Tanner Brunsdale knew from his very first experience in the workplace he'd found a career path that would fulfill his passion for
After starting his career at Walmart in a personnel management role, Brunsdale moved onto a position with the New York Public Library as a benefits coordinator. While there, he was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma and quickly had to get up to speed on navigating the right kinds of care.
"Even though I was working in benefits, I felt very lost — I don't even think I had a primary care physician," he says. "Without the support of my boss and the benefits through the library, I wouldn't have had any idea what to do. That experience gave me the desire to pursue a career in benefits because I wanted to be that person that people turn to when they're in these kinds of situations."
Brunsdale has been in remission since 2010, yet the experience has had a lasting impact. He's since worked at companies such as American Airlines and GoPro before landing at Lyft in 2021. As their head of benefits and global mobility, he has focused on creating an
"People are looking for those benefits to support them in their day-to-day lives," he says. "It goes beyond compensation [to] caring about you and your family and your life first."
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Brunsdale recently spoke with EBN about his path to HR leadership, connecting benefits back to company values and how offerings he's brought to Lyft have helped on his own path to fatherhood.
How did your early professional experiences shape your leadership style of putting people first?
My leaders at the New York Public Library and American Airlines were hugely influential. Their philosophy was: We're here to support people in these big moments in their lives — having a baby, going on leave, medical events. They led from a place of empathy, and the way I was treated made me feel that as well. [Today], I get to know [my team] as people, what drives them, how they prefer to work, and I make sure they can come to me with anything.
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How is that influencing your approach to benefits in 2024?
I want to take a deep dive into our benefit programs. There's a lot of great momentum right now at our company. We're changing as an organization — our employees are getting older, their family size is increasing and we're much more diverse. Making sure we're meeting the needs of our employees where they are now, because that demographic has shifted, is a [top] initiative.
One of your initiatives upon joining Lyft was to expand family planning benefits. Where did you see a need, and how has the expansion impacted you personally?
We have very rich fertility benefits, but the reimbursement level for adoption and surrogacy, for someone like me who has to go that route, was very low. It was an easy sell to leadership to increase that to be more equitable. My husband and I adopted a daughter last April — she's nine months old now — and Lyft supported that financially.
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If you think about fertility and family-building benefits, the number of employees that need those may be small in the scheme of things, but the impact it makes to those who need it is huge. If we're able to show we know something is important, even those that don't need it will look at that and say, 'Wow, Lyft really cares about who we are as people.'
How do you take care of yourself, and why is it important for leaders to showcase this in the workplace?
One of the most powerful ways to show people you value their well-being is to model this behavior. I have a manager who takes time for himself — I see him utilizing PTO and spending time with his family, and so I try to do that as well for my team. By seeing your leader exemplify taking time for themselves, leaning into rest, not getting burned out, not sending emails at all hours of the night shows my team, 'Hey, it's OK for me to take time off.' They know I value that flexibility and the need for taking care of yourself. In the airline industry, it's said you have to put the oxygen mask on yourself before helping others. I think in HR, you really have to do that — you have to make sure you're taking care of yourself before you can really help others."
