Connection & shared experiences
Give people a reason to join in.
Talent shows, game nights, recipe face-offs, team selfie competitions, and shared celebrations created opportunities to know colleagues beyond the work.
I built the people and leadership systems behind an eight-time Best Place to Work. Explore the strategies, creative programs, and everyday practices that supported that success.
Workplace recognition earned by Heartbeat during my tenure leading Talent.
Ad Age & MM+M
2017, 2018, 2019, 2021 (twice), 2022, 2023, 2025
Med Ad News · 2020
Best Companies Group · 2022–2023
MM+M Woman to Watch · PM360 Elite 100 · Diversity Journal Black Leader Worth Watching · Official 40 Over Forty
I built a People function from the ground up and kept evolving it as the business changed. Explore the work by the problem you need to solve.
Showing all nine stories.
UpBeat, WorldBeat, BodyBeat, and LoveBeat were a huge part of the culture behind our workplace recognition. They gave people reasons to connect, participate, take care of themselves, and enjoy being part of the community.
As the company grew and ways of working changed, we needed deliberate ways to build connection and keep our shared culture alive.
Recurring programs, recognition, shared experiences, and a distinctive voice made culture something people could participate in throughout the year.
What I built. A culture approach that combined connection and wellbeing with recognition, belonging, and leadership practices. The Beats and Sasha gave that experience a creative, recognizable personality.
The programming included shared celebrations and games, community activities, fitness and wellbeing experiences, and creative campaigns that brought people together.
Talent shows, game nights, recipe face-offs, team selfie competitions, and shared celebrations created opportunities to know colleagues beyond the work.
Dance and strength classes, meditation, pedometer challenges, 5K runs, massages, and smoothie days sat alongside activities such as backpack stuffing and coat and food drives.
A themed week welcomed people back with an ’80s scavenger hunt, classic video games, trivia, photos, and playful participation through the LoveBeat Teams channel.
Peer appreciation, employee recognition, business resource groups, and spaces for people to share their experiences reinforced the connections built through the programs.
Sasha was the recurring character who made a spectacular mess of ordinary responsibilities. Her funny stories ended with a consequence and a clear reminder: don’t be like Sasha. People looked forward to reading what she had gotten herself into this time.
Last night was her birthday. This morning, she woke up next to an empty Prosecco bottle, a half-eaten tub of ice cream, and a shoe she’s pretty sure isn’t hers.
Her phone is at 2%. Her head is pounding. She has three missed calls from her manager.
Apparently, “I’ll do my timesheet when I get home” was a terrible plan.
New illustrative story written for this portfolio, based on Sasha’s original birthday-and-Prosecco premise. This is not an original campaign.
The Beats created recognizable programs and repeated opportunities to connect, rather than leaving culture to chance.
Programming spanned social activities, wellbeing, community involvement, recognition, and learning so people had multiple ways to engage.
Sasha was the cautionary tale: funny, chaotic, and reliably getting herself into trouble. Each story used her predicament to land a practical reminder. The same character also appeared in learning exercises.
Manager expectations, employee check-ins, growth opportunities, recognition, and equity practices supported the culture beyond the activities themselves.
I joined a growing business with no HR function and built one. As the company doubled and then tripled, the function had to evolve with its needs.
The business had no HR function. Growth required the structure, expertise, and systems to support a more complex organization.
An integrated People function supported business decisions and the employee experience across hiring, staffing, development, performance, rewards, and operations.
What I built. A team of 17 spanning HR business partners, talent acquisition, resource management, learning, coaching, employee experience, and office management.
Develop the function as the company grows and its organizational demands change.
Lead resource management on skills, capacity, and deployment in response to client and business needs.
Work with Finance on budgets, forecasting, and headcount investment, and with Legal on employee relations, investigations, and major employment decisions.
Co-lead Publicis Connects for U.S. Talent professionals and contribute programming, knowledge sharing, and initiatives across the broader network.
Adopting a Challenger identity required more than a new description of the company. People needed to understand the behaviors, apply them in their own departments, and see them reflected in expectations and decisions.
We needed to define what being a Challenger meant in each department and in the work people did every day.
Challenger behaviors were built into What Good Looks Like, performance assessment, the nine-box, talent conversations, and succession planning.
What I built. A high-performance approach connecting the company’s direction to department expectations, individual growth, manager accountability, talent assessment, development, and recognition.
Department teams came together to find new ways to solve old problems. The work gave employees a way to practice ambition, insight, invention, courage, and positive impact.
I partnered with department heads to define role expectations and paths for growth, incorporating the behaviors of a Challenger into the standards.
Those standards informed performance measures, nine-box assessment, calibration, and succession planning. Conversations started with department heads and extended to every manager.
We built mechanisms to identify high performance and underperformance earlier, respond sooner, plan development with employees, and use recognition deliberately.
What expectation did we establish?
What specific behavior or result shows the gap?
What feedback and support have we provided?
What might another perspective reveal?
Check that the role expectations were communicated and understood.
Describe behaviors and outcomes, gather other perspectives, and distinguish style from substance.
Review the feedback, tools, and training already provided, including the manager’s contribution.
Set the next action, make the improvement plan clear, and follow up regularly.
Being good at a craft did not prepare someone to lead people. I made leadership readiness and the growth of direct reports part of what it meant to be a manager.
People were promoted into manager roles after excelling in their craft. Manager success was not evaluated or a priority for career advancement.
No automatic managers. Every manager must also be a leader: prepared to guide, counsel, inspire, and help their people perform and grow.
What I built. A leadership standard supported by the Manager’s Manifesto, Manager Toolkit, Bootcamp, Lead with Heart, coaching, and feedback on the impact each manager had on their people.
Clear expectations. Consistent conversations. Useful feedback. Support for development.
Bootcamp, role-play, practical tools, six-week group coaching, and ongoing manager meetings.
Direct-report feedback and impact assessment inform development priorities.
Manager satisfaction increased from 79% to 97%.
The Manifesto defined what managers owed their teams: clear expectations, regular conversations, useful feedback, and support for growth.
Leadership readiness replaced the assumption that promotion in a craft automatically qualified someone to manage people.
Bootcamp, role-play, six-week group coaching, and ongoing manager conversations helped people practice the work of leading.
Manager effectiveness included direct-report feedback and how well their people performed and grew. Results informed further development and support.
Each learning program answered a different business need. Managers and employees identified skill gaps together so development could be deliberate and useful.
Rapid growth left foundational training gaps. Pitch teams needed a deeper bench. Early-career employees needed stronger connections and opportunities to learn together.
Targeted programs built foundational knowledge, presentation capability, and early-career connection. Development planning connected individual needs to the business.
What I built. A learning approach spanning early career through executive leadership, with programs designed around specific needs and growth goals.
We grew quickly and had not trained enough. Beat Basics created foundational learning to help people build the knowledge needed to do their work.
The business needed more people who could stand up, tell a story, articulate a point of view, and sell an idea. I created Speak From the Heart to build that capability and open opportunities for career growth.
BYOP brought early-career employees into the office to learn together and build relationships with one another.
Managers worked with employees to highlight skill gaps and identify training needs. Role expectations and career goals gave those choices direction. Knowledge Share and Voice Your Vision also gave people ways to demonstrate expertise and stretch beyond their roles.
An employee could be performing well, underpaid, overdue for advancement, and working long hours. Those facts lived in different places. I connected them so we could see the person’s experience and act.
Data lived in disconnected platforms. Some information was not tracked at all. Without benchmarks, we could not readily see pay gaps, stalled progression, or people falling through the cracks.
A connected employee experience, with the information and benchmarks needed to identify red flags and act so no employee fell through the cracks.
What I changed. I connected existing information, tracked what was missing, and established benchmarks such as average pay and time to promote by role. Those benchmarks made gaps visible and created the red flags we could use to act.
Senior Strategist · Strategy
| Role | Time in role | Role promotion benchmark |
|---|---|---|
| Senior Strategist | 36 months | 24 months |
| Strategist | 24 months | 24 months |
| Associate Strategist | 12 months | 18 months |
| Salary | Role average | Band position |
|---|---|---|
| $105,000 | $120,000 | Below midpoint |
Review flag: pay below role average and time in role above the promotion benchmark.
| Change | Salary | Context |
|---|---|---|
| Current | $105,000 | Merit increase |
| Prior year | $101,000 | Merit increase |
| Promotion year | $96,000 | Promotion |
| Review | Performance | Potential |
|---|---|---|
| Latest | Exceeds expectations | High |
| Previous | Exceeds expectations | High |
Review flag: a high performer sustaining a heavy workload.
No active leave in this fictional example.
No recent award or program nomination recorded.
Include in the unrecognized high-performer list for upcoming awards and program nominations.
Enjoys mentoring early-career colleagues. Prefers direct feedback and team recognition.
Recreated around the profile structure in the source deck. All employee details, salaries, benchmarks, and records shown here are fictional.
These signals brought people into focus. Each prompted review and a conversation, followed by action suited to the person.
The work combined data analysis, conversations, and leadership action.
Connect career conversations, performance, compensation, learning, work hours, check-ins, and personal preferences. Track missing information and create benchmarks so the data can reveal meaningful gaps.
Connect development to aspirations and use personal knowledge to shape the employee experience. When an award, industry nomination, group program, or monthly recognition opportunity came up, consult the list of high performers who had not been recognized. Use that view to spread recognition thoughtfully instead of repeatedly choosing the same people.
Compare pay and time in role with relevant benchmarks. Examine differences across the workforce and investigate gaps in the employee experience. Partner with talent acquisition and resource management on equitable practices across hiring, staffing, mobility, development, and succession planning.
Examine year-over-year trends and segment the data by several factors, including tenure, time in role, pay, department, and reasons for leaving. Use patterns to build leaver profiles, then proactively meet with employees whose experiences resemble those patterns.
Pay, benefits, recognition, and wellbeing required a strategy connected to the business and the employee experience.
Compensation decisions needed a defined purpose, department-level planning, and a consistent way to examine equity.
Three compensation cycles a year used defined strategies, department-level reporting, one-to-one planning, and pay-equity tools applied in every cycle.
What I built. An end-to-end total rewards approach covering compensation, benefits, wellbeing, lifestyle resources, and recognition.
Define the objective, such as retaining critical roles or rewarding high performance, before developing recommendations.
Use department-level information and one-to-one conversations to examine needs and proposed decisions.
Apply pay-equity tools during each cycle so potential gaps can inform the planning and approval process.
When an industry award, program nomination, or monthly award opportunity arose, consult the list of high performers who had not been recognized to spread recognition thoughtfully.
Acquisitions, restructuring, leadership transitions, and shifts in company direction each required people to understand and adopt a different way of working.
Different entities, structures, practices, and expectations needed to come together as the organization changed.
Shared structures, leadership practices, talent systems, and employee experiences supported integration and continued adaptation.
What I led. People integration for the Langland, BBK, and Maxcess acquisitions, alongside change management through restructuring, workforce reductions, leadership transitions, and changes in company positioning and values.
Bring acquired entities onto shared organizational structures and clarify how teams would work together.
Connect leadership expectations, talent systems, and employee experiences while navigating ambiguity.
Clarify responsibilities, review the communication approach, coordinate legal review, and plan coverage and manager transitions.
Equip leaders to acknowledge the personal impact, explain the decision consistently, and avoid promises they cannot make.
Coordinate available mobility and outplacement resources and explain the practical next steps.
Plan team conversations, clarify responsibilities, and provide space for questions after notification.
AI was changing the skills people needed and how work could be done. Within Talent, a leaner team also needed to retain knowledge and expand its capacity.
Institutional knowledge depended on the people holding it. A smaller Talent team needed more capacity.
I built and trained an AI agent to preserve institutional knowledge and expand the capacity of the team.
What I built. AI and workforce transformation into the talent strategy, connecting changes in work to skills, hiring, upskilling, leadership development, and deployment.
Translate changes in how work gets done into decisions about capability, hiring, and development.
Build and train an agent around institutional knowledge so the team could draw on it in its work.