Culture Under Pressure
Focusing on company culture is easy when things are going well.
But what happens when the environment changes?
When growth slows, teams shift, and leadership decisions carry more weight?
Across Berlin’s tech ecosystem, many companies are navigating a now familiar reality:
ever higher expectations, tighter budgets, teams learning to embrace uncertainty while hoping for clarity and trust.
It's hard to be intentional about culture when everything is urgent. Ironically, that's also when it's needed most.
This panel brings together founders, leaders and operators for an honest conversation about culture.
Culture not as a set of values on a website - but as something shaped through leadership decisions, conscious trade-offs, and everyday behavior.
We’ll discuss:
• The latest findings from an independent report on Berlin Tech Culture (contribute here)
• The tension between performance expectations and psychological safety
• Leadership decisions that build — or erode — trust
• How leaders maintain alignment in uncertain times
Panel speakers:
Sandra Strauss - Chief People Officer at Urban Sports Club
Sandra leads the people strategy at USC, guiding how the company builds and supports teams across Europe. With 20+ years in HR leadership - including roles at SoundCloud and Viacom - she brings deep experience in navigating growth, transformation, and the leadership decisions that shape trust, performance, and culture in times of uncertainty and change.
Sara Dietrich - Head of Berlin Office at Netlight
Sara is a Senior Manager and leadership consultant at Netlight, where she has played a key role in growing the Berlin office from 20 to over 120 people. She's dedicated to making human-centered leadership skills tangible, impactful, and accessible, based on the belief that leadership is a craft for everyone, not just managers. Her focus is on building future-proof organizations, leveraging Netlight’s unique organizational system of coaching leadership, shared ownership and intrinsic care for achieving business results to unlock extraordinary results.
Loek Hageman - Head of Capability and People Strategy at Bayer
Loek is a People Strategy and Transformation Leader focused on building organizations where talent, culture and leadership accelerate business performance. He currently drives enterprise people and capability strategy at Bayer and is the founder and global co‑lead of MERGE, a multigenerational Business Resource Group that has grown into one of the company’s most influential community‑led platforms.
Miguel Brion - Principal for Employee Engagement and DEI at Delivery Hero
Miguel is a Principal for Employee Engagement and DEI at Delivery Hero and a seasoned Talent Enabler with over a decade of HR experience. He partners with global leaders to drive engagement, learning, and culture initiatives that strengthen psychological safety and build thriving workplace communit
ies.
Agenda:
6-6.30pm – Welcome and Networking
6.30-7.30pm – Interactive fireside chat with the panelists
7.30-8pm – Facilitated smaller group discussions
8-9pm – Networking
Who should join:
Founders, People & Culture leaders, and operators shaping teams in fast-changing environments.
Organizers:
Thunder – a product studio building mission-driven software and digital solutions for companies that want to create meaningful impact. Beyond engineering, the team works across design, product strategy, and brand to help partners turn ambitious ideas into products that truly matter. Thunder team believes technology should serve people, purpose, and progress.
Brightroom – boutique learning and development provider focused on enabling human capabilities for self-driven, yet collaborative work in fast-paced organisations.
Photo & Video Notice: By attending this event, you agree that photos and videos may be taken and used by the organizers for communication and promotional purposes.