Welcoming Joe, Laika’s Head of People

As Laika grows, our founders want to ensure the company continues to be driven by our people-first values. The team conducted an intentional search to find the best person to lead our team through this period of growth. We are pleased to welcome Joe Bast to Laika as our first Head of People!

Joe’s background as an organizational psychologist makes him uniquely qualified to help develop our internal processes and hone our skills as a team. We’re focused on making Laika a happy place to work and collaborate. And continue to strive to create a product and services that empower our customers through compliance.

About Joe Bast

Joe is a seasoned, executive leader who focuses on surfacing the best in people and solving hard business problems through bringing amazing people together to build great People processes that support rapidly growing companies.

Jeffrey Reitman, a member of our board, said,

“From an investor and board director perspective, I am thrilled to have Joe Bast join the Laika team. Given our recent growth, it’s clear that Laika’s platform is the market-leading solution in the compliance tech space. Growing the team with top-tier talent while maintaining our unique culture is critical to seize the opportunity in front of us. Joe is key to this mission and will help Laika realize its full potential.”

He recently served as a C-suite executive, VP of People, and Human Resources thought leader and coach. Joe has a background in talent management, learning and development, and consulting. With extensive experience leading teams to solve people, learning, and operational challenges we’re excited to leverage his talents in our growing business.

Throughout his career, Joe worked with organizations and senior executives. This includes a variety of industries like technology, healthcare, hospitality, logistics, finance, and energy.

But we’re not just excited about all the professional experience Joe brings to Laika! Throughout the interview process, it became clear that Joe’s curiosity, passion, and innovative mindset would be a perfect fit for our team.

Applying Joe’s Experience to Laika’s Values

Joe’s emphasis on values driving recruitment and retention resonated with our founders. Particularly as we work to innovate old compliance frameworks with cutting-edge technology and services.

Joe grew up doing homework at the back of his parent’s restaurant in Minnesota. As a kid, he noticed the difference in mannerisms and behaviors among employees and customers around leaders. This inspired him to pursue psychology within the industry. After completing his Ph.D., Joe leveraged his knowledge to drive success at businesses through understanding people and relationships.

Eva, Sam, and Austin established Laika with well-defined values. We look forward to seeing the impact those will have on recruiting and the lifecycle of our employees with Joe’s leadership.

“Throughout my career, I learned how important culture and values are to the success of a company. Laika has a clear set of values, even at an early stage, which was one of my most important reasons for joining. We have a chance to identify and recruit great people to help grow the business. Using those values as the foundation of our people systems will be one of the reasons Laika doesn’t just delight our customers, but also creates an amazing place for our employees to thrive.”

Joe currently resides in Vancouver with his wife and two teenage daughters. He speaks Spanish at home and frequently visits his wife’s hometown of Lima. Joe plays ice hockey (goalie!), enjoys learning in any capacity (books, podcasts, YouTube), and loves vacationing with his family in St. Maarten.