Boryana Straubel (Dineva) joined Tesla in 2011, at only ~600 employees, and helped the company through more than half a decade of hyper-growth. By early 2017 the company had grown over 5,000% and Boryana had built and led a number of world-class teams such as People Analytics, HR Information Systems, HR Operation, Compensation, New Markets Readiness, Mergers and Acquisition Integration, and Business Operations. With a degree in economics from UC Berkeley, she drove an innovative organizational design at Tesla that converged data warehousing, systems and data structures, and the art of data presentation. Her teams emerged as a proactive consulting force providing invaluable and actionable data to scale the company. The team revolutionized the way the HR organization positions itself within the business by unleashing the power of people data. She left Tesla on July 2017 to focus on leading the Straubel Foundation, where she currently serves as Executive Director.
Boryana was also the VP of Talent and Culture at Wikimedia, the foundation behind Wikipedia. At Wikimedia, Boryana oversaw all internal operations, people functions, workplace, and the team practices function.
Following her passion of enabling and investing in human potential, Boryana also spends time as the Executive Director at the Straubel Foundation. The foundation’s focus areas are sustainability, education and science.
A life-long learner and global nomad, Boryana Straubel has lived in Bulgaria, Germany, Austria, Russia, and the USA. Her leadership potential and ability to drive positive change became apparent early in her childhood as she organized various groups around social change initiatives. UC Berkeley awarded Boryana the Future Leaders Award, a recognition for only 0.04% of all incoming students. Additional accolades she has received are CAL Alumni Association Leadership Award, American Association of University Women Award, SM Rotary Club Award, SMCCD Anniversary Award, The Morris Family Award, Cordes Language Studies Award. She has also been on the cover of HR Executive Magazine. In 2016 Boryana was recognized as a global top performer by the Andrew Meikle, Elkiem and the Meikle Files.
Boryana is an expert in all things talent and people. She is a renowned data-driven, business operations, and optimization powerhouse. As an internal consulting juggernaut, her skills have been applied across all functions of both public for-profit and not-for-profit organizations.
