Her Story
About Kristen
I started my career right after college doing nonprofit work, working specifically at the Girls Leadership Institute and also in education for Julia Morgan School for Girls. It's not really atypical for L&D folks to get started in education, so that's where my background was - nonprofit education. I actually attended a conference where I met one of my mentors, Dr. Elaine Yarbrough, who is the Organizational Development Director at the University of Colorado Boulder. She was doing a session on conflict management, and that's really what piqued my interest in pursuing the field. At that conference, I got to sit down and talk to her more about her background and her passion for helping organizations change in a way that allows their employees to thrive and is very human-centered. While I was at Julia Morgan and the Girls Leadership Institute, I was teaching social-emotional learning, a curriculum that's very much communications-based, really helping girls to develop those skills that will help them to be successful in the world, both personally and professionally. When I started doing my org dev program at the University of San Francisco, they were teaching a lot about leadership development and how to lead successfully, and I loved the validation that it's not just young folks who need these skills, but we need to equip professionals to be able to effectively deal with conflict, to be human-centric leaders, to have empathy, to be able to grow and develop and coach their people. My passion has continued to lead me to working on different stuff, but it's all been very focused throughout my career, even in different industries. I'm a certified professional coach with IPEC, and I completed my certification in Change Management with ProSci. One of the things I'm most proud of was during the process of merging with SiriusXM when SiriusXM bought Pandora. I was the point person lead for leadership development and manager enablement, equipping managers to help their teams deal with big organizational changes and helping them to be strong leaders throughout. I was also leading some of the more operational capabilities focused on the change management activities, bringing both of those things together with a human-centric approach, this empathy and care for the fact that change is really hard for people, while also setting this North Star for what the bigger picture and ultimate outcome was.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Kristen
01What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I would say absolutely follow your heart and follow where your passion is. I feel like that's what has made me most successful, is that every day I believe in everything that I'm doing. I believe so much in not just how learning and development can be a strong lever of performance for the business, but also how impactful it can be for people's lives. That's something that I'm truly proud that I get to be a part of every day of people's personal and individual growth. Number one, follow your heart, follow your passion, and also don't let challenges get in the way, and don't ever let anyone make you feel like you can't do it or you can't achieve something. I think, especially as women, we all tend to have imposter syndrome at different points in time, and there's a lot of different socialization mechanisms that put that into place, but I think it's really important that if you ever start to have that doubt, that you reach out to someone or find someone who can help cheerlead you along the way, because I think ultimately we're as successful as the way that we build each other up, and no one should have to go through that journey alone. So I think it's important that we all support each other. Don't be surprised by the curveballs, because sometimes the things that come beyond it are even better and feel even more aligned to your purpose than maybe what you originally thought you were gonna do.
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