#266 Caroline Rawlinson: Culture Amp's CEO on Lessons from China, Founder Succession & Evolving a Growth Stage Tech Company

Caroline Rawlinson is the CEO of Culture Amp, the global employee experience platform trusted by more than 6,000 organisations and 25 million employees. Underpinned by people science and AI, Culture Amp helps organisations build high-performing teams at scale. Before joining Culture Amp, Caroline held executive leadership roles at MYOB, Trade Me and Fletcher Building across Australia, New Zealand and Asia. In her first ever in-depth interview, Caroline shares the journey behind becoming CEO of Culture Amp. She reflects on growing up in Auckland, captaining hockey teams, meeting her husband at McDonald's, landing a role at PwC despite knowing almost nothing about finance, and the forgotten career goal she wrote down at 28: "I want to be CEO." Vidit and Caroline explore the big learning in Shanghai when she was a first time CFO that changed how she leads forever, the partnership that made an international executive career possible, succeeding Culture Amp's founder as CEO, balancing today's business with an AI-native future, building high-performing cultures at global scale, and why the closer she came to becoming CEO, the harder it became to believe she could. Please enjoy exploring your curiosity. ________ 00:00 Who is Caro? 00:03 Growing up in Auckland 00:10 Talking her way into PwC 00:16 The best commercial leaders 00:21 Designing a career with intent 00:24 "I want to be CEO" 00:28 Building confidence in others 00:30 Why direct conversations matter 00:34 The China lesson that changed everything  00:43 Becoming CFO at 33 00:49 Ambition, marriage & family 00:56 From CFO to CEO 01:03 Taking over from Culture Amp's Founder at the start of 2026 01:10 AI and the next era of software  01:16 Advice for future CEOs 01:18 Rapid Fire Sprint ________ Get in touch with us via email at [email protected] Join our stable of commercial partners including the Australian Government, Google, KPMG, Vanta, Allens, Macquarie Capital, City of Sydney and more.  Show notes and more episodes here Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram Get in touch with our Founder and Host, Vidit Agarwal directly here Contact us via our website ________ The High Flyers Podcast features in-depth interviews with the world’s most influential figures in business, tech, finance, government and sport. Launched in 2020, it has ranked in the global top ten for past three years, with listeners in 27 countries and over 200+ episodes released, and featured in Forbes, Daily Telegraph, and at SXSW. Our guests include -- Malcolm Turnbull (Prime Minister of Australia), Jason Collins (Head of BlackRock, Asia Pacific), Brad Banducci (CEO, Woolworths), Michael Schneider (CEO, Bunnings), David Eckstein (CFO, Legora), Jesse Zhang (CEO, Decagon), Elena Verna (Head of Growth, Lovable), David Haber (a16z Partner), Jodie Auster (Uber's Global Head of Travel), Rob Giglio (CCO, Canva), Jean-Michel Limieux (CTO, Shopify and Atlassian), Stevie Case (CRO, Vanta), Cristina Cordova (COO, Linear), Gautam Chari (Head of Capital Commitments, Bank of America), John Haddock (CBO, Harvey), Mark Suster (Partner, Upfront Ventures), Niki Scevak (Partner, Blackbird), Craig Tiley (CEO, USA Tennis), Jeanne DeWitt Grosser (COO, Vercel), Paul Bassat (Partner, Square Peg), Bowen Pan (Creator, Facebook Marketplace), Peter Varghese (Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Australian Government), Sam Sicilia (CIO, Hostplus), Jack Zhang (CEO, Airwallex), Tim Doyle (CEO, Eucalyptus), Sukhinder Singh Cassidy (CEO, Xero), Sanjeev Gandhi (CEO, Orica) and Philip Green (Australia's Ambassador/High Commissioner to India).