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by Aware
Erin Souza brings 15+ years of HR experience to bolster Aware’s human-centric workplace mantra.
Aware, the leading enterprise-grade collaboration governance, compliance, and insights platform, today announced the appointment of Erin Souza as Chief People Officer (CPO). Throughout her career, Souza has distinguished herself with her approach to building teams and empowering them to do great work. In this newly created position, Souza brings a fresh leadership perspective to Aware during a time of incredible growth as the company strives to achieve its mission of empowering employees by creating more empathetic, flexible, and human-centric workplaces.
As CPO, Souza is charged with scaling a strong culture that prioritizes innovation, collaboration, and support, both internally and externally. She will oversee the company’s hiring and talent attraction strategy, and design a system to inspire employees to do their best work, grow, and develop their careers. Souza will also focus on coaching and skill development to help managers and leaders cultivate high-performing teams. With work and life interconnected now more than ever, she favors a holistic approach to people development that supports diverse employee needs and helps employees overcome unique challenges.
“I’m excited to bring my entrepreneurial spirit together with my love of all things people and culture to Aware and partner with a leadership team that prioritized a people-first philosophy from day one,” said Souza. “The last few years have shown businesses must reflect upon what is important and valued to the modern employee. We must listen, adapt and change our priorities to put people first and foremost to attract, develop and retain top talent.”
“We are so fortunate to have Erin join our team and help us scale our culture as the company continues to have explosive growth,” said Jeff Schumann, CEO of Aware. “Erin’s incredible background and strong people-first mindset perfectly aligns with our values. We are confident that she is exactly what Aware needs to grow and give our employees the support they need to thrive.”
“The fabric of organizations is woven by human beings who have a desire to belong and be part of something bigger than themselves. What greater challenge than to be responsible for the most important part of the business … the people,” said Souza.
Souza brings over 15 years of human resources experience to Aware, with a natural drive to help employees develop strong careers, build a healthy workplace culture and connect with one another to establish high-performing teams. Previously, she was the VP of People Experience at Sonos where she led the company’s recruitment, growth, and engagement strategies and cultivated the Sonos culture across 15 global offices. Before this, Souza was the VP of Human Capital at Charles River Associates (CRA), a global consulting firm, and worked in financial services.
This news comes on the heels of Aware’s recent appointment of veteran Bill Strogis as Chief Revenue Officer and a $60 million Series C investment led by Goldman Sachs this past October.
