Meet Gery, our Head of People and Culture in Bulgaria

Our People and Culture team is dedicated to growing the Tide team and ensuring our Tideans have the best environment and tools to evolve and develop in their careers. We’d love for you to meet the people behind the People and Culture team– so first up, here’s our Head of People and Culture in Bulgaria: Gery!

👋 Hi Gery, great to chat to you today! Could you please introduce yourself in a sentence?

Hi, I am Gery! I joined Tide two and a half years ago as Head of People and Culture in Bulgaria.

What made you want to join the team?

The challenge. I felt like I was given 1000 blank pages and a great team to write an amazing story with. 

You head our People and Culture team in Bulgaria, how would you explain your role to someone who isn’t familiar with your area?

That is a tough one, I tried to explain it to my grandmother once and I am pretty sure she lied to me when she said she understood 😃 
I guess what best describes the People and Culture team’s job is that we help Tide grow and expand (‘scale’ was a tough word for granny) by making sure we hire, develop and retain top talents. My job is simply to support and enable my team to do that. 

There has been incredible growth in our Sofia office, when you started there were 54 Tideans compared to almost 300 now! In such a fast-paced environment, what’s your typical working day?

A typical day starts with a very well structured task list and ends up with a messy calendar and a bunch of unexpected tasks that popped up out of nowhere. But that is exactly why I love working at Tide – I never know what the new day will bring.

You have helped the team grow in Bulgaria for nearly 3 years now. One of our big focuses is to have a diverse team at all levels. Could you tell us how Tide is committed to having more females in leadership roles?

Women have totally different perceptions about the world. We wear so many hats and we embrace every single one of them. 

That is why I am confident that a company with more female leaders handles changes much more easily and I am happy that we at Tide are committed to hiring diverse talent at all levels. We support women in business not only by hiring more women at senior levels, but also by participating in different internal and external events, helping other women succeed in their careers, build skills and promote our culture of inclusivity, diversity and #oneteam.

Talking about leaders, what is the best piece of career advice you have received?

In order to be a good manager, hire people who are smarter than you.

And what advice would you give someone who is looking for a role in FinTech?

Be ready to ride the tide!

We have a pretty great list of employee benefits at Tide, what is your favourite one?

The freedom to work from everywhere.

One last question before you go! When you’re not at Tide, what’s your favourite thing to do?

Explore new places, reconnect with nature and spend time with my family. 

Oh and… Any hidden talents?

I do embroidery 🥰