Meet the Treners: Anita Pagin
June 3, 2026
Trener Robotics
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One day, early in her career, Anita showed up to work wearing one blue heel and one black heel. Different colors. Different heights. She did not notice until lunchtime.
Most people would want to forget that story. Anita tells it willingly. For her, it captures something true about working in startups: no one has all the answers, and the people who thrive are the ones who can find their footing even when things do not quite match up.
She joined her first company as the only People Operations hire at a 130-person medical device company still running on paper. Within weeks, the Director of HR hired to lead the department walked out after just two weeks on the job, leaving Anita to figure it out as she went. Since then she has built People departments at early stage companies and gained deep experience across organizations all the way through Series E, always coming back to the same observation: most organizational challenges are not business problems. They are alignment problems.
Why Trener
Anita joined Trener because the challenge was bigger than building a People function. She wanted to help build an operating system. From her first conversations with Asad, it was clear they shared the same belief: People Operations should be woven into the business, not sitting on the sidelines. The best people leaders are not program builders, they are the ones helping leaders navigate growth and build teams that can scale alongside the technology. Trener is building technology that helps robots navigate complexity, and Anita's job is helping people do the same. Just as Acteris gives robots the autonomy to handle variability and adapt without constant intervention, Anita's work is about building a team that can do the same, operating with clarity, moving quickly, and making good decisions without needing to escalate everything.
Her Mission
As Trener's first Head of People, Anita is focused on building the foundations that let both the company and its people grow as we scale. Behind every robot deployment, every model trained, and every partner onboarded is a team of people who need to communicate clearly, grow quickly, and stay aligned on what they are building. That is where Anita comes in.
"I love the messy middle where priorities collide, communication gets tangled, and smart people are solving different parts of the same problem," she says. "That's where I do my best work."
Her Superpower
Anita's superpower is observation. She is genuinely fascinated by how people communicate, make decisions, and sometimes accidentally make things more complicated than they need to be.
Outside of work, Anita is an accomplished baker, and if you are lucky enough to try her famous banana bread, you will understand why it has earned its reputation among the Trener team.
Anita also loves a good metaphor. The Cheesecake Factory has a menu the length of a novel and a wait time to match, while In-N-Out has four things on the menu and a line that keeps moving. The best operations are not the most complicated ones, they are the most deliberate. That is the kind of organization she is here to help build at Trener.
As the company grows from a tight-knit startup into a global robotics platform, building the human infrastructure to support that journey is just as important as the technology itself.