HRTech Interview with Maria Colacurcio, CEO of Syndio

Syndio CEO Maria Colacurcio discusses workplace equity, global pay transparency, and how technology is reshaping pay equity compliance.

HRTech Interview with Maria Colacurcio, CEO of Syndio

Welcome to HRTech Cube, Maria! Can you please share your professional journey with us? What led you to your current role as CEO of Syndio and your focus on workplace equity?
I’ve had a passion for purpose-driven work since I can remember– from working on congressional campaigns early on in my career to now leading Syndio. I first joined Syndio when the company only had a few employees and customers. Since then, we’ve built a company with over 140 employees and over 350 customers, including some of the best brands in the world such as Walmart, Nordstroms, Siemens, and Salesforce. And we help them solve some of their toughest challenges: complying with global pay transparency regulations and empowering them with AI and analytics to make smart, consistent pay decisions at scale.

Syndio’s Workplace Equity Trends Report highlights significant issues around pay transparency. What are the biggest takeaways from this year’s findings, and how do they reflect the current pay equity landscape?
By aggregating data from 400 HR professionals and leaders globally, our Trends Report gauges priorities and sentiment around pay transparency initiatives. These insights are especially relevant for business leaders today as the EU Pay Transparency Directive (EUPTD) is the largest pay equity legislation in 50 years and impacts multinationals with an EU footprint.

Our report found four key trends within the current pay transparency landscape:

  1. The EU Pay Transparency Directive is keeping leaders up at night.
  2. Most organizations are not prepared for the full scope of pay and career transparency.
  3. Companies are investing in more robust pay equity strategies to get ahead of complex transparency requirements.
  4. Despite DEI headwinds, companies are holding steady on pay equity.

You highlighted that the EU Pay Transparency Directive is the most significant pay equity legislation in 50 years. How is this directive impacting U.S.-based companies with an EU footprint, and what steps should they take to prepare?
Any U.S. company with employees in the EU will need to comply with at least one aspect of the EUPTD. That includes many of America’s best and most dynamic organizations. It’s both a huge wake up call and a textbook example of how compliance is becoming ever-more complex for U.S. companies with a global footprint. The majority of the obligations outlined in the directive impacts employers with even a single employee in the EU. The 2025 compensation cycle will be the last chance for organizations to make pay adjustments before they’re filed in public pay gap reports. The stakes will be higher than ever – the directive will not only mandate companies to disclose their pay scales, but it will also require them to report pay gaps and fix unjustifiable gaps publicly. Those who fail to comply will face severe consequences.

The earlier organizations can start preparing, the better. The first action companies can take is to check for benefits gaps and understand if your organization’s pay equity analyses include benefits. Another important step is to check job postings and ensure they include salary ranges and a brief benefits overview. Companies will also need to centralize their pay gap reporting to help proactively identify and address pay gaps while ensuring compliance. Prioritizing how to communicate pay gaps and pay conversations in general with employees will prove key to establishing a system that employees trust and falls in line with the EUPTD’s requirements.

According to the report, many organizations are struggling with transparency preparedness. What are the primary hurdles, and where do you see companies investing to meet these challenges?
In a less complex world, companies historically relied on the support of lawyers and consultants to help navigate regulatory changes. That is untenable today, and the old methods are becoming increasingly costly, inefficient, and unsustainable as companies try to comply with ever-increasing requirements. Technology has proved to be a true game changer for companies as digital solutions can automate compliance processes, increase speed and ease, and mitigate costly errors and compliance risks. Going further, technology has the power to enable companies to shift from a reactive to a proactive approach when it comes to pay decisions, allowing companies to scale accordingly.

Formulaic pay structures are emerging as a solution to build pay transparency. Can you explain how this approach works and why it might be a game-changer for organizations?
Formulaic pay structures directly connect compensation to business objectives, creating a more efficient system. Ultimately, these structures allow companies to move away from the more archaic annual merit cycle to a dynamic system that adjusts their pay incentives based on the skills and/or metrics that most align with their business goals. More and more companies are starting to turn to formulaic-based pay structures to help build pay transparency. Formulaic pay is built on setting a base pay for a certain set of skills and experiences, and differentiation is incentive based — which helps point to specific explainable pay incentives vs. traditional pay range/grid-based increases.

Despite DEI headwinds, many companies are holding steady on workplace equity. What’s your perspective on this trend, and what’s missing from the “holding steady” narrative?
While organizations remain committed to pay equity, their journey has evolved — from focusing on representation goals without clear action plans to using data-driven analyses to address root-cause issues that drive disparities in pay and advancement. This shift not only reduces gender and racial pay gaps, but ensures consistent and explainable pay and advancement for all employees. Despite DEI becoming a politically charged concept in today’s climate, the fundamental principle of merit-based pay equity remains valid. Organizations that embrace transparency and implement data-driven compensation strategies will ultimately be the ones that achieve true fairness in pay practices.

The true test for companies moving forward is how can they optimize pay on an ongoing basis and move from a twice yearly pay equity analysis to monitoring equity and balance it with the need to attract and retain talent in a dynamic market.

Syndio has been at the forefront of pay transparency solutions. What recent initiatives have you launched, and what’s next for the company as you continue to lead in this space?
AI is quickly revolutionizing the way we think about pay transparency and compliance. At Syndio, we’re focused on delivering AI with a clear business case and see the opportunity for AI to simultaneously improve access to on-demand information and simplify complex compliance requirements. To help companies tackle this head on, we recently launched Syndi, a new first-of-its-kind AI tool purpose-built for pay transparency compliance. Syndi uses an expert-in-the-loop approach, leveraging proprietary data curated by domain and legal experts and is available 24/7 – eliminating the need for external consultants and reducing costs. And this is just the beginning. We are developing use cases that would help guide customers in their pay transparency journey and act as an expert on their shoulders as they handle the complex pay decisions that come across their desk every single day.

We also launched Syndio’s Pay Gap Reporting Hub to provide companies with a single-source of truth for changing regulations. This hub maps the regulatory landscape across six continents and offers organizations detailed guidance and best practices for complying with the increasingly complex web of requirements, including:

A centralized, comprehensive view of pay gap reporting requirements, qualifying thresholds, and deadlines across the globe
Timely updates as requirements change across countries and jurisdictions

As a leader in pay equity, how do you approach balancing innovation, compliance, and business growth in such a rapidly evolving industry?
That’s the tension we live in every day — and frankly, it’s where Syndio thrives. Innovation isn’t about breaking rules; it’s about solving hard problems in smarter ways. As you’ve seen, compliance is one of the most complex challenges HR leaders face right now, and yesterday’s tools aren’t equipped to solve today’s problems. We don’t treat those constraints as barriers — we treat them as design principles and opportunities. Our platform is built to help companies navigate that complexity while still moving fast and driving business results. When we leverage AI, it’s to help reduce friction and ensure our customers have our expertise at their fingertips at all times.

At the end of the day, our job is to make it easier for companies to do the right thing, meet their legal obligations, and reward the talent that drives their business forward. At too many companies, these are competing goals but we see them as one integrated strategy. And the customers who embark on this journey with us reap huge benefits. That’s what fuels me: applying technology to create real business value in a way that’s deeply grounded in fairness and transparency.

What advice would you give to HR leaders and executives trying to navigate the complexities of pay equity and workplace transparency?
Navigating changing regulations with deadlines quickly approaching can feel overwhelming, but it’s important for companies to remember that the key to achieving true pay transparency is to take steps to build a more proactive, centralized strategy — so you can be as efficient as possible as requirements continue to evolve and grow more complex.

Maria Colacurcio ,CEO of Syndio

As CEO of Syndio, the industry pioneer in global pay transparency solutions, Maria Colacurcio is passionate about helping companies build equitable workplaces where every worker is valued for who they are and their contributions. Prior to joining the company, she co-founded Smartsheet.com, which went public in 2018. Maria also spent four years at Starbucks, which is one of the first Fortune 50 companies to go public with pay equity results. Having started her career working on congressional campaigns, she has a long history of mission-driven work and a compassionate and competitive attitude to spur change. As a CEO, she is walking the walk on eradicating workplace inequities.