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About me

I’m an Organizational Psychologist and People Operations professional based in Latvia, working across international and remote-first environments.

My work has always centered around one core question:
how do we design systems that genuinely support people to perform and thrive?

After exploring different paths in my early career, I earned my Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and later a Master’s in Organizational Psychology — grounding my curiosity about human behaviour in evidence-based practice. Since then, I’ve built my professional life at the intersection of people, processes, and psychology.

In tech and startup environments, I focus on optimizing employee lifecycle processes, strengthening operational clarity, and supporting managers through complex people matters — particularly within distributed and async teams.

Alongside my People Operations career, I work as a psychologist, providing psychological assessments, individual counselling, and mental health trainings. Whether I’m working with leaders, teams, or individuals, the common thread is the same: helping people navigate complexity with more clarity and resilience.

I’m particularly passionate about employee experience, wellbeing initiatives, and building thoughtful workplace cultures that balance performance with humanity.

 

Outside of work, I enjoy both stillness and movement — from creative projects and long Netflix evenings to workouts, yoga, and the occasional virtual reality Beat Saber session.

These days, I split my time between Latvia and the Netherlands, and you might occasionally find me in London as well.

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Career

PEOPLE OPS & other

PSYCHOLOGY

September 2023 - Today • GoCardless

July 2021 - Today • Freelance

PEOPLE OPERATIONS PARTNER

AVIATION PSYCHOLOGIST

Ensuring a quality employee experience. Supporting UK, LV, US, AUS & FR with their day to day operational matters - onboarding, offboarding, payroll, policies, and other internal processes and employee and manager queries.

CO-LEAD FOR MINDFUL ERG

January 2024 - January 2025

Mindful ERG (Employee Resource Group) is focusing on employee mental health. ​I'm involved in event and activity planning, the technical aspects of building and maintaining our internal knowledge hub, the creative aspects of writing and creating content on mental health topics, and anything else thrown my way.

Doing psychological assessments for pilots, built and led mental health trainings for cabin crew, have run and analysed an employee engagement survey for cabin crew and soffering psychological consultations for employees when needed.

My clients include various Aviation businesses in Latvia: "Union Aviation", "Raf Avia", and "Latvijas Gaisa Satiksme".

September 2022 - Today • Freelance

COUNSELING PSYCHOLOGIST

I offer remote therapy sessions and my doors are open to clients all over the world! 

September 2022 • Speaker at GoRemote

"WORK-LIFE BALANCE

WHEN WORKING REMOTELY"

September 2017 - May 2018 • Riga State Gymnasium No3

GUIDANCE COUNSELOR

Stepped in the role for one school year (Sept-May). Organised events for students, offered mental support and individual consultations for them and also communicated with parents.

August 2020 - November 2022 • Lokalise

TALENT ACQUISITION & PEOPLE OPS

During my time at Lokalise, I moved between POps and TA teams.

In TA, I did global hiring in 40+ countries and owned the recruitment process A to Z. Partnered with HMs, served as an advisor and also mentored junior colleagues.

In POps, I owned remote teambuilding events, worked on processes and policies around remote work and employee wellbeing, owned a part of the onboarding and participated in employer branding initiatives. Also occasionally served as an advisor in people-related cases, coaching and supporting both managers and colleagues.

August 2018 - May 2020 • TrainingLab

TRAINING, DIGITAL & EB PROJECT MANAGER

As Training project manager, I worked with clients, ensured a smooth training experience, and supported the business using my psychology knowledge by helping develop new solutions.

As Digital manager, I created and maintained company websites, created learning materials and high quality video assets.

As Employer branding manager, I managed company's social networks, created visual assets and strategy, wrote copy and organised a conference of 250 attendees, while managing a team of 15 volunteers in the process.

I've done more - 

but I can't fit everything here. Feel free to visit my LinkedIn to see it all!

Knowledge

EDUCATION

In progress ....

I'm currently studying coaching!

TECHSTACK

General

G-Suite; Asana; Confluence; Notion; Slack; Jira

2025 • European Association for Aviation Psychology (EAAP)

EAAP35 conference in Athens, Greece.
Theme: Brains & Planes: Science Informing Practice, Practice Informing Science

HR

HiBob, Greenhouse, SageHR, PeopleForce

Creative

Photoshop, Wix, Canva, Vyond, GarageBand, iMovie

2021 • University of Latvia

Master's degree, Industrial and Organizational Psychology (Mg.Psych)

2020 • Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

Certificate, "Personality Traits That Predict Behavior in Pilots"

2019 • University of Latvia

 Bachelor's degree, Psychology

Creative pursuits

In my free time, I love to express myself in various ways - I write stories and poems, I make song covers and post them on YouTube. I love to take pretty pictures and make home movies of my trips with friends.

You won't see it all - but some of it can be found here!

© 2025 by Maruta Ignatoviča
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