Episode 1: Introductions
Labor in the Loop
Episode 01 — Meet Your Hosts
Content note: This episode is rated NSFKM. Not safe for Karen's mom (or young ears).
About This Episode
Every podcast has to start somewhere. So we’re going to start at the beginning!
In our debut episode, we-- Britt and Karen-- introduce ourselves by sharing our career paths, starting with all the wrong jobs, pivots, and years spent figuring ourselves out. Britt grew from filing medical charts at her mom's doctor's office at 16 to HR consultant. Karen grew from washing dishes at summer camp to a PhD in AI ethics. To get there, we rewrote a lot of stories about ourselves, like “I’m lazy,” and “there’s no job that will pay me that I will be good at.”
What We Cover
How two friends from Southern California ended up studying work for a living
Britt's career path: filing charts at her mom's doctor's office, childcare, Starbucks, sales, a collection agency, a hospital in South Carolina, and finally HR
Karen's career path: summer camp kitchen, gift wrapping, a church office,, financial planning admin, Korea, a PhD, and workforce development research
What it actually means to be a "late bloomer" and why we take pride in the label (now, anyway ;)
What our nonlinear career paths taught us
What's coming up on the show: hiring process deep dives, workplace dynamics, AI and the future of work, and probably some crying
Timestamps
00:00 — Intro and content warning (hi Karen's mom)
01:04 — Introducing Britt and Karen
05:13 — How we met!
09:47 — Britt's career story begins
22:56 — First real office job, temp agencies, and how Starbucks made Britt more extroverted
33:36 — A ribbon-cutting ceremony that changed everything
40:01 — Finding HR at 34
43:42 — Karen's career story begins
1:04:07 — Korea, a postdoc, and what burnout actually feels like
1:26:00 — Where they both landed and why they started this podcast
1:35:00 — What Labor in the Loop is all about (so far)
About Your Hosts
Brittany (Britt) is a certified HR professional based in Boise, Idaho with four years of experience spanning HR generalist work, talent acquisition, and fractional HR consulting through her own practice, Lumi HR LLC. She got into HR the long way, through customer service, restaurants, sales, administration, and a lot of figuring it out as she went. That path is exactly why she cares so much about the people side of work.
Karen Boyd is a values and technology researcher and director of research at a think tank in Southern California. She holds an MBA from the University of California, San Diego and a PhD from the University of Maryland's School of Information, where she studied AI ethics and the future of work. She is, by her own admission, better at studying people than working with them.
Connect With Us
Britt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brittanyhumphreys
Karen on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drkarenboyd/
Lumi HR LLC:https://www.instagram.com/lumihrllc/
Karen’s author account: https://www.instagram.com/karenboydauthor/
Leave Us a Review
If this episode resonated with you, we'd love to hear from you. Leave a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. We would love your feedback as we build the show! Please reach out with comments or questions at info@laborintheloop.com.
Labor in the Loop is part career strategy, part tech deep dive, part therapy session between two friends who study work for a living.
