Shelby Bascom is the People Ops Manager at Jellyfish, based in Boston. We sat down with Shelby to talk about the evolving role of People Ops, her mentors, and DE&I strategies! 

Q: Who is Shelby Bascom? How did you get to where you are in your career focusing on DE&I?

Shelby: HR fell into my lap. I was an office administrator for a company that worked with children with special needs. They were shutting down their office in West Roxbury at the time, and they had an opening within their corporate HR office in Randolph, MA. So I jumped into that role, and once I started, I just fell in love with it.

Q: Who has been a DE&I mentor for you throughout your career?

Shelby: Tasha Kitty, former Chief People Officer at Panorama Education is someone I consider to be a mentor. She always said, ‘lead from the front.’ Why did she say that? HR typically is known as a department that operates behind closed doors, and since the COVID-19 pandemic, HR is now a department that is on the forefront of decision-making within a business. She always encouraged me to ‘lead from the front’ especially when it comes to DE&I - be a leader and an example for others within the company.

Q: What organizations do you see doing a great job with DE&I?

Shelby: I don’t think any organization is doing it perfectly because each company has its set of challenges when it comes to DE&I. I would say that newer companies in general are doing it well because they are actively thinking about integrating DE&I into all of their processes from Day 1. However, I do think that HubSpot is a leader when it comes to DE&I in the Boston area because they are constantly promoting new employee resource groups and aren’t afraid to make public statements about what’s happening in the world.

Shelby: We are still relatively new as a company and we grew from 50 to 100 employees at the end of 2021 so we are still in our “honeymoon phase” when it comes to DE&I. However, we’ve been starting to think about how to incorporate DE&I into everything we do. I’m excited to work on our DE&I strategy in the new year, but it will be challenging to balance the DE&I strategy with our rapid growth.

Q: What DE&I initiatives are you looking forward to bringing to Jellyfish employees? 

Shelby: There are few things that I’m excited to implement for Jellyfish employees. First would be employee resource groups. So far, we had an employee who wanted to start a #jellyfish-of-color Slack channel to bring a sense of community. I’m looking forward to this group migrating into a formal ERG within the company. I’m also looking forward to bringing DE&I programming to Jellyfish employees so that they can learn “how to be an ally” especially within the engineering industry which has been so white-male dominated. Furthermore, I hope that we can integrate DE&I into more of our policies and practices such as hiring new talent.

Q: What are your 2022 DE&I goals at Jellyfish?

Shelby: As Jellyfish continues to grow as a company, I want to ensure that we have a strong sense of community throughout 2022 so that is something that will be at the forefront of my mind as a people ops leader. I want to actively develop our DE&I strategy and work with Jellyfish’s executive team to ensure that DE&I is part of every conversation - whether it’s manager conversations, policies, or even vendors that we collaborate with. I want DE&I to be embedded within our culture - for us to think about how we can make sure every voice is represented in the conversation, from veterans to parents to the LGBTQ community to remote workers and so much more.

Shelby Bascom is the People Ops Manager at Jellyfish, based in Boston. We sat down with Shelby to talk about the evolving role of People Ops, her mentors, and DE&I strategies! 

Q: Who is Shelby Bascom? How did you get to where you are in your career focusing on DE&I?
Shelby: HR fell into my lap. I was an office administrator for a company that worked with children with special needs. They were shutting down their office in West Roxbury at the time, and they had an opening within their corporate HR office in Randolph, MA. So I jumped into that role, and once I started, I just fell in love with it.

Q: Who has been a DE&I mentor for you throughout your career?
Shelby: Tasha Kitty, former Chief People Officer at Panorama Education is someone I consider to be a mentor. She always said, ‘lead from the front.’ Why did she say that? HR typically is known as a department that operates behind closed doors, and since the COVID-19 pandemic, HR is now a department that is on the forefront of decision-making within a business. She always encouraged me to ‘lead from the front’ especially when it comes to DE&I - be a leader and an example for others within the company.

Q: What organizations do you see doing a great job with DE&I?
Shelby: I don’t think any organization is doing it perfectly because each company has its set of challenges when it comes to DE&I. I would say that newer companies in general are doing it well because they are actively thinking about integrating DE&I into all of their processes from Day 1. However, I do think that HubSpot is a leader when it comes to DE&I in the Boston area because they are constantly promoting new employee resource groups and aren’t afraid to make public statements about what’s happening in the world.

Q: How is Jellyfish thinking about DE&I?
Shelby: We are still relatively new as a company and we grew from 50 to 100 employees at the end of 2021 so we are still in our “honeymoon phase” when it comes to DE&I. However, we’ve been starting to think about how to incorporate DE&I into everything we do. I’m excited to work on our DE&I strategy in the new year, but it will be challenging to balance the DE&I strategy with our rapid growth.

Q: What DE&I initiatives are you looking forward to bringing to Jellyfish employees? 
Shelby: There are few things that I’m excited to implement for Jellyfish employees. First would be employee resource groups. So far, we had an employee who wanted to start a #jellyfish-of-color Slack channel to bring a sense of community. I’m looking forward to this group migrating into a formal ERG within the company. I’m also looking forward to bringing DE&I programming to Jellyfish employees so that they can learn “how to be an ally” especially within the engineering industry which has been so white-male dominated. Furthermore, I hope that we can integrate DE&I into more of our policies and practices such as hiring new talent.

Q: What are your 2022 DE&I goals at Jellyfish?
Shelby: As Jellyfish continues to grow as a company, I want to ensure that we have a strong sense of community throughout 2022 so that is something that will be at the forefront of my mind as a people ops leader. I want to actively develop our DE&I strategy and work with Jellyfish’s executive team to ensure that DE&I is part of every conversation - whether it’s manager conversations, policies, or even vendors that we collaborate with. I want DE&I to be embedded within our culture - for us to think about how we can make sure every voice is represented in the conversation, from veterans to parents to the LGBTQ community to remote workers and so much more.

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Shelby Bascom, People Ops Leader at Jellyfish, talks about the evolving role of People Ops and her DE&I strategies for 2022

DE&I Leader Spotlight: Shelby Bascom of Jellyfish

Tue Jan 18 2022

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