Her Story
About Denise
I started my career as a receptionist and saw an opportunity to become an HR representative. I got into the field, fell in love with it, and began elevating and growing, climbing all the way to the top as CHRO. Now I run my own HR consulting firm called the HR Executive, where I help small businesses and new entrepreneurs who've never had HR build out their infrastructure, implement policies, and learn how to hire, fire, and communicate effectively. I've been in this field for 25 years, mainly in media and entertainment for the last few years, but now I'm expanding into different industries like adult daycare nonprofits. My main area of expertise is building out HR infrastructures for small businesses that never had HR, creating their policies and procedures, and training new entrepreneurs who've never managed people or dealt with people problems within a business. I work alongside CEOs, understanding their business complications and people problems, finding compliance gaps that are often overlooked but expected to maintain as a first-time business owner, and training them on what it means to have employees and be legally compliant, especially in California where we have the strictest employment laws. I also help highly ambitious women find employment or start businesses of their own, doing career coaching to help them understand their worth and value and climb the corporate ladder.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Denise
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to my mom. Definitely her hard work and her work ethic. Everything that she was able to give, even as limited as it was, and seeing how hard she worked day in and day out. Just knowing that I wanted something different for myself, something different for my kids, even. My mom was an immigrant parent who left Central America to make a better life for herself in the United States. She worked at and managed a cleaner's for a very long time, but she never felt like she had enough to be able to own her own business, even though the people she worked for left the business in her care 90% of the time. She just never felt ready. When I decided to become an HR consultant, I had my own fears and phobias about how starting a business might look, because no one in my family ever done it, and the people I shared those moments with tried to talk me out of it. They said, 'Denise, you're crazy, you know how hard this is gonna be?' And yet and still, I did it with no blueprint. I am the first generation to start a business in my family and make it become prosperous. A lot of what I do now is kind of in remembrance of her.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I give, and the one I hold onto, is: You're ready. That's the advice I often give to my clients. You're ready. Most of the time, we are ready. We have everything we need, but we just don't have the belief to achieve that next level. My mom never felt ready to own her own business even though she had everything she needed, and that's kind of where the career coaching came in for me, because she just never felt ready. When I decided to become an HR consultant, I had my own fears and phobias, but I did it anyway. So the advice is: You're ready.
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