ABOUT ME 👩🏻💻
Hi, I’m Isidora Torres and I’m a softie.
By softie, I mean being empowered by my soft skills which are often underrated in the workplace.
I’m motivated by work that consists of meaningful employee engagement and crafting a work culture rooted in equity, and empathy, and place a strong emphasis on interpersonal skill development aka soft skills aka softies. I firmly believe that cultivating these skills is as critical as any other hard skill.
Spent the last decade in advertising with chops in brand strategy and account management. A Twitter DM changed that and I found myself as a startup operator for the last two years, most recently at Haus, an aperitif company. Solid generalist with a Swiss army knife of skillsets ranging from marketing to product to fulfillment.
Currently getting my Master's in Counseling at Northwestern University (part-time/remote) but super open to freelance opportunities – focused on projects around people ops (less HR, more effective and empathetic employee engagement through workstreams and systems!).
If we can’t laugh together, I don’t know if we can work with each other. Email me at torresisidora@gmail.com
Working With Feelings: Caring For Employees Through Cultural Humility and Emotional Fluency
I recently published Working With Feelings: Caring For Employees Through Cultural Humility and Emotional Fluency. Working With Feelings is a creatively structured handbook that teaches you to both understand how our cultural backgrounds and social standings impact our ability to recognize, process, and acknowledge emotions and how to harness this knowledge to create an emotionally fluent and safe work environment for your team. Using interviews with experts and everyday employees, author Isidora Torres prompts you to increase your own cultural awareness and competency while enabling you to engage in meaningful conversations and create a more productive, psychologically and emotionally safe, and human work culture.
Kim Scott, bestselling author of Radical Candor and Just Work, said "Working With Feelings explains that we communicate on two planes at the same time: one rational, the other emotional. If you ignore the emotional signals you're getting you simply won't communicate very well."
You can order your copy HERE.
EXPERIENCE 📚
Haus
Senior People Operations + Culture Lead
May 2019 to Nov 2021
Fullscreen
Senior Account Manager
Jan 2018 to Feb 2019
Weber Shandwick
Digital Manager
Mar 2016 to Jan 2018
Strategist
Narrative_ (acquired in 2019)
Jun 2014 to Feb 2016
Associate Strategist
McCann NY
May 2013 to May 2014
…and a bunch of freelance gigs throughout.
EDUCATION
B.S. Advertising
San Jose State University
Fall 2008 to Spring 2012
M.A. Counseling
Northwestern University
Fall 2021 to present
SERVICES 💡
Project Management
Identify gaps in workflows and drive workstream and system improvement through process development
Support broader cross-functional creative initiatives and projects by developing and managing agreed-upon client and development timelines from conception to execution
Apply a structured and agile project management methodology across workstreams to ensure efficiency; flexible in using existing project management tools such as Asana and ClickUp
Define and manage business-critical project milestones to ensure projects are scoped and resourced properly; Raise flags as necessary to keep the project in budget and in scope.
Can provide interim support across different functions such as product management, fulfillment, marketing, and business operations
People Operations + Culture Development
Identify key questions to inform initial strategic inputs for employee engagement
Identify areas of opportunity to develop frameworks and documentation for future employee onboarding and knowledge share
Develop hiring process documentation for visibility and consistency
Support the development of onboarding materials for full-time employees and contractors
Support optimizing operational workflows through data collection using tactics such as employee and key stakeholder interviews
Develop inputs needed to develop baseline employee engagement strategy such as employee engagement surveys, emotional fitness surveys
Work closely with leadership to develop company values through competency exercises
Work closely with leadership to develop frameworks and guiding principles for performance/talent reviews
Work closely with leadership to develop internal learning and development and cultural programming to inform and serve employees
STREET CRED ✔️
“At Haus, Isidora made it her mission to build operational frameworks and a culture that truly served its employees. Leading with empathy and thoughtfulness with everything she did, she built out operational, culture, and wellness programs for the team that didn’t just fulfill a quota or tick a box, but instead were truly impactful. Isidora was able to anticipate and address team needs across all departments in a way that made her feel simultaneously like the glue that kept the company together and the oil that made it run smoothly. Working with Isidora is the best decision you can make in your professional (perhaps even personal) life.”
“Isidora is the best. Isidora made an immediate impact when she joined Progress Labs. Her ability to step into a role, get a sense of where things are at and where they need to go is 100000x better than anyone else we’ve ever worked in an operations position. I can point to a 2x increase in revenue since her time with us and believe it’ll continue to increase while she continues to better our business. If I could hire 100 clones of Isi I would in a heartbeat. ”