Head-and-shoulders portrait of Ash Coleman Hynie

Build teams that see—and scale—real performance

I'm Ash Coleman Hynie, founder of CountrPT and creator of ManageUp—employee-led data and manager-ready insight that replaces guesswork with receipts.

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delivers early, reliable performance signals—predicting 90-day proficiency—so managers coach in week three, not quarter three.

Ash, in 90 seconds

Ash Coleman Hynie is an engineering leader turned senior people-systems executive who builds products that make performance visible without dehumanizing work. After leading engineering teams and quality systems, she scaled to executive people leadership at Credit Karma and Brex, then founded CountrPT—a product that lets people capture real, day-to-day impact in their own words and data. That employee insight powers ManageUp, an enterprise layer that gives leaders real-time signals for effective leadership and fair calibration. Ash's voice combines technical depth with people-systems expertise; you'll hear it on podcasts and stages where she challenges broken performance rituals and offers practical alternatives rooted in evidence and care. She's coached engineering managers and ICs across tech, building employee experience systems that work for underrepresented talent and high-performing teams alike.
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Ash began her career in kitchens—where precision, feedback, and service are daily disciplines—and carried that ethos into software quality, engineering leadership, and later, executive roles in people systems and employee experience. She scaled from individual contributor to engineering manager to senior people-systems leadership at Credit Karma and Brex, learning how effective leadership requires both technical depth and human systems thinking. In 2024–25 she founded CountrPT to solve a persistent problem: performance systems over-index on manager memory and quarterly artifacts while overlooking daily wins, context, and invisible work. CountrPT helps individuals capture "career moments"—evidence, context, reflection—then uses AI to summarize patterns for 1:1s, promotions, and pay conversations. Those same signals underpin ManageUp, which gives leaders a real-time, privacy-aware view across teams: what's landing, what's blocked, and where to coach now—not six months from now. Ash's work is deliberately asset-based, drawing from her engineering background and people-systems expertise. She doesn't ask people to shout louder; she gives them a better ledger and teaches leaders to read it. You'll find her making the case on Hanselminutes, Teach the Geek, and at events like ALIGN and TestBash. Offstage, she keeps access open: public product updates, a Discord feedback channel, and steady guidance via short-form video as @ashtechbestie. She's building a company—and a community—around effective leadership and evidence-based performance.

Career Highlights

🏗️

Engineering Leadership

Led engineering teams and quality systems, scaling from IC to engineering manager with deep technical expertise in software quality and testing frameworks.

👥

Senior People & EX Leadership — Credit Karma & Brex

Built people systems and leadership practices that improved engagement, calibration, and performance.

🎯

Founder & Product Leader

Founded CountrPT and created ManageUp, combining engineering background with people-systems expertise to solve performance visibility challenges.

Founder & Build Thesis

The problem

Traditional performance systems optimize for storage, not sense-making. Reviews happen late, rely on recall, and flatten context. Great work becomes invisible; issues surface after they're expensive. Meanwhile, leaders juggle admin rather than coaching.

Our thesis

Start with the employee. CountrPT captures "moments" (outcomes, artifacts, reflections) in the flow of work. AI summarizes patterns and prompts productive conversations. On top of that, ManageUp gives managers and executives the real-time signal they actually need: where value is being created, where risk is rising, and what to do next—without asking people to write more paperwork.

Why now

  1. Signal gap is widening. Remote/hybrid + tool sprawl make memory and manager opinion unreliable.
  2. Leaders want earlier calls. Correct in week 3, not quarter 3; Align 2025 literally asks us to drop broken rituals.
  3. Employees want receipts. Individuals need portable, provable evidence for growth; CountrPT's app and community meet that need.

ManageUp, one-liner: Real-time, employee-powered performance visibility—so leaders coach sooner and teams grow faster.

Proof & Impact

  • Former Head of DEI, Credit Karma executive experience shaping culture and performance systems. Read coverage
  • Coming Soon: Feature on the Lead the People podcast: Coming Soon. Visit podcast
  • Featured on the "I Hate It Here" Podcast (July 2025): Why it's never too late to pivot careers with Ash Hynie Listen to episode
  • Featured on Hanselminutes (Jan 2025): bridging perception and impact in modern teams Listen to episode
  • Teach the Geek (Mar 2025): founder story; communicating value and achievements Listen to episode
  • ALIGN 2025 speaker: Performance reviews aren't the answer View conference
  • Testing community leadership: Ministry of Testing & Agile Testing Days speaker/mentor View profile
  • Founder traction: Public sites for CountrPT and ManageUp; early-access pipeline open Visit ManageUp
  • Audience reach: TikTok @ashtechbestie (~3.8k followers; ~269k likes as of Sept 2025) Follow on TikTok
  • Community channel live: CountrPT Discord feedback for users Join Discord

For Investors — ManageUp

  • Problem: Annual rituals miss early signals; late calibration and bad hires are expensive.
  • Solution: ManageUp predicts 90-day proficiency and provides real-time performance insight for earlier coaching, fair calibration, and better manager time ROI.
  • Why now: Manager leverage drives engagement; modern AI makes onboarding & performance ops measurable and scalable.
Founder/market fit: engineering + senior people leadershipTwo-sided engine: CountrPT → ManageUpDistribution: respected stages & channels
Investor intro See ROI calculator

Speaking & Media

Talk titles & abstracts

From Engineering to Executive Leadership

How technical depth becomes a superpower in people-systems leadership and effective team management.

Performance Without the Theater

How to replace performative reviews with continuous, evidence-based coaching and fair calibration.

Receipts Beat Opinions

A framework for capturing "moments" that make promotions undeniable—especially for underrepresented talent.

Engineering Leaders: Coach in Week Three

Using early signals and people systems to course-correct before morale and money are lost.

Building People Systems That Scale

How engineering thinking applies to employee experience and effective leadership practices.

Designing for the Quiet Wins

Making unseen work visible in hybrid teams through better people systems.

Past stages

Community & Access

Ash builds with—and for—people whose work is too often overlooked. Her default is asset-based: equip individuals with tools and language to show value, then teach leaders to read it well. Beyond stages, she opens practical access—short videos that demystify performance, a feedback channel for users, and direct conversations with teams trying to lead with care and evidence. CountrPT centers portability and dignity: your data stays yours, and your growth story travels with you.

Three ways Ash increases access

  • Shares tactical guidance via @ashtechbestie to normalize receipts-over-rhetoric.
  • Keeps a public CountrPT feedback Discord to learn with users.
  • Builds employee-first capture that benefits underrepresented talent without tokenizing—portable, provable value.

Personal Notes

I was a chef before tech. Kitchens taught me to care about outcomes, feedback, timing, and service—every single day. In software quality and engineering, I learned that products succeed when teams see what's really happening instead of what they hope is happening. As an executive in employee experience and DEI, I saw how systems help—or harm—people. CountrPT and ManageUp are my attempt to put all of that to work for you. I like teams that speak plainly, leaders who coach early, and systems that reward the quiet wins as much as the loud ones. If we work together, expect candor, warmth, and a bias for evidence over adjectives. We'll trade rituals that don't work for practices that do—and we'll leave people, and performance, better than we found them.

Let's Connect

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