Liz Warren

I started my career journey with an interest in criminal justice, working on an associate's degree because I wanted to be in law enforcement and eventually join the FBI. However, when I started studying that, I found that law enforcement was actually very boring to me and seemed like a broken system. What I did enjoy was the psychological component of criminals - what goes into the actual act of committing a crime, why do people commit crimes, and why do they continue to commit crimes. I was more interested in that than the actual law enforcement piece, and I still believe very passionately that if we fix some of the systematic issues, we'd see a huge decrease in crime. This led me to psychology. I fell into human resources like many professionals do - I started as an HR assistant just trying to earn some money while I worked on my master's degree in psychology. In doing that, I ended up falling in love with the practice of human resources and how psychology can be used to inspire productivity, decrease absenteeism, and increase retention. It really carried over to every aspect of it, so I chose to switch my educational path to industrial organizational psychology and stick with human resources instead of going into psychology and counseling. I've been in HR for 12 years and consulting for four and a half years. I had a mentor who was a general manager at a hotel I worked at previously, and he taught me a lot about operations, which gives me a unique perspective in human resources to be able to consider the operational needs and the overall business impact of what we do. Currently, I focus on organizational development, laying down the framework of HR for long-term success for the company. I really enjoy consulting, so I may stick with it, but I am definitely looking into potential leadership opportunities as my next career goal in the next 5 years. For my company that I work for, I do regular webinars and a podcast as opportunities to spread insight.