The Align Impact Culture Framework
An analysis by Winter Wall, Chief People Officer
Part I — Culture as Our Operating System: Why It Matters Now More Than Ever
Over the last few years at Align Impact, one truth has become unmistakably clear: culture is not the soft stuff—it’s the system that determines whether we can deliver on our mission at scale. It is the invisible architecture that shapes how we partner with clients, how we collaborate internally, how we handle uncertainty, and ultimately, how much impact we create.
At its best, our culture is defined by three powerful values:
Partner Generously
Build Mindfully
Guide Transparently
These are more than principles. They are behaviors—observable, repeatable, and powerful when lived consistently. As I’ve reflected on how we continue strengthening our cultural foundation, several opportunities surface:
1. Deepening connection between daily work and mission
Our firm attracts people who care deeply. We are wired to take things personally—in the best way. That is a gift worth cultivating. Creating more intentional spaces to connect daily tasks to broader impact strengthens meaning for every role, not just client-facing ones. How to do this while maintaining boundaries, respect, and dare I say balance - is a journey I feel we are all on, constantly learning, and unlearning. I grew up in ‘hussle culture’ constantly lauded for my willingness to sacrifice my health, my family and friends and certainly my well-being to demonstrate my effort and dedication. I get tremendous esteem from work and was raised with work ethics as a central value. None of that is inherently negative, and I find myself questioning habitual patterns of my own to understand what I or we should expect from our team. We need to be able to connect our purpose to our work while understanding our purpose is not our work.
2. Strengthening belonging and inclusion beyond checking the box
Belonging is not a policy; it’s a felt experience. When employees can show up with curiosity, empathy, and authenticity, they become more than colleagues—they become collaborators in a shared mission. Data prove that that sense of shared purpose, a shared care, acts as an accelerant for productivity, learning, and engagement. Belonging is not a nice to have, it’s a requirement. And where it lacks, often lies a systematic mistrust or otherwise unacknowledged issue that will erode cultural efforts regardless of their strength.
3. Balancing flexibility with connection
Our hybrid structure reflects trust. To protect that trust, we must intentionally build connection points—rituals, routines, and shared moments that reinforce cohesion even when we’re physically apart. Understanding the strengths of a distributed team is required for building cohesion in today’s environment. We are constantly learning how to connect virtually, where to invest in in-person collaboration, and where the value expands to fill the in between.
4. Expanding recognition & gratitude practices
Recognition isn’t optional—it’s fuel. The most valuable employees care, stay curious, and bring enthusiasm, humility, and hard work. Highlighting these behaviors reinforces what we value and creates a culture where people feel seen. I must admit, there are times where I do things that I wonder, ‘is everyone going to think this is so dumb?’ And almost without exception, those games or connections are where I see our team light up, laugh, and get to know each other. We do a shout out series every month at our All Voices and it is hands down one of my favorite Align rituals. Every team member is shouted out for something specific in the last month by a colleague and they then spread the recognition to another team member. It’s a way to celebrate one another and the tremendous work we are all doing, sometimes behind the scenes, sometimes in silos, and sometimes right out front, it’s all worthy of acknowledgement.
Why I Care (and Why I’m Writing This Piece)
We are an assessment friendly firm, one of the assessments we rely upon is the Working Genius. My zone of genius is translating complexity into clarity and building practical pathways that turn bold visions into aligned action.
Culture—arguably the most complex system of all—is where I see that work mattering most.
This series is about naming who we are, where we’re growing, and the cultural strengths that will determine our long-term success.
Part II — Leading Through Change: What Transition Taught Us About Culture
One of the most defining chapters in our recent history was the transition of our founding CEO—a moment filled with emotion, uncertainty, and potential risk. It was also a moment that revealed the deepest truths about our culture.
Culture is most visible during transition.
During that transition, I saw:
Disconnects across leadership, employees, and the board
Departures that signaled deeper misalignment
A need to explore and deeply interrogate client continuity and organizational stability
The evolution of a founder-led business brings challenges and incredible opportunities. When the time comes for a founder to evolve into the next phase of their lives and give space for a new chapter of their company's lifecycle - the change is dynamic, non linear, and comes with risk. For Align, it was clear that to reach the next stage of growth and to foster the company we knew was possible, we had to address the emotional undercurrents associated with that change, as much as the strategic ones.
What we learned about culture under pressure is that culture work in crisis is not procedural—it’s relational.
Three lessons stand out:
1. Alignment must be multi-directional.
Founders, boards, and successors all have different facts, fears, and motivations. Aligning them requires deep listening, credible data, and trust-building—not just a plan. We continue to strengthen communication channels to ensure stakeholders are clear on where we want to go and how we can get there together.
2. Emotions drive behavior more than logic.
A founder’s attachment, an employee’s uncertainty, a board’s fear—these shape decisions as much as spreadsheets do. Ignoring emotional realities slows everything down while acknowledging them creates movement. One of the lessons we are actively learning is how to support and leverage the emotions that propel us and how to acknowledge and process those that do not.
3. Culture is maintained through formal and informal channels.
Listening sessions, check-ins, casual conversations and even chats—these became the connective tissue that guide and inform our path through ambiguity.
Why this matters for us today
That period continues to teach us that culture is not what we write down—it’s how we behave when the stakes are high.
It also showed us the power of trust, belonging, recognition, and collective resilience—what Esther Perel calls the four pillars of thriving workplaces. We have work to do and will always have work to do in each pillar, that’s the nature of culture, always moving, always growing, and evolving.
We didn’t just “get through” that transition. We rebuilt with clarity, courage, and alignment. That is culture in action.
Part III — Building the Culture We Want: Trust, Belonging, and the Future of Work at Align Impact
If Part I was about our foundations, and Part II about what we learned under pressure, this piece is about the future we’re intentionally creating.
The workplace is changing—and so is the nature of trust.
Great workplaces share a simple formula:
Employees trust their leaders, have pride in their work, and enjoy their colleagues.
And this must be true for everyone, not just some.
At Align, trust is not just interpersonal—it’s systemic.
And trust is built through transparency, consistent follow-through, and shared accountability.
Our values already reinforce this:
Guide Transparently → trust through clarity and honesty
Partner Generously → trust through reliability and care
Build Mindfully → trust through disciplined, thoughtful work
Belonging as a strategic advantage
Belonging fuels retention, creativity, and resilience. When employees feel seen and appreciated, they solve harder problems, collaborate more fluidly, and extend the culture to others.
Recognition as a cultural accelerant
Our people thrive on meaning. They care, ask questions, stay curious, bring enthusiasm, and show up as team players. Calling out these behaviors systematically—not occasionally—matters immensely.
Collective resilience is our edge
We operate in a complex capital ecosystem. The ability to adapt without losing coherence is what differentiates aligned organizations from fragile ones.
My work—my zone of genius—is to create the systems, structures, and human-centered practices that turn this resilience into a sustainable cultural rhythm. Whether it’s monthly engagement surveys, all-voice meetings designed to help us connect, or quarterly check-ins to keep us grounded in growth, the time I spend strengthening our culture with this team is a direct reflection of how intentionally we’re building it.
Part IV — The Call to Action: Culture Is Everyone’s Job
Culture is not a department. It is not HR’s mandate alone. Culture is every interaction, every decision, every behavior we reinforce. If the first three parts of this series helped us name who we are, what we’ve lived through, and the cultural aspirations shaping our future, then Part IV is about the work of translation—how we take these cultural insights and turn them into daily, observable, reliable practice.
One thing has become increasingly clear as our organization grows and matures: culture becomes real only when it becomes operational. Values matter, but systems make them durable. Inspiration moves us, but habits sustain us. This is the phase where what we believe becomes what we do.
1. Moving From Intention to Infrastructure
Many companies stop at naming values; few do the harder work of embedding them into the rhythms of the organization. And honestly, I have heard this before – take your values off the wall and into your work. But what does that actually mean? What does integration look like? At Align, we are ready for that next level of cultural architecture.
Operationalizing culture means asking:
Where does this value live in our workflows?
How do we reinforce it in decisions, rituals, and systems?
How do we hold ourselves and each other accountable to living it?
To support this, we continue building structures—like All Voices meetings, monthly recognition practices, and quarterly feedback loops—that convert abstraction into alignment. These aren’t initiatives; they’re behavioral scaffolding for trust, belonging, and transparency.
2. Creating Behavioral Consistency Across a Growing Organization
As we scale, cultural inconsistency becomes one of the greatest risks to performance and cohesion. Different teams, different managers, and different working styles create fragmentation unless we anchor to shared expectations.
This phase of our growth requires us to define:
What “Guide Transparently” looks like in everyday work
What “Partner Generously” sounds like in tough conversations
What “Build Mindfully” requires in planning, pace, and decision-making
Behavioral clarity reduces friction—especially in a hybrid environment—and increases the psychological safety that makes belonging possible. As our team emphasized time and again, belonging is not procedural; it is felt. And consistency is what allows it to be felt reliably across teams.
3. Embedding Culture Into the Employee Experience Lifecycle
Operational culture touches every moment of a person’s time at work:
Recruiting & Hiring
In addition to assessing skill—we are assessing shared care, curiosity, humility, and alignment with our mission-driven work. Our first round interviews are all with me and centered around cultural fit, then we move towards technical skill and acumen.
Onboarding
This is where expectations are set, rhythms are learned, and cultural norms take shape. I recently added a Professionalism Guideline to ensure our team is comfortable with our expectations. This will save the mental energy new joiners often spend on questioning and instead use it towards connection and valuable learning. Onboarding is not orientation; it is integration.
Feedback & Growth
Culture becomes tangible when we give and receive feedback grounded in our values. When we articulate how someone exemplifies a value—or where a behavior misaligns—we anchor performance in shared purpose.
Leadership Development
Leaders have an outsized cultural footprint. As we evolve, equipping our leaders to model transparency, manage emotions in themselves and others, and foster trust is not optional—it is cultural protection.
Embedding culture into these lifecycle moments ensures it is not dependent on individual champions but becomes part of our organizational DNA.
4. Building Cultural Muscle Memory
Culture becomes durable when the same behaviors repeat across contexts, stakes, and personalities. This is what I think of as muscle memory - can we get the reps in to make culture not only known but felt?
We are building this through:
Ritualized recognition, not just checking the box.
Standardized communication rhythms
Transparent and appropriate sharing of decisions and rationale - how we think about what is valuable and useful for the entire team to know, what helps align and what tips to burdensome?
Norms around cross-team collaboration
A shared language for trust, belonging, and collective resilience - how a team session on shared energy shaped our understanding of working together.
These systems won’t remove ambiguity from our work—but they will help us navigate ambiguity with more steadiness and connection.
Why This Phase Matters
We are no longer simply describing our culture—we are engineering it.
By operationalizing what makes Align unique, we protect what is essential while making room for evolution, scale, and innovation. This moment is not about preserving the past; it is about building the conditions for our best future. No matter the phase of a business it is essential to think about what the design of an ideal culture would look and feel like - how do we want our team to describe our company at a dinner party? Would they recommend working here to a friend? How are they connecting with one another? With leadership?
And as always, culture is not something created by leadership alone. It is strengthened every day by how each of us shows up—with curiosity, generosity, and purpose.
Culture is not what we say we value—it’s what we prove we value.
And together, we are building a place defined not only by expertise, but by humanity, alignment, and purpose. What are you building?
Disclaimer: Align Impact is an investment adviser registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Registration as an investment adviser does not constitute an endorsement by the SEC, nor does it imply any level of skill or training. This post is provided for informational purposes only and should not be construed as an investment recommendation. The information provided is believed to be from reliable sources, but no liability is accepted for any inaccuracies, except to the extent such liability arises from a breach of duty Align Impact owes to you as an investment advisory client pursuant to the terms of such relationship (should such a relationship exist). Past performance is no guarantee of future performance.
