Testimonials

Harold Ryan, CEO ProbablyMonsters (Former Bungie CEO) Over the last four years, Mariah has played an essential role in building ProbablyMonsters. From early-stage Chief Operating Officer to most recently Chief Giving Officer, Mariah has been integral to building our culture and setting us on a path for operational and philanthropic success. Mariah is a talented Operations, HR, Start-Up, and Social Impact executive who has worked by my side through the development of two complicated Start-ups. Mariah’s building, strategy, and leadership skills, enhanced by her diplomacy, were incredibly valuable during both these builds. In the past, Mariah worked with me during a complicated divestiture and the start-up of Bungie Studios. I knew I could count on Mariah to join me again at Probably Monsters to build a successful company focused on a people-first, respectful, inclusive, and giving culture. As the ProbablyMonster’s early-stage Chief Operating Officer, Mariah helped develop our operational infrastructure, hired and led our Operations executive team, including Finance, Human Resources, Outsourced Legal, Facilities, and Corporate Social Responsibility. Mariah and our executive team developed strategy, policies, procedures, and our solid operational foundation.
After building in Operations, Mariah turned her attention to Corporate Social Responsibility as our Chief Giving Officer. Mariah’s passion and deep community roots established meaningful non-profit organization partnerships and culminated in the development of an impactful, Corporate Social Responsibility Program, ingraining Giving into our culture. She has guided, empowered, inspired, and helped build a better community and made a real difference in people’s lives.
I highly recommend Mariah and look forward to my next opportunity to partner with Mariah again. Harold Ryan
Jeff Meder, CEO Cost-U-Less During the last seven years of operation, Mariah served as an outside HR consultant reporting directly to me. Mariah was effectively our HR department, but on a consultant basis. She developed, designed, and executed most of our critical programs and projects. Mariah worked with local labor attorneys as well as labor attorneys in the foreign countries in which we did business. In the course of her assignment she became our “in-house” expert on California State, US Territory, and international labor law. She developed a close professional relationship with my executive team, my store managers, corporate staff, and me. Mariah has a warm and sensitive manner about her that allowed her to slip in and out of the company as needed. Her professionalism was always at the highest level. She handled herself with the company’s best interests at all times and won the confidence of everyone she encountered in our company. Mariah was also flexible enough to start and stop projects as our priorities shifted. Mariah was a great asset to me, as Chief Executive and I would strongly recommend her for any endeavor. She was a pleasure to work with and a trusted confidant. Jeff Meder
Shannon Armstrong ,Chief People / HR Officer ProbablyMonsters Working with Mariah at ProbablyMonsters has been a great learning experience. As the early-stage Chief Operating Officer, Mariah hired, led, and managed ProbablyMonsters Operations. I reported to Mariah during this time and was responsible for leading Human Resources and Recruiting. We partnered to develop a complete HR / Recruiting infrastructure, including compensation, benefits, budgets, strategy roadmaps, programs, policies, workflows, procedures, and establishing a diverse, inclusive and respectful culture. I've always appreciated Mariah's candor. I also appreciated her collaborative and diplomatic approach. Working in a start-up environment with a complicated shared services model can be challenging – but with Mariah's support, we were adept at managing organizational growth and change and integrating new information/metrics into our decision-making process. Mariah always had time for her team to provide mentorship when needed. Mariah began our start-up journey with an inclusive, collaborative approach focused on a combination of innovation, best practice development, continuous improvement, and laughter. Mariah's passion surrounding Social Impact work and Philanthropic Giving was inspiring as she transitioned to the Chief Giving Officer role. It was impressive to watch her build and lead our Corporate Social Responsibility / Giving Program, encouraging employees to give back to our community. Mariah's work was integral to uniting our ProbablyMonsters team and building our inclusive, people-first culture. I'll never forget our start-up adventure – the hard work, dedication, and laughter, and I'm thankful to Mariah for providing a growth-oriented and encouraging environment. Shannon Armstrong
Allison Brown, Human Resources Leader, GPHR, SHRM-SCP, CPTD Mariah is an exceptional Human Resources leader and strategic visionary. I directly reported to Mariah at KOIN-TV, a 24/7 news station in Portland, OR. As a member of the senior leadership team at KOIN-TV, she excelled at influencing and role modeling strategic thinking. She led our department's accountabilities that included organizational and leadership development, employee engagement, recruiting, training, benefits, compensation, recognition, safety & security and workers' comp. Within our region, she also trained and mentored others in HR. Mariah continues to be a mentor of mine today as she is generous with her knowledge, insights and time. There are many things I admire about her style, especially: she is not knocked off balance by the unexpected; she reads situations quickly and excels at focused listening; she finds common ground and gets cooperation. Mariah is an innovative thinker and excels at broad-range planning. She is also highly resourceful and a skilled problem solver who understands the business beyond the HR department. She is effective in a variety of presentation settings: one-one-one, small and large groups, with peers and direct reports. Her optimism is infectious and she is a top-notch communicator. I will always be grateful to her for sharing both responsibility and accountability. She trusted me to perform and she comfortably delegated both routine and important tasks and decisions that helped me truly learn HR. She gave me the greatest gift a leader can give: stretch assignments and opportunities for my long-term development and she had the confidence I would be successful. I am grateful for having the opportunity to report to her and will always be a proud member of her team. (This is a personal reference and does not represent the viewpoint of my current employer.) Allison Brown
Mandira Virmani & Leslie Howle, Computing For All Non-Profit Mariah Bettise is a visionary leader, networker, and coordinator. She was inspired by the work our non-profit tech education pre-apprenticeship program (computingforall.org) does with providing a career pathway for underserved youth. In her role as the Chief Giving Officer at Probably Monsters she coordinated with their talented Firewalk Studio employees to mentor our students by sharing their career journey, job roles, and helping students build career awareness. This professional contact was rich and inspiring for our students, Mariah also included Computing For All in a creative Holiday Trivia Event and Non-Profit Drive culminating in donations to help us fund our student needs. It was an impactful, amazing and successful effort. She is a compassionate, hard-working, very knowledgeable leader with a social justice conscience who kindly enriched our students lives. I highly recommend her to anyone seeking a talented, accomplished leader in any role. Leslie Howle Director I worked with Mariah when she was Chief Giving Officer at Probably Monsters. She is the best partner one could ask for. She is thoughtful, empathic, dedicated, and committed to building a strong partnership. She nurtured the relationship with Computing For All and grew it on many levels bringing along so many people from Probably Monsters which resulted in a huge positive impact for our students. Mandira Virmani Director
Dave Matthews & Leif Johansen,Studio Leaders at ProbablyMonsters Mariah has been integral in establishing our culture and setting up the operational infrastructure that comes with building from ground zero. Her empathetic approach to leadership enables her to set a cultural pace and build teams that support that sustain those goals and direction. Her respectful and inclusive communication profile encourages others around her to engage, elevating the quality of any project. Those key traits became massive boons as we continued to extend our People First philosophy from an internal cultural pillar to reaching out to our communities as the Chief Giving Officer. Whether focused inward structurally or building bridges outward to partners and communities, Mariah’s positive and professional approach has helped set the course for continued success. Dave Matthews Studio Head Mariah is an extraordinary professional. I had the pleasure of working with her on incubating new teams and her breadth & depth of expertise were critical to setting our foundation right. Her attention to detail and genuine desire to do right by the team were a constant inspiration for me. Leif Johansen Design Director