Payvand Gonzalez has a diverse professional background as a strategic, community-oriented HR leader.
She brings with her 15 years of progressive HR experience in people, program, policy and change management, workforce development, support services, labour relations and HR operations. As an HR executive and partner, she has developed and implemented people and culture strategies at leading organizations, start-ups and global companies on policy, procedure, inclusive practices, and HR systems.
Payvand’s passions started in youth and community programming, combined with the identities she occupies as an intersectional feminist and Iranian, have formed and continues to influence her professional philosophy of holistic HR. Intertwining the lived and personal experiences and perspectives of the teams she supports into collaborative and open working spaces has been at the centre of her career.
Her educational background is in psychology, where she studied counselling and human development at Simon Fraser University. She whole-heartedly believes that one can never learn enough and went on to study ethics at BCIT as well as human resources management and organizational development at SFU.
In building her people and culture portfolio, Payvand also travelled internationally working and researching with different community organizations in the US, South America and the Caribbean to broaden her scope and applied perspectives in diverse methodologies and practices of leadership, community development and the intersection of supporting diverse communities at home.