What's the Company Culture Like at SentiLink?

Name a recent decision that clearly reflected your values. What changed as a result?

One of the biggest decisions I made recently was replacing our twice-yearly performance reviews with alignment check-ins. We wanted performance management to reflect our value of “follow through” — making feedback an ongoing commitment rather than something that happens a couple of times a year. Monthly conversations create more opportunities to recognize great work, address challenges early and keep development goals moving instead of waiting months to course-correct. The shift has made performance discussions feel more actionable and less stressful because there are no surprises. Managers have better visibility into employee growth, employees receive more timely coaching and we’re able to make better-informed decisions around development, promotions and performance. It reinforces the idea that supporting employee success isn’t an event, it’s a habit.

What habit keeps cross-team work moving — and how do you track its effect?

One habit that’s made a huge difference is introducing "hotspots" and "hotspot reviews" for key cross-functional initiatives — short-term priorities that are critical to company goals. Every executive reports on hotspot progress weekly, which forces early conversations about blockers, dependencies and tradeoffs. Then, once a month, we review progress with a broader leadership group so everyone understands how work connects to company priorities. The value isn’t just accountability; it’s creating alignment before problems become delays. We track effectiveness by watching how quickly blockers are surfaced and resolved, whether hotspots are completed on schedule and whether teams can clearly explain how their work contributes to company goals. The process also reduces duplicate work because priorities stay visible instead of living within individual teams.

How do you make recognition fair and visible — and what metric proves it works?

Recognition is everyone’s responsibility, not just a manager’s. Every week all hands begin with “True SentiLinker” shout-outs, where employees recognize peers who’ve demonstrated one of our company values in the past week. That makes recognition visible across functions and ensures we’re celebrating the behaviors that drive our culture — not just the biggest wins. Managers reinforce this in their regular one-on-ones, but peer recognition gives us a much broader view of impact that leaders might otherwise miss. We track participation by looking at the volume and distribution of shout-outs across teams and values, ensuring recognition isn’t concentrated within a handful of functions or individuals. Combined with employee engagement feedback on feeling valued, it gives us confidence that recognition is both meaningful and equitable while continually reinforcing the culture we’re building.

Which of your core values most defines how your team works together?

’Deep understanding’ is the corporate value that I see most often in how we work together at SentiLink. My favorite example of this is our company-wide ’Donut’ session hosted every Thursday, where we are randomly paired up to investigate and label real-life fraud cases together. These provide a great way to meet other colleagues we may not interact with much in our roles and to ensure we all have a shared mental model of how fraud works in practice. Donuts are structured around themes related to our new product offerings or fraud research activities, so they also provide an excellent opportunity for everyone to be looped in on our most exciting developments.

How do you align new hires to your culture?

Every new hire begins with a three-month intensive ’fraud patrol’ program that focuses on how we investigate and label fraud cases at SentiLink. The goal of fraud patrol is to master our fraud label taxonomy, which is an important framework we use to discuss fraud cases internally and with our partners. Our program blends self-study and live guided sessions and culminates in graded assessments to ensure everyone has a strong grasp of our business before starting their day-to-day roles. As someone who did not join with formal fraud prevention experience, I found this incredibly effective in quickly building domain expertise and being able to ’talk smart’ about fraud.

How do you celebrate employees who live your values in action?

At SentiLink, we have several channels to recognize colleagues who demonstrate our corporate values. Every Friday, we dedicate a section of our all-hands presentation to recognize those who went the extra mile in their work over the past week. We also have multiple company-wide Slack channels for celebrating wins across our sales team, product and tech teams and other functions. For example, recently one of our new joiners was recognized for being the first employee outside of our fraud intelligence team to receive a perfect score on the assessment used in our fraud onboarding program.