Her Story
About Susan
My specialty is really building effective leaders and teams. I'm absolutely passionate about what I do, which is building effective leaders and teams and also developing a talent infrastructure for small companies that are scaling quickly. It's really just the people function, helping create optimal people experiences. I'll really start with speaking to a company and understanding what their pain points are, and then designing an HR or OD Diagnostic to help them identify their priorities, and then I'll build it from there. For example, today I met with someone who is basically looking to develop their leadership team. They're a small company, and the people who are in leadership roles have no training. But I identified that they also do not have a competency model, so they don't even have an infrastructure to identify what good looks like. So I'll be sending them a proposal for building them a competency model, along with a leadership training curriculum to help them develop that, potentially a performance management to help them evaluate. So it's really just optimizing the people within the business.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Susan
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to tenacity and resilience, and a lot of faith. It's about having that stick-to-itiveness and grit that you can't really teach or hand off to someone else. That's what separates those of us who have started our own businesses from those who always say they want to start a business but never do.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
My best advice is really to have a growth mindset, which means soak it up, find as many opportunities to connect with mentors, and to try new projects, and to raise your hand for things, so that you can really get involved, learn as much as you can, create as many relationships, and emotional collateral with people. You really learn about yourselves, you develop relationships, and you develop credibility, and you develop skills, and all those things come with you. You can never lose those things. Continue to build your skills. Just keep building your skills. If they offer you training, take it. If they ask if you want to be involved in a project, say yes. Have that growth mindset, where you can really expand your skills and experiences. Stay humble. The growth mindset means there's always someone to learn from, there's always more that you can gain, and when you come with that open mind, the sky's the limit.
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