Episode overview
IIn this episode, Luke Fisher (CEO of Mo) and guest co-host Dan Kessler (President of Energage) sit down with KK Byland, Chief Human Resources Officer at American College of Education (ACE), to explore her remarkable decade-long journey building a values-led culture.
You’ll hear about:
- How KK built the HR department from scratch, starting with the physical organisation of employee files
- The transition from a static annual review process to a dynamic, continuous feedback model
- Why they moved from being a co-located office to a fully remote workforce across 40 US states
- How a strong sense of purpose and mission helps them tune out the “noise” of current events
- How they create moments of intentional connection in a remote-first culture
- The moment they realised that culture is not owned by HR but by every single employee
This is a candid and inspiring look at how a mission-driven B Corp has sustained a strong, evolving culture through rapid growth and remote transformation.
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Read the top takeaways
Read the guide we created based on KK’s story.
Episode transcript
Luke: Hello and welcome back to Culture in Action. I’m Luke Fisher, CEO of Mo. Today I’m joined by two guests: Dan Kessler, president of Energage and the famous Top Workplaces Awards, and KK Byland, chief human resources officer at American College of Education (ACE). They are a trailblazing organisation that delivers affordable, accessible, and high-quality higher education across the US.
KK has a unique role. She’s been there for over a decade and scaled the HR function from a team of one—yes, just her—to a culture-driving powerhouse that supports a fully remote workforce across more than 40 US states. In this episode, she shares her remarkable journey from building an HR department from scratch to embedding culture into every stage of the employee experience while staying true to ACE’s mission of serving those who serve others.
We explore how ACE has sustained a strong, values-led culture through rapid growth and remote transformation, and how being a mission-driven B Corp shows up in everyday moments, not just headlines. If you’re navigating through culture change in a growing, remote, or purpose-led organisation—or all three—this episode is for you.
Luke: Welcome back, everybody. I’m absolutely delighted to have two people here with me today. One is Dan, who’s becoming quite a familiar voice, and the other is KK. So let’s start with Dan, if you don’t mind. Would you tell those who haven’t listened to you yet a little bit about yourself?
Dan: Of course. I’m the president of Energage and a proud partner with Luke and the team at Mo. I’ve been with the organisation for almost 15 years. That journey has afforded me the chance to work with and get to know a number of culture-focused leaders. What I’m really excited about is that today we have one of the best. KK, the CHRO at American College of Education, I’ll hand it over to you to share a little bit about yourself.
KK: Thanks, Dan, and thanks, Luke, for the opportunity. I’m KK Byland, and I’ve been with American College of Education for ten and a half years now. I had the opportunity to start the HR department with the organisation in 2015. I started my career in early childhood education. Shortly after I started teaching, I discovered something called HR. At the time, I didn’t even know much about what that was, and I had a very negative experience in the workplace. I wanted to have an opportunity to change that experience, and it really piqued my interest. Sometime after that, I went back to school and got my master’s degree in human resource management. A human resource leader was born.
Luke: Cool. So KK, thank you ever so much for that. As the Brit in the virtual room that we’re in here, the first time I heard about you, I have to confess, was when I started doing a little bit of research and we had our preparation call. But I assume that’s more because I’m over here in the UK rather than anything else. So would you tell us a little bit more about ACE and what makes you unique? Because you seem like a best-kept secret in the US.
KK: We really are, and you didn’t know much about us just because you are a Brit. We really are one of the best-kept secrets in the United States. American College of Education is a college that offers affordable, accessible, quality online programmes for those serving our community. So we really focus on programmes for educators, business leaders, and healthcare professionals. We’re reaching teachers, nurses, and leaders and making sure that they have master’s degrees and doctorate degrees at an affordable price point so they’re not graduating with boatloads of debt.
86% of our students graduate debt-free, which means we’re not contributing to the student loan crisis that we have here in the United States. Those individuals are going out into their communities, giving back what they’ve learned, and instituting that into their respective positions. In fact, we had a recent study done by Lightcast that showed that for every dollar invested at ACE, our students get $19 back on their investment. When we say that we are committed to delivering affordable, accessible, high-quality education for our learners, that proves it.
Building an HR Department from the Ground Up
Dan: That’s extraordinary. When it comes to building the people strategy at ACE, you mentioned that it’s been about ten years and you joined as the HR team of one. To kick us off, maybe take us back to those initial days and weeks and just sort of paint a picture of what you were walking into in those very, very early days.
KK: I can tell you that the opportunity to sit down and have this conversation with you has been so exciting for me. It’s given me the opportunity for the first time in ten and a half years to really reflect on this journey. We start something, and we just go to the next thing and the next thing. We don’t often have this opportunity. This has been a wonderful exercise for me. Honestly, going into week one, month one, and the first six months, the question I asked myself was, ‘What did I do?’ ‘What is happening?’ Everything was very fundamental. If you think of what it takes to start any department at any organisation, that’s what I had to start doing.
At ACE, our HR was being outsourced by a sister company at the time. That company was much larger than we were. We were about 90 employees, so they were maybe handling our HR issues as a side job. We often joke that we were the stepchildren, but it was an internal joke. So I had to focus on employee files. Where were they? How do I get them together? I had to focus on benefits. What did those look like because we were integrated into benefits with that sister company? When you truly think of what we needed to start a department, I was at ground zero. I had employee documents and things shipped from Dallas every day. I was just receiving packages. Then I would sort and file for months, honestly.
But alongside that, and most importantly, I took time to get to know the organisation and the people. We had around 90 employees, and I took the time to meet each one, get to know them, and have them get to know me as a person because what I wanted was not just an HR department for ACE. I wanted them to know and feel that what we were setting up was an organisation that would be set up to serve them, not just a department that was there to be transactional and serve the organisation’s needs. We wanted to be able to do those things but also serve the people’s needs. I took great pride in learning people’s names, their spouse’s names, their kids’ names, and their pet’s names. That was fundamentally important to me because I know you work with HR professionals all the time, and HR gets a bad rap. To this day, when people ask me what I do and I tell them I’m head of HR, you get that look, or it just gets silent, and there’s tension. I didn’t want that. I wanted people to see me as a person and not the HR lady.
Luke: Yeah. I’ve got this vivid, almost cartoon picture in my mind of a stack as big as you can imagine of employee files that were shipped and then added to every day. And I’ve got all of these conversations with an overwhelming level of learning, insight, and hope probably for what the organisation could become. And I’ve got you occasionally going, ‘Oh God, what do I need to do? What are these foundational items that I need to start putting into place? How do I prioritise these files, all these conversations, and how do I just get started and move in the right direction?’ Can you help us understand where you were and how you started to prioritise? ‘Okay, these are the big building blocks I’m going to work on, and these are the steps I need to take.’
KK: It was often hard to straddle and go between the two, but one of the first things that leadership asked me to do was an evaluation of the performance management process. They were doing their annual evaluations in Excel spreadsheets, and then they were being turned in and filed. That’s just a check mark off of somebody’s to-do list; that’s not a real conversation. That’s not true feedback. So I took the time when those were coming in to read through every single one. It gave me a really good opportunity to get to know the employees from a performance level and the leaders. How they lead, how they perceive their group, and how they evaluate their group. I learned very quickly that we needed to pivot, and we needed to pivot quickly. We did away with Excel and a rating system because we were so inconsistent. Some leaders gave their teams all fives because they thought their people could do no wrong, and they’re all fabulous. Then we had some leaders that would give their teams all threes because it’s impossible to be a five. We know that’s not equitable, and it’s not a true evaluation of people. So we shifted to more of a feedback on a quarterly basis model. That took a lot of coaching. Our leaders needed to know how to give and receive feedback. That’s just one example of an area where we had to focus and pivot. That’s still evolving. We’ve evolved that process a couple of times throughout the years. It’s still a feedback process, but we have taken feedback from employees and said, ‘What do you like about this? What don’t you like about this? What do you want to see? How can we change it so that you get the most value out of your performance management that you need to be successful?’ It’s ever-evolving. Nothing’s ever perfect.
Strategic Inflection Points
Luke: You’ve teed me up wonderfully in the theme of evolving for my next question, which is, when we spoke before, there have been a couple of major inflection points for the organisation, like transitioning to being fully remote. I think you’re now present in 40 different states. I just wondered if you have any reflections on what these inflection points are. Where you’re like, ‘Okay, we have to change again. We’re kind of starting from scratch again because something really material has changed.’
KK: I think the most pivotal one was, ‘We can’t do this alone anymore.’ So many of us HR professionals are units of one for so long, and my hat goes off to all of those leaders because that is a tough thing to do. I did that in a previous role before joining ACE. I hired an intern in 2016 just to give me some breathing room on the constant administrative work and to give me the opportunity to do some of the things you were mentioning, like looking up and looking out. Where should we be focused strategically? How do we continue to grow meaningfully while building in culture? That was one of the areas, and I’m proud to say our intern is still with us today. She’s no longer an intern; she’s grown with us and had a few different roles within the HR department, but she’s really helped build this engine.
As we transitioned to fully remote shortly after that, and we’d been introduced into dozens of states, obviously, we’ve got to look at how we are onboarding our employees while being remote. That’s a huge inflection point because you think of what onboarding looks and feels like being face-to-face. How do we deliver the employee experience that we want to deliver? How do we do that remotely? How do we introduce ACE to candidates during the recruiting process and give them the feeling of ACE during an interview? All of those things are part of the employee experience. It starts there.
It’s about embedding our culture and the employee experience in all the decisions we make. There are two key components when we’re at the table making key decisions. It’s really, ‘Are we living out our values and are we staying true to our culture?’ Secondly, ‘Is it true to the mission of our students? Are we still going to be able to serve the students in the way we have promised them?’ If the answer is yes, then we’re doing what we said we’ve promised. And so, talking through those inflection points, those are the things that we have stayed true to.
Luke: If I can play that back to you just to make sure that I understand. So you had a transition to remote that triggered some feeling-based questions, like when you don’t have proximity as a default, how do you make people feel like they’re a part of the organisation? Then another inflection point was the opportunity for leverage through developing your people and how you align strategic direction with the inflection point and resource that appropriately. I think they’re the main two.
The other thing that really stood out is that through all of the growth and changes and challenges that you and the team have overcome, you have that clarity and focus on, ‘Are we staying true to our values and our culture?’ and ‘Are we staying true to our mission of serving students?’ Having that clarity at the top level of direction, values, mission, and purpose provides a level of clarity and focus that has clearly helped you navigate all of those changes.
Dan: The other thing that makes me think of is having such a unique experience of being able to scale an HR team as the organisation is scaling and moving to a remote culture and hiring people all over the United States. One of the things that we know culture leaders talk a lot about is that sense of cohesion and connection. You already talked about the onboarding experience and how critical that is to that initial sense of connection and why you’re there. Can you share a little bit more about what you all have thought about in terms of maintaining that sense of cohesion and connection as employees settle in?
KK: For us, it’s making sure our employees feel seen and heard because in a remote organisation, it’s very easy to feel isolated. Even if you’re part of a department of 30 or 80 people, you can still feel very isolated. So we are very intentional about our employees feeling seen. Whether those connection points are with one-on-ones with leaders or coaches, or through our mentoring programme, where leaders are signed up to be part of it, and then if an employee wants to sign up, they get paired with a leader. We also have what’s called a new hire mixer every quarter. All the new hires are online, and we get to know our new hires. All the executives are invited, and we spend time with them. They get to see our faces, talk to us, and ask us questions. It’s dedicated time for our new hires.
We also have fun, engaging playtime, if you will. So we do March Madness and in the autumn, we’ll do college colours days and celebrate college football. We’ll do a college football pick-and-pool. We also do remote holiday parties where we’ll get online and play some fun holiday games. We’ll say, ‘How do you celebrate the holidays?’ and it doesn’t matter what holiday you celebrate, ‘Let us know, and we’ll celebrate you.’ So we find different opportunities throughout the year to come online in these forums and see people face-to-face and feel connected. Our leaders make an intentional decision to do that with their individual teams as well. We have teams that do monthly or quarterly fun games where it’s not so work-focused. Doing things like that to ensure our employees feel connected and part of what we consider the ACE family is truly important and very intentional for us.
I think the other part for us is we have a formal and an informal recognition programme. Informally, we can go into our HRIS and anybody can give somebody a kudos, a high five, or recognise somebody living out our core values. And then formally, we have something called the ACElebrity, where staff and faculty can recognise somebody consistently going above and beyond and making their work life significantly easier. Our students can also nominate faculty that have made a significant impact on their student journey. Those awards are nominated all year, and we award them at the end of every year. Again, it’s just about those very intentional moments throughout the year to ensure that our employee experience doesn’t look the same for everybody. They can pop in and engage as much as they want to or not engage, but all these opportunities are available to them.
Luke: It feels like you’ve got a nice blend of consistency with variability and something that becomes personal. How has that happened? Is that designed by intention in the employee experience, or is it a case that leaders have pulled you in a direction, and it’s easy enough for the organisation to jump on board?
KK: It’s very intentional because, at the end of the day, culture isn’t about perks; it’s about how our employees feel when they come to work. You’ve each heard about the Sunday Scaries. I don’t know the term because I don’t have them. I make it my mission to ensure that our employees don’t have them. That’s a thing for me. They don’t have to love every day. I don’t love every day that I work. Some days are much harder than others. But at the end of the day, if we look at things holistically, we need to love what we do and respect the people that we do it with. I feel that along the way, we come away with some pretty good people. Then I think we’re winning.
The ACE Mission
Dan: Speaking of winning, one of the things that has been some of the evidence of what you all are doing right has been the various Top Workplaces accolades that you’ve racked up over the years at a national level for your industry, standing out in things like leadership, innovation, work-life balance, purpose, and values. All of these things are what your employees are telling you, the things that you’re doing extraordinarily well. Can you talk a little bit about what that recognition has meant for the organisation, both internally and externally?
KK: I’d love to. This is so exciting. We are just so proud of this. Before we partnered with Energage, we engaged with Best Places to Work in Indiana because our headquarters is in Indiana. That was our grassroots validation that we were doing things right. That was a wonderful validation, but it was a small sampling of our employees, right? It was our Indiana-based employees. At some point, we were like, ‘Gosh, we’re in all of these states, and wouldn’t it be nice if we got validation and heard from the rest of the group how they think we’re doing?’ That’s when we started this partnership and took a look at how we were doing nationally.
Since then, we have been a nationally ranked top workplace. We’re so proud of that. We’re going for our fifth year. Our survey launches next month. What that’s meant for us internally, from a data perspective, I’ll start there. We all know the stats. I think Glassdoor recently released that organisations with a strong culture have a 72% better retention rate. Our regrettable turnover is currently at 2.72%. So we are retaining our employees, and I think that’s an excellent data point that can serve us well. Our friends at Gallup have many, many stats out there about greater profitability, less turnover, and higher productivity. 92% of our employees agree that we operate with strong values, and 92% of our employees are also proud to work for us. They say we have meaningful work, so that’s validating in that we are walking the walk. We’re not just saying the words. We don’t just have a nice mission on our website that looks or sounds good, but we’re doing the work behind closed doors. That’s what’s important. I think our survey proves that.
Beyond that, this top workplace recognition gives each and every one of our employees the opportunity of ownership of our culture. HR is not the culture owner. We facilitate culture. Yes, we will help drive culture, but don’t own it. Every single employee in our organisation is a steward of our culture, and they own it from day one. We like to talk about that and instill that by saying, ‘You’re responsible for your culture. What do you want it to feel like? What do you want it to look like?’ I think this recognition is their award to say, ‘You did it, and this is yours to be proud of.’
Dan: So beautifully and perfectly said, KK. Thank you for sharing all of that. We know that many HR leaders are listening to this call. I want to reiterate how the culture is owned by every employee. When you hear it being passed off as an HR responsibility, you know a broader mindset shift needs to happen with the organisation. I think one of the many challenges of HR leadership is that balance of working on more strategic parts of facilitating the culture for the team. There is a significant amount of operational and administrative tasks that need to get done. Can you talk a little bit about how you’ve balanced that over the journey with ACE?
KK: This was one of the more difficult ones because it was never either/or. It was always about how we do both simultaneously. And I think that also goes back to answering your question earlier, Luke, if we can, in all that we build and continue to do, if we can talk about building our operations out while maintaining and building and enhancing our culture, that’s the secret sauce to me. That’s what’s going to sustain us. For us, it’s really at the leadership level because, as you know, people don’t leave organisations; they leave their leaders. So we have formal leadership training programmes and opportunities. We have succession planning. We have a lot of things built into what we would call leadership fundamentals to hopefully give our leaders the tools to be successful with what they’re doing and give their teams opportunities to be successful as well. Because if we do that, that’s what’s going to help build and cultivate the culture that everybody wants and feels. And so that’s how we get both, and we don’t have to do either/or. That’s what’s really important to me as we continue on this journey because for us, we’re still growing upwards of a 20% clip year over year, so it’s not stopping. We have to continually be focused and intentional. It’s not perfect. It’ll never be perfect. We have to own where we need to improve. We have the commitment to do so, and we have the commitment to say, ‘We kind of fell on our face here. What do we need to do better? How do we do that? Let’s do it together.’
The ACE Mission
Dan: You’ve talked about this deep commitment to accessible and debt-free education. The mission of what ACE is doing for students is why we work so well together. We are both B corporations. And I know Luke and the team are on the path as well. I guess for those listening who aren’t as familiar with the B Corporation movement, there’s been some extraordinary reflections and write-ups of the 10,000 B corporations in the world and what drove this interest in a different way of operating a business and saying that you can hold an intense focus on financial success and profitability and growth while having a purpose and a consideration for people, social impact, and environmental impact. For ACE, I’d love to go a little deeper about how you have woven that deep purpose and mission into your work and your culture organisationally.
KK: For us, it’s part of our DNA. I mentioned that from our inception, we were created to serve those who serve. We were created to have programmes for teachers because if you think of a teacher’s salary, they’re almost never going to earn the cost of their degree back. Why is that degree so expensive? There’s no need for that. I challenge any college and university out there to ask themselves that. There’s no need. From the inception, we were created to provide that master’s degree or doctorate degree at a price point where they could pay as they go, and it would still be high-quality. We don’t take federal funding from the government, meaning our students don’t have student loans. Now, if students need financial aid or assistance, there are third parties that will assist them, but they don’t need it because our price point is as such. By the way, we haven’t increased our tuition since 2016, and we’re committed to doing that because the cost of higher education is far too expensive. Our teachers, nurses, and leaders need to get higher degrees at a price point where they will earn it back in their salary.
Our mission and being a mission-driven organisation really is part of our DNA. From the beginning, it’s been, ‘How do we continue to serve those who serve others?’ We have that mindset in everything we do. We’ve done many interviews and asked people along their employee experience journey, ‘What’s your favourite thing about working for ACE?’ Their response is the people, the mission, and the giving back. When you have a mission that resonates so deeply with your employees, what do we know as business leaders is going to be the result? It’s going to be more success. Being a mission-driven business isn’t just about the bottom line. It’s about the triple bottom line and everything that comes along with it. How do you make that happen? You need people that care about your mission, what you’re doing, how you’re doing it, and what the end result is.
I’ll talk about this because it’s coming up in two weeks, ten days. It’s the reason, the why, behind what we do. That’s commencement for us. We get one day a year where we watch our students walk across the stage and get their degrees. For those of us who get to attend that ceremony and watch that happen, it is a moving day. We work for that day every single day of the year. Inevitably, somebody’s little daughter or son is in the audience and says, ‘That’s my mum!’ Or somebody’s spouse is in the audience and says, ‘Yeah, honey, go!’ Because every one of these students are working adults. They’ve worked full-time and gotten this degree at night or on Saturdays. They’ve missed school ball games, or they’ve had their laptop in the bleachers. What they have sacrificed while getting this degree, we know what it means for them to have done what they did. The ripple effect of what they’ve accomplished goes far beyond just getting a piece of paper and walking across the stage. That child just saw their parent follow through on a commitment and better the lives of whoever it is that they’re serving and better the lives of that family. We have seen first-generation students get their bachelor’s with us and come back and get a master’s, then a doctorate. Can you imagine the generational impact of that? It’s the mission that every one of us at ACE is bought into and that we want to carry on.
Advice on Culture and Leadership
Luke: I feel like we should almost finish there because that is strong. I’m going to ask you one more question because I made a promise to the last person on the podcast. I’m going to skip the others and go to this one because I feel it’s quite relevant to what you just said. I understand the culture you’ve built through these conversations, and it’s recognised by Energage and the Top Workplaces recognition activities. But the world is reeling, and there’s a lot going on. I would be keen to get an understanding and answer to this question, which came from the last guest, which is, in the current socioeconomic climate, there’s a lot of noise, and it’s almost unrelenting. How do you feel that impacts your ability to drive change in your culture?
KK: Some days, it feels very daunting. We can’t deny that. But at the end of the day, the question we come back to and ask ourselves is, ‘Does this have to do with the work we’re doing?’ If the answer is no, then that’s all it is. To your point, Luke, it’s noise. We have an opportunity to become part of the noise or to tune it out, and we unequivocally tune it out because we never want to be part of the noise. We focus on the job, our students, and our people. That’s what will continue to get us where we need to go. We went through this with COVID, remember? It’s not just the environment we’re in today, albeit it’s different but the same. It’s noise, and it’s loud, heavy, and everywhere you go. But at the end of the day, what we focused on was, ‘What do we need to do today? What do we need to do this hour? What do we need to do to get us through whatever we’re working on?’ Sometimes people told us, ‘I come to work to get away from that.’ It’s my focus away from all of that. That’s a bit of a compliment.
Luke: True that. Very, very true. I’m going to try and squeeze in quick-fire questions. Are you ready for this? It’s going to go quick. What’s the proudest moment in your journey at ACE?
KK: Watching other people get promoted.
Luke: Yes. I love those two. Hardest moment that taught you the most?
KK: Letting go.
Luke: The book, author, or thinker that shaped your approach the most to culture or leadership?
KK: Honestly, it’s the people I get to work with every day. We all love Brene Brown, John C. Maxwell, and Patrick Lencioni, but the people that truly shape me are my everyday people.
Luke: Good answer. One piece of advice you’d give to an aspiring top workplace?
KK: You have to start somewhere. A great place to start is with the B Corp assessment. Not that you have to be a B Corp, but it’s a great toolkit.
Luke: And then the very last question is, what’s the one question you would love to ask the next guest on the podcast when it comes to driving culture change?
KK: What’s one moment when you realised that culture wasn’t just something to manage but something to co-create with your people?
Luke: Okay, that’s a strong one. So, KK, thank you ever so much for your time. This has been really, really fun. It’s a great mission that the organisation stands for, and it’s a great journey you’ve been on. I can’t wait to see where it ends because it seems like you’re continuing to do great things. Thank you for joining me and Dan. We really appreciate it.
KK: Thank you.
