Title: Making Culture Practical to Influence Business
Speaker: Larry "SugarBear" Reyes, Culture Curator & Strategist
Description:We know that culture is not created, it's observed in our behaviors that support a cause. Yet, so many organizations rarely utilize their culture potential to support or solve their current company goals. It's more than ping-pong tables and casual dress, it's about employees plugging into your ask and making it memorable. Join your peers in a discussion to leverage culture to drive business results.
Date: June 13, 2018
Time:
11:30 Network & Lunch
12:00 Speaker
Location: SABOR
9110 I-10 #1, San Antonio, TX 78230
Speaker Bio:
Larry Reyes is CEO and Founder of RewardingCulture, LLC, a company culture consulting service that helps fully funded startups and mid-market organizations build culture that engage employees to drive business results. He views culture like a memorable painting, recognizing that it’s not just layers of paint that make it unique and desirable, but it’s the technique that is applied that builds inspiration and drives purpose. Reyes’ philosophy is to grow and evolve an existing culture successfully, recognizing it’s 25% science and 75% artistry in the application, and that’s his differentiator. Reyes specializes in helping senior executives that face challenges with attracting new and maintaining existing talent; acclimating new leadership; improving ineffective values, mission, or vision statements; and elevating low morale. He also has extensive experience within employee engagement, onboarding, leadership development, StrengthsFinders coaching, prospect/client engagement, as well as custom workshops.
Reyes grew up in a family business in San Antonio, Texas that focused on customer service and employee engagement and eventually joined Rackspace in 1999 as employee #14. He is also known as “SugarBear,” a term of endearment by all employees and clients to this day. He contributed to the success from a startup organization to a $1.2 billion-dollar global and public company. Reyes’ tenure afforded him an exciting and unique perspective to a Fortune 500 company with a vast array of learned lessons and interesting experiences. He founded Rackspace University, a diverse program designed around matrix teams for technical, business, and leadership training, available to all employees. He created and delivered an awarding-winning orientation, called Rookie-O, a monthly program comprised of 80-160 new hires per session with focus on values/mission/vision to strategy, history, and culture. The Rookie-O program facilitated in-person audiences and remote locations simultaneously around the world that influenced over 6,000 employees. Reyes mentored top executives to be present and to create strong company communication and engagement around organizational culture and high-performance teams. As the Ambassador of Rackspace Culture, Reyes, was the certified spokesperson for the company and infused the Rackspace culture in all that he engaged. He was requested to mentor clients, and their senior executives, on how to create and enhance their culture while empowering their employees in a servant leadership model. Reyes’ culture discussions and facility tours were also consistently requested by universities, graduate programs, politicians, government organizations, non-profits, church organizations, IT associations, and renowned authors.
Reyes, aka SugarBear, has been featured for his work in in AmericanExpress Open Forum, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, Human Capital Media, and Workforce Magazine to name a few. He has been noted for his work in three books: The Ownership Quotient by James L. Heskett, W. Earl Sasser, Joe Wheeler (Harvard Business Press); Re-Engage by Leigh Branham, SPHR, and Mark Hirschfeld; and recently a contributor to The Culture Book: Volume One - When Cultures Click by Weeva & Culturati.
Larry Reyes is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin. He is an avid student of corporate culture, engagement, and onboarding practices. He is married, has a four-year-old daughter, and is extremely proud to live and support the city of San Antonio, Texas.
