You know, grew up watching his documentaries, a massive fan, and I made it. I trained it on his voice. It was perfect. And it was talking about the future of work in HR and David Atlas, never na. He's one of those famous voices in the world, right for watching his nature. His nature documentary, and he was talking about the future of work, and these are the top trends in HR. It was unbelievable. I really, really want to put this out, but I just can't, because it's unethical,
Lauren Nunes 36:12
right? And that's the thing. There's there's just all the ethical issues that do it do need to be worked out. Of course.
Chris Rainey 36:21
Yeah, a couple of questions, quick fire before I let you go. Yeah, what some of your passions and hobbies outside the office? Well,
Lauren Nunes 36:28
so I I'll do start with a random one that I love, random ones. Well, yeah, so one of the random ones, I've been doing this since 2015 so it's actually going on 10 years now, do you know what Poshmark is? Posh what Poshmark? No, you. So it's, it's a reselling service so you can, like, resell your clothes, your shoes. Okay, so I've done that for years. I have hundreds and 1000s of followers, so I do it
Chris Rainey 37:00
very Yes, oh my god. So this is your secret little twitch persona outside
Lauren Nunes 37:07
thing I do. But I always joke with my family, like, if it's not nailed down, I am putting it on Poshmark, and we are selling this thing
Chris Rainey 37:13
interesting. Do you know, like in the UK, is it like Vinted?
Lauren Nunes 37:17
Yes, yes, it's exactly. It's very similar. Or Vesti air,
Chris Rainey 37:21
which, yeah, I actually interviewed vintage Chief People Officer. Oh, yeah, yeah. So, okay, that's a similar thing. Basically, is it like, Is it high end, or is it, or
Lauren Nunes 37:30
is it broad? It can be, it can be, it can be, whatever, but, yeah, oh, but
Chris Rainey 37:34
you can get followers as well. You get followers, yeah. So they've kind of like gamified it in it. Ah, that's, yeah, I love that.
Lauren Nunes 37:44
It's a twist on the community thing you have followers well, that say, you know, check out Lauren's whatever.
Chris Rainey 37:51
So much. This is amazing. No, I love stuff like this, yeah. And
Lauren Nunes 37:56
then other things are more normal hobbies. I just I, I love going to the gym. I love hiking. So just, you know, I live in California, so I get to take advantage of hiking things like that.
Chris Rainey 38:08
Nice. I actually, I'm doing a new series called in motion, where I spend a day with CHROs, doing some physical activities whilst doing interviews. So my next one coming up is with Unilever CHRO, and she's going to be, I'm going to her home in Amsterdam, and she's going to be teaching me a Yo, teaching me yoga. And so she's massively into yoga. And she was like, Okay, come to my house. I was like, oh, what? Oh, yeah, cool. Go into Amsterdam and we're going to do a yoga class. We say, Oh, I get on. And we're going to do an interview while somehow do an interview. Yeah, we did it during the pandemic. It was really fun. I did, like, downhill mountain biking with CHROs. I done like, just, like I went through, like, just, like a mindfulness walk through the forest and another episode. It was really cool. Like, because we couldn't, because we couldn't meet indoors, so, so I was like, Let's Get outside and and do some stuff. So I'm excited. Well, maybe we have to do something together. Yeah. Well, exactly, that'd be
Lauren Nunes 39:10
fun. We'll sell we'll sell jeans together.
Chris Rainey 39:13
You teach me. I'll teach you. You do that, and I'll teach you some gaming. So I'd be like, exactly, that's a little hybrid episode of doing that. How, how do you think your your your son? You said your son, right? Or you have one kid or two kids. How do you think your son would describe what you do for a living?
Lauren Nunes 39:33
He Well, now he's older, so he has a better sense of it. I think initially he thought I was running Twitch, you know. So I love that. I was super, super cool. Now I'm sort of cool, like I'm still connected I'm with Twitch, but he understands now that I'm, you know, I'm running people and not running all of Twitch that Dan's doing that. So he gets that now, yeah. Yeah. He just thinks I have a job where I talk a whole heck of a lot. That's
Chris Rainey 40:04
normally the response, right? Like, yeah. But the problem is now you're in this kind of no win situation. If you leave Twitch, you're no longer to call mom say, right, right.
Lauren Nunes 40:14
I know. What could I possibly go do? I went
Chris Rainey 40:16
from the antech with Pokemon to twitch like, you're kind of hurt. It's hard. It's gonna get hard now. I
Lauren Nunes 40:24
feel like, now I'd have to go work for Porsche or something, you know, as he's getting older. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 40:29
it's like, what next, Mom, listen, honestly, I've really enjoyed the conversation so much before I let you go for those HR leaders of tomorrow that are going to be sitting in your seat one day, what advice would you give to those individuals? And then we'll say goodbye.
Lauren Nunes 40:48
I think that this job, so many people go into this job because they say, I love working with people. And I think the reality of this job is it's really hard. It's it is about the people, but you make some really hard decisions, and my advice and guidance would be to never forget it's actually about the people and the business and helping the business do better through their people. And how, how do you do that? How do you do that authentically and empathetically is is really important. And I think sometimes, as you stay in this role, it's it's easy to forget exactly why you're doing this work and why it's so important. And so I would just say, like, always stay true to what you're doing, but also remember it's to help drive the business forward. And there's a tension in that, and how you do this work the right way, supporting people and also supporting the business.
Chris Rainey 41:52
Amazing. No, I agree. I agree. Well, listen, thanks so much for coming on. Next time I see you, I want to be gaming in the office. This is amazing. I will hold you this. We make it happen, but it was so much fun, and I wish you all the best until next week.
Lauren Nunes 42:05
Thank you. You too, Chris, you.
More from the HR Leaders Podcast
Lauren Nunes, Chief People Officer at Twitch.