Liquid Death built an iconic $1.4B brand by breaking the rules—and they did the same with HR. Instead of settling for a broken system, they scrapped it and went all-in on one that actually works. Now, you can hear exactly how they did it. Join Alice Young, VP of People & Culture at Liquid Death, and Vanessa Kahkesh, HR Content Lead at Rippling, for a behind-the-scenes look at how they executed a seamless, scalable HR transformation.
Liquid Death built an iconic $1.4B brand by breaking the rules—and they did the same with HR. Instead of settling for a broken system, they scrapped it and went all-in on one that actually works.
Now, you can hear exactly how they did it.
Join Alice Young, VP of People & Culture at Liquid Death, and Vanessa Kahkesh, HR Content Lead at Rippling, for a behind-the-scenes look at how they executed a seamless, scalable HR transformation.
In this live webinar, you'll learn:
01 Why 2025 is your best shot to kill legacy HR for good
02 How to lock in executive buy-in—fast
03 Proven frameworks for evaluating HR systems that actually scale
04 Alice's real-world lessons from scaling people at Liquid Death
Guest Bio
Alice Young currently serves as the VP of People and Culture at Liquid Death. Prior experience includes roles as Director of HRBP at FabFitFun from 2019 to June 2021, and Senior Human Resources Business Partner at Riot Games from 2016 to 2018, where Alice supported a large cross-functional team in producing League of Legends and managed employee relations case systems. Earlier positions include Associate Director at California Lawyers for the Arts and Dispute Resolution Associate at the Center for Conflict Resolution, where Alice facilitated mediation services. Alice holds a Juris Doctor degree from Loyola Law School and a Bachelor's degree in Sociology from California State University, Northridge.
Guest Quote
“ We're here to ensure that the business is successful, that we have the right people in the right place at the right time, focused on the right things with the right goals.”
Time Stamps
[02:40] Meet Alice Young: From Law to People & Culture
[04:56] Building HR From Scratch
[06:34] The Big Switch
[13:51] Scaling Culture & Vision for HR
[16:37] Implementing Rippling
[18:26] Advice for the Next Generation
Sponsor
I’m Telling HR is brought to you by Rippling, the #1 rated HR workforce management system that eliminates the friction from running a business. Visit Rippling.com to learn more.
Links
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[00:00:00] Alice Young: In terms of what our HR tools and practices were like when I joined, they were close to non-existent. Part of the, the direction that I got from our, our CEO was prepare for scale, and so that meant we had to make a lot of changes.
[00:00:26] Vanessa Kahkesh: Hi Alice. Thank you so much for coming today.
[00:00:30] Alice Young: Hey Vanessa. Thanks for having me.
[00:00:32] Vanessa Kahkesh: How was your weekend?
[00:00:35] Alice Young: I don't even remember. It's Tuesday.
[00:00:40] Vanessa Kahkesh: Who knows? Uh, probably good. Yeah. Well thank you for coming and making time to, to have this conversation. Super excited for this talk. Before we dive in, I think we gotta, we gotta do an official cheers. Sure. I'm gonna open mine. I have the dead billionaire. I've never tried this flavor.
[00:01:01] Alice Young: That's a good one.
That's a, that's a favorite. I'm, I've got Sherry obituary with me this morning.
[00:01:09] Vanessa Kahkesh: Nice. Okay. Breakfast champions. Well, cheers to this. Cheers. The webinar. Do the logo ling and Liquid Death. Um hmm. Amazing. Okay, well let's, let's get started. So, hello everyone. Thank you so much for coming today and watching this webinar.
I'm Vanessa Kahkesh and I'm the HR content lead here at Rippling, and I'm super excited to have our special guest, Alice Young, who's the VP of People and Culture at Liquid Death. For those who don't know. Liquid Death is one of the fastest growing non-alcoholic beverage companies in the world. They're valued at over $1.4 billion.
And so, yeah, this is, this is a really exciting conversation to kind of take us behind the scenes and sit with the mastermind of people and culture behind this company, Alice. And yeah, so we'll dive into how Liquid Death. Had their journey with making an HR system switch and learn more about your story.
Alice, so I guess we can just dive right in. I'd love to like start from the beginning. Could you walk us through how you went from being a legal assistant and being in that kind of world of law to then moving into HR and now. Being here today, leading culture and people at Liquid Death, how, how did you get to where you are today?
[00:02:40] Alice Young: Yeah, no, it's not an uncommon path to go from the, the legal space into the HR space. I, I know many fellow recovering attorneys who are for now HR leaders and yeah, I mean. I, when I graduated from college, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I loved school, I loved learning, and I kind of happened to end up at law school.
I was like, this seems like it's gonna be great. And while I loved law school learned so much. It was such a valuable experience. As I started to transition into the the workforce, it was not exactly what I was expecting or what I was looking for, the right fit for me. And so that's when I started thinking about other alternatives and ways I could use my law degree and fast forward in hr and this is where, this is where I'm meant to be.
[00:03:41] Vanessa Kahkesh: Do, do you get any like funny looks when you say you're leading like. People and culture at a company called Liquid Death.
[00:03:50] Alice Young: Sometimes when I first started it was with Liquid dos. It was 2021 brand didn't have as much recognition as it has today. And so those interactions where people would, would be like, what is Liquid death and what are, how those are fewer and further between.
Nowadays, when I tell folks that I'm working at Liquid Death. People are excited. You know, we have so many great fans of, of the brand and we're doing our, you know, marketing and brand is, is really strong and doing incredible things out there. So, so yeah, it's, it's really cool to be a part of.
[00:04:32] Vanessa Kahkesh: Yeah, that's why I reached out 'cause I was like such a cool brand.
So curious to know like what it's like to be inside of the company with that like rebellious. Nature almost. So I guess like when you first joined the company in hr, what was that like? I know that it probably wasn't super flushed out, the HR department and like how has it, how has it evolved a little bit since you've been there?
[00:04:56] Alice Young: Yeah, so I joined the company when we were about 60 people. We've since grown to 200 plus employees across. 30 states. So we've, we've grown quite a bit and in terms of what our HR tools and practices were, were like, when I joined, they were close to non-existent. We were, you know, the team was doing the best with what they had, but like I'm talking, we were, we had one recruiter on the team who's been here since the beginning is like jack of all trades, incredible.
I was having to do recruiting, just using Gmail. There was no, you know, no system to assist with that. And we were doing a really high volume back then. And, uh, yeah, we had A-A-P-E-O that was kind of taking care of the essentials, you know, making, making sure folks got paid right. But beyond that, you know, there was, there was nothing in terms of, you know.
Engagement work or performance management or you know, compensation, reviews, that sort of sort of thing. So it was, it was kind of like. The, they were keeping the lights on. That's, we like to say,
[00:06:16] Vanessa Kahkesh: mm. So then like, you, you join and it was like barely, there was barely anything there. It was kind of non-existent for the, at least like the backbone of like a tech stack or whatever.
So then like, I guess when did you know, you like had to do something that something had to change and, and what were those next steps that you took?
[00:06:34] Alice Young: It was pretty immediate when I, when I joined, like part of the, the direction that I got from our, our CEO and our co-founders was. That do prepare for scale, right?
And so that meant we had to make a lot of changes. And so I really, I tried to take my time and evaluate what was working for us, what wasn't working for us, and as our strategy, short-term, long-term, was developing, you know, trying to think about how I can align the work that I, that our team is doing, that and the people space, and what the needs of the business are going to be, and anticipating that a little bit.
But the first major change came when our contract with our PEO, uh, was, uh, was up for renewal. And, you know, through those negotiations we were not getting very favorable terms. There was rate increases and you know, when you're paying per employee per month, you know, a significant amount. It really adds up when you're, when you're growing, when you're doubling in size, tripling in size, so.
It was at that point that, you know, we had decided it was time to look at other solutions and that's when we began our evaluation of, you know, do we stay with a PEO or not? Which, you know, HRIS do we go with and understanding the. Market a bit more. So that was an interesting experience.
[00:08:02] Vanessa Kahkesh: Mm-hmm. And like when you were doing that like evaluation kind of phase, what were like the key things you were looking for in this next tool to like solve your pain points?
Just so that also people watching this who might be in similar positions as you were like, would have a better idea of like, how would I approach an evaluation process?
[00:08:23] Alice Young: Yeah, so I think it's really important to have a clear sense of what's a must have and what's a nice to have from the perspectives of, of different users of the system.
And so my must haves a nice to haves were very different than what a, a hiring manager's needs and must haves are, or a new employee. And so thinking about. What all of the different types of user experiences are within the platform was something that we really prioritized. And then also just understanding, you know, there's no one size fits all solution.
And so for us, you know, we were, we're a multi-state employer and so being able to support that was critical. Having the optionality to support international workforce was really important to us. And then, you know, we are not an, you know, we're not a tech company. We don't have a bunch of engineers, so we wanted a, a really straightforward.
System that was easy to administer and also simple for employees to use. And then another item that has continued to be a high priority for us is just the onboarding process and ensuring that that is positive one, that's, that's such a, a critical part of the overall employee experience and employee life cycle.
Uh, and so we've, we've really made that a, a top priority for our, for our team.
[00:09:58] Vanessa Kahkesh: Yeah, when you were like making the proposal. 'cause I think like a lot of times, you know, HR feels, or some HR leaders like feel siloed from the rest of the company, but I feel like when you make like a system switch or like you completely onboard your entire company onto a new platform, like everyone is involved, it's like not just an HR thing, but like how do you convince like your CFO and like your CEO that this is like needed.
Especially when like hr, you know, doesn't always have that voice. Like what, what were some things that like kind of convinced that for your CEO?
[00:10:33] Alice Young: Yeah. I was, I, I'm very fortunate that I, since day one our CEO has really trusted my recommendations and has, has valued what? HR can bring to the table, which is great.
And then in, you know, in terms of, of influencing change, one, he knew and wanted the change, right? Mm-hmm. He knew what we had was not a scalable solution. Everyone had felt, you know, the pain of having these, having the, the limitations on the system that we currently had in place. So folks were eager for change, which was great.
And then the fact that our PEO contract was up and we were renegotiating the terms, there was an opportunity for us to find solutions that would, that would also have a cost savings. And so that was, you know, like, we can bring in a more efficient system and save the company money. Like let's do it. You know, it was, it was not us.
Not a tough sell. And also we were a smaller company at that time, and system transitions like this are a lot easier when you don't have, you know, hundred, hundreds and thousands of of employees. So that was one thing that I am grateful that we did early, is making that, that that change.
[00:11:53] Vanessa Kahkesh: Yeah, it's definitely, I feel like easier, like when you do it right away or like, at least at the beginning.
'cause once you scale it's like how do you make that switch? And then even also before like January, like starting off the new year, having everyone on the same payroll, like that's also really key. I think that that's why like, yeah, we we're trying to emphasize too, just the, the timeliness of all of this.
'cause it's like, you might as well do it now versus like wait later and have like a split payroll.
[00:12:22] Alice Young: Yeah, well, and like it's just as important to have a plan in place for, for the transition and to do a thorough inval evaluation. Getting the implementation timeline right can really like make or break the, the change.
So in our case, like we did not have the fortune, good fortune of being able to do a Jan one transition. So we had a mid-year. Transition and that created a lot of additional work for RCM. It created some confusion within the employee base, having two different W twos at the end of the year. And, you know, our tax filings for the year were, were a little bit required.
Some, some additional work on, on our end. And these were challenges that like. It wasn't a one time solve. They kind of lingered like every, you know, few months. Every, you know, a year had gone by and we'd get folks reaching out like, Hey, I, what happened to my W twos? Or, I need my employment verification.
It's in two different systems and we've since gone back and been able to bring over all of the historical. Data, but yeah, it was, it was above the, having the, having the midyear transition would not recommend, would not do that again unless they absolutely had to.
[00:13:51] Vanessa Kahkesh: I was interested, 'cause you said that your CEO kind of like always knew HR was something to invest in, like in the company, so like.
Could you talk a little bit more about your role, like how your role in HR or just like the, the role and function of HR has evolved at liquid death, like, and what is your vision for what it could turn into now that maybe you're able to like, automate more systems? Like, like what would be kind of the ideal situation for you to kind of unlock all of your potential in hr?
[00:14:26] Alice Young: Yeah, no, that's a great question. You know, if I had unlimited unlimit, you had magic resources. Yeah, magic wand. We've been able to build an incredible team of, of HR folks at Liquid Death. That really have their, their own specific areas of expertise, but are also broadly able to pick up different parts of, of HR and, and be successful.
So that's something that I've really prioritized with, with the team is ensuring everyone understands every part of hr and you know that we are cross-trained. Everyone knows every process. We're a small team. And so it's, it's really important that we're able to step into each other's shoes and, and help each other out, you know, so that's been fantastic.
The one thing that we do not have, that I would love to have for the future is a more robust learning and development strategy and learning and development program. We, you know, we have folks who are experts in. Benefits we have and total rewards employee relations. We have two business partners on the team that are deeply embedded in within the teams that they, that they support, really have a deep understanding of the, of the business, which has also, you know, been really critical for our team's success.
And, uh, yeah, I mean the fu the, the future. Our team is largely dependent on the future of the business, right? Like I've always tried to, to keep that in mind. My work, my team's work. We're here to ensure that the business is successful, that we have the right people in the right place at the right time, focused on the right things with the right goals.
And so that's, that's kind of always been our North Star. We'll, we'll continue to be. For, I love that. The foreseeable future.
[00:16:37] Vanessa Kahkesh: No, I, I can, I can see it coming into fruition. Like I think it's, and like it's, it is true. Like literally the people make the company and the business. Yeah. So you are. Building the business as you scale.
The people I think like learning and development and just like the onboarding process is like really crucial. And then that like, yeah, I guess that's why Rippling is trying to free smart people to work on heart problems. 'cause we're like gotta gotta let the people actually do what they're meant to do.
Yeah, definitely. When you like had, when you made the switch to Rippling and like had to get everyone on board, could you talk a little bit about that process? Like how was it like getting everyone set up and then also how did your time like s change, like where you spend your time? I think you mentioned before a little bit like how saved some time with like your workflow.
So yeah, just curious about like that a bit.
[00:17:34] Alice Young: Yeah. So by having a, a system that, that made the onboarding process a lot simpler for, for us and for employees and managers and just overall on the backend administration side of the, of the system really allowed us to have more time to do more strategic HR work.
And so with Rippling and like. The reporting functionality we had, no, we were not doing any kind of reporting on anything prior to that. So that was one thing that we've, we were able to stand up and, you know, we've been able to, to continue to evolve what that looks like as the business has evolved. And, you know, it's something that we've, it's really valuable to the, the leaders within the organization.
[00:18:26] Vanessa Kahkesh: Yeah. Okay. You don't have to feel like you have to give a great, like perfect answer on this, but just like to everyone watching or like to the y to the next generation of like HR leaders and people who wanna like, you know, get rules where they're also able to like shape culture and lead people, what is one piece of advice that you would tell them?
[00:18:47] Alice Young: Yeah, that's a great question. I think it's really important. For folks in the HR space to stay true to yourself and don't sacrifice who you are for a job. I've seen it too many times and it can be really debilitating and we need. We need good folks in the HR space and it's, it's a tough job. Yeah. No matter where you are.
And so one thing that I've tried to keep in mind and prioritize in throughout my career is I wanna be somewhere where I believe in what we're doing and that where I can, I can, you know, be. A part of bringing something to the world that I believe in. And so that has, that helps me get through the hard days.
Mm-hmm. Like running the whole offsite. Yes. And you know, that's fun. That's a fun thing in 2025 this day and age. There's a lot of not fun things we have to, we have to deal with. And so, you know, life is short. Have fun. You know, that's something we all, we always try to keep in mind at at liquid death.
That's kind of part of our DNA is not taking ourselves too seriously and, and having a good time, and having a, having a laugh. 'cause we need that so badly.
[00:20:21] Vanessa Kahkesh: Yeah. No, literally we, we do like in every, every department, not just HR even.
[00:20:26] Alice Young: Yeah,
[00:20:27] Vanessa Kahkesh: yeah. No, that's, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be taking that advice, so thank you for sharing that.
Sure. Uh, okay. Well I don't have any other questions, so I think that concludes the webinar. Thank you so much for of course, chatting. I really enjoyed our conversation and I hope everyone watching this learns something and can take away the incredible journey Liquid Death has had and from you, Alice. So yeah, thanks so much for sharing like your journey and your wisdom to the audience and the community.
Of course. Happy to, happy to share. Thanks for having me,
[00:21:06] Alice Young: Vanessa. Okay. Well cheers
[00:21:09] Vanessa Kahkesh: to,
[00:21:11] Alice Young: to murdering this
[00:21:11] Vanessa Kahkesh: interview. Yes, murdering the interview. Murdering thirst, staying hydrated. Yes. Thanks again and I'll see everyone later.