Sheena Aileen Davis, M.A.
Sheena Aileen Davis, M.A., is a strategic Human Resources leader with more than 15 years of experience specializing in total rewards, compensation strategy, benefits design, HR technology, and internal communications. She currently serves as Head of Total Rewards, HR Technology, and Internal Communications at Apache Industrial, where she reports directly to the Chief Human Resources Officer and leads enterprise-wide people strategies that align workforce programs with business objectives. She is approaching seven years with Apache, a period she often describes as “dog years” in transformation, having joined when the organization was much smaller and highly manual, with limited systems and processes in place. Since then, she has played a key role in modernizing HR infrastructure, scaling total rewards strategy, and driving initiatives that have delivered meaningful operational improvements and significant healthcare cost savings.
Sheena’s path into human resources was unplanned but formative. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Criminology and Investigations and her Master’s degree in Applied Social Research and Statistics, and initially entered the workforce through an analytics focused role with Hay Group, later acquired by Korn Ferry. There, she conducted employee engagement surveys and data analysis, gaining early exposure to workforce insights without initially realizing she was building a foundation in HR. Her work included opportunities to train colleagues in London, where she spent six months working internationally. A growing interest in compensation and benefits, sparked by reviewing employee feedback on pay and healthcare, ultimately led her deeper into the field. She later joined Goldman Sachs in a director partner compensation role before relocating to Texas, where she continued her career in compensation and expanded into broader total rewards work.
Over time, Sheena developed a deep passion for both compensation and benefits, recognizing the unique value each brings to organizations. She has led compensation work rooted in complex financial analysis and Excel based modeling, while also embracing the relational and employee facing impact of benefits strategy. This dual expertise has shaped her leadership approach, blending data driven decision making with a strong focus on employee experience. Throughout her career, she has helped organizations save millions of dollars through innovative benefits and compensation strategies, reinvesting those savings into improved healthcare and employee programs. She is also a conference speaker and thought leader in total rewards, known for connecting analytical rigor with a people first perspective to build more equitable and effective workplace systems.
• Respect in the Workplace
• Mental Health Foundations for Leaders
• West Virginia University - BA, Criminology and Investigations
• West Virginia University - MA, Applied Social Research & Statistics
• Volunteer at the Children's Hospital
What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to ownership and wanting to do things right. Once I'm responsible for something, I want to see it through - I have a lot of internal drive. My parents were pretty hard on me when I was younger, harder on me than my brothers, and I don't know if that just instilled that I had to be the best and push myself harder. But now I have that internal drive that I know I can be better, and if I'm not doing it the right way, I see that there could be a better way or we could do something more efficiently. When I own something, I want to see it through and make it better - I always know it's not perfect yet and we can continue to improve. I see people at work that just kind of put their feet up, and I used to tell my boss, I wish I could be one of those people just kicking their feet up doing nothing, but for me, it doesn't matter if I have a crappy boss or a crappy leader - I still could never not give 120%. It's not in my nature because I feel like that would look and reflect poorly on me. I just have that self-drive and passion that I want to do well, and I want other people to do well, and I want what's best for everything. My former boss told me at my 5-year mark that she'd never had a boss that cared so much, and I think I just have this self-drive where I want to make everybody proud. I want to leave things better than I found them - even if I left a place angry, I couldn't burn it down. I would want to make it perfect. Even if I hated my boss, I'd give them all the passwords, organize everything, because I couldn't leave my name negatively spoken about.
What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Learn the business. For HR, and really not just HR, you need to understand how the company makes money and what matters to leaders. If you don't understand the business, you're not going to be able to be strategic within HR - you're just going to be looked at as setting policies and procedures, not actually helping move the business forward. Understanding our business and what we needed to do, understanding our company and our people, helped me figure out what I wanted to change at Apache and what I was looking to do for our employees. I was trying to save money because we were spending ridiculous amounts and people were scared to use our benefits, but if I didn't understand how the business worked, there was no way I was going to be able to get in front of leaders and actually put money back in their pockets while also putting it back to our employees. You need to understand and learn the actual business so you're able to potentially have a seat at the table, and that starts younger, not just as a leader. I also don't think that just because you have a manager or director in your title makes you a leader - you can be a leader at any level of the organization. Just because you are an analyst or a coordinator doesn't mean you're not a leader in some way. You can teach up, teach down, and teach across. Don't think that you're not a leader just because you are just starting out. Try to find something that you truly are passionate about. I like comp, but I love benefits - there's that passion. Find your passion, it doesn't have to be benefits or safety or anything specific. You're still young, you have time, don't just say you got a job and now you're stuck with it. And really learn your role, learn the basics.