By Sona Schmidt-Harris | s.schmidtharris@mycityjournals.com

Holladay resident Zach Pino is very personable. It could be his unusual gold eyes (he swears they seem to change colors) or his empathetic approach. Either way, as the new Chief People Officer at NetBase Quid, that’s a good skill to have.  

Recently named to the position by San Francisco-based NetBase Quid, an AI consumer and market intelligence company, Pino is facing the challenge of managing a nearly 100% remote workforce.

Human resource management is not new to Pino who was previously Chief People Officer at DigiCert, Senior VP of People and Places at Ancestry.com and a director at eBay.

Facing the “total paradigm shift” of a remote workforce, he said, “The biggest challenge is how you kind of replicate the informal nature of the office because it takes a fairly formal gesture if you’re remote to interact with someone. You have to hit them with Zoom.”

One of the challenges is that many businesses invested in their space because they wanted it to be a natural extension of their culture. This concept has diminished in recent years.

“It’s a new type of intimacy,” said Pino, who calls Holladay home now going on 12 years. “You see their homes and their spaces. It's hard because some people love it. Some people hate it. Some people are self-conscious, and you have to kind of figure out the challenge.”

Pino noted that even before the pandemic, the business world was changing. “Notions of what it means to be productive and be working, office attendance versus not, has changed,” he said. “And people were naturally, before the last couple of years I think, taking a lot more control of their lives.”

He believes there’s no turning back. “We're not trying to figure out when and how we're going to bring people back into the office or how quickly or how flexible we're going to be,” he said. “We know there is no return-to-work day.”

Pino attended the University of Utah “though it took me longer than I needed to get my degree,” he said with a laugh. He later obtained a certificate from Cornell in Human Resources Management.

He attributes much of his success to people who helped him along the way, and he makes sure to let those people know of their tremendous influence on him.

Though Pino is pleased with the thriving business environment in Utah, he also believes that there is often an unconscious bias against certain individuals. “I am very serious about doing my part to be an advocate and an ally and support people through,” he said. “They don’t need a head start or an unfair advantage. I think they just need a level playing field.”

Pino helps achieve a level playing field by listening. “Always understand where they're coming from and realize that you're making assumptions that very well could be wrong and take the time to kind of sit back and learn and listen, and understand before moving into problem-solving, unconscious judgment modes or trying to help,” he said.

Pino, Utah born and (mostly) raised, has returned. “I never want to leave,” he said.