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By: KnowBe4 HR
Published: 17 Aug 2022
Last Updated: 17 Aug 2022
In honor of KnowBe4’s 12th birthday, Knowsters around the globe celebrated in a big way! Every year, KnowBe4 honors its anniversary by making a lasting impact on our community and planet.
From extraordinary philanthropic efforts and swag giveaways to hosting a taco lunch and providing our Knowsters with delicious treats, let’s check out how our Knowsters celebrated our 12th anniversary!
Spearheaded by Lael, KnowBe4's Director of Global Sustainability, our philanthropic anniversary efforts will help further our sustainability efforts so we can continue lowering our carbon footprint.
For this year's anniversary, KnowBe4 sponsored 12 beehives, one for every year KnowBe4 has been in business. Each mature hive, or colony, will house approximately 20,000 honey bees. That means KnowBe4’s donation is ultimately adding 240,000 bees to the planet! Bees are important because they pollinate approximately 130 agricultural crops including fruit, fiber, nut, and vegetable crops. Bee pollination adds approximately 14 billion dollars annually to improved crop yield and quality. According to the Center for Biological Diversity, more than half of North America’s 4,000 native bee species are in decline, with 1 in 4 species at risk of extinction.
KnowBe4 also made a donation to Ocean Voyages Institute to clean up 12,000 pounds of garbage from The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP)! The GPGP is the largest of the five offshore plastic accumulation zones in the world’s oceans. It is located halfway between Hawaii and California and covers an estimated surface area of 1.6 million square kilometers, an area twice the size of Texas or three times the size of France.
"This year, I was thrilled to work with two outstanding organizations to reduce garbage in the ocean and increase bees in the region. Ocean Voyages Institute is making huge strides in removing garbage, particularly plastics, from The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The Pinellas Beekeepers Association maintains honey bee hives throughout the entire county. Both organizations are doing amazing work to safeguard the environment, and it was humbling to play a part in contributing to that work!"
-Lael, Director of Global Sustainability, Clearwater, Florida, U.S.
As you may know, we take extreme ownership here at KnowBe4. The principle is simple: everyone totally owns their sphere of responsibility and takes full ownership for their area. This inspired us to participate in extreme sports in honor of our anniversary this year!
"Many of our Knowsters have epic hobbies and our CEO, Stu, wanted to emphasize how awesome our KnowBe4 employees are by showcasing their extreme sports in a fun video! We had Knowsters skydiving, skiing, rock climbing, skateboarding, and even wakeboarding. One of the best parts of creating this unique video was watching our Knowsters in action."
-Elaina, Artisan of Culture & Geekery, Clearwater, Florida, U.S.
Many in-person and virtual celebrations took place for our Knowsters around the globe.
Our Fun & Shenanigans team hosted a delicious taco lunch on every floor at our global headquarters in Clearwater, Florida! Knowsters working in the office received fun swag throughout the day.
Our Singapore Knowsters gathered in person to celebrate KnowBe4's anniversary. They enjoyed some delicious Korean BBQ, had swag giveaways, and even sang karaoke!
In our Berlin, Germany office, Knowsters were given free chair massages during their in-office celebration.
"The team enjoyed some delicious cupcakes that had KnowBe4's 12th-anniversary logo on them. We also wore birthday hats to celebrate and had loads of fun together!"
-Marina, People & Culture Coordinator, Berlin, Germany
In our Cape Town, South Africa and Melbourne, Australia offices, Knowsters had fun celebrating with balloons and various pastries.
"We started our day with Starbucks coffee followed by some amazing cake to celebrate KnowBe4's anniversary. We ended our day with a team dinner. It was a great time connecting and celebrating with the team, especially since we had our Johannesburg team in the office for the week!"
-Olivia, Director of People Operations, Cape Town, South Africa
Our Knowsters in India celebrated with a team lunch. The employees that could not make it in person had lunch delivered to their homes!
From saving the bees to sweet celebrations across the globe, KnowBe4’s 12th birthday was one for the books. Cheers to 12 years, Knowsters! We can’t wait to see what is in store for next year!
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