In this Talent Tales episode, talent.imperative Founder Nicole Dessain had the honor to interview Mercedes Sullivan, Executive Vice President, People, Culture & Communications at McKinley Companies.

In a recent episode of Talent Tales, talent.imperative Founder Nicole Dessain had the honor to interview Jayne Glick, Director of Organizational Effectiveness at design agency IA Collective.

Jayne shared her innovative approach to HR and organizational development. Her conversation provides valuable insights into the application of design thinking in career framework redesign and emphasizes the critical role of prototyping in evolving HR practices.

In this Talent Tales episode, talent.imperative Founder Nicole Dessain had the honor to interview Jessica Haaz, an attorney who works at a New York State agency.

Jessica is an investigative attorney and former prosecutor who has spent most of her career in the private sector within New York City and State.

Jessica’s superpower is relationship building. She thinks she has honed this superpower because she is curious and likes to learn about people and because she is authentic which makes others feel comfortable talking to her.

A little over a year ago, Jessica launched a personal project called “100 Interesting Conversations”. The initial inspiration came from a conversation with one of her professors years ago who highlighted that sometimes you just need to have conversations with people to learn about their jobs and that by asking them insightful questions you might figure out career options for yourself.

In this Talent Tales episode, talent.imperative Founder Nicole Dessain had the honor to interview Lynn DiBonaventura, Director, Learning & Growth, US Business Operations at CSL Behring.

Lynn is an HR talent professional who is also very engrained in the business. She’s spent the last twenty-five years in and out of talent management and talent development on a global scale. Her expertise is in leadership development and talent mobility within organizations.

Lynn’s superpower is being an empathetic leader and really leading an organization and a team forward and doing it through empathy, relationships, and communication.

In this Talent Tales episode, talent.imperative Founder Nicole Dessain had the honor to interview Dr. Bruce Pereira, Global Learning Design Lead at a Large Professional Services Organization.

Bruce describes himself as a “narrative and systemic archeologist” - someone who uncovers hidden meaning through the power of storytelling. Bruce’s superpower is helping people unearth their unique stories and exploring the systemic impact these stories have on teams and organizations.

In this Talent Tales episode, talent.imperative Founder Nicole Dessain had the honor to interview Ashley Eisenberg (Sr. Director Program Management, People Solutions) and Rachel Franco (Program Designer – Innovation Framework) at Change Healthcare.

In this Talent Tales episode, talent.imperative Founder Nicole Dessain had the honor to interview Dr. Valerie Toney Parker (Chief People Officer) and Steve Bynum (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Manager) at Chicago Public Media.

Valerie’s superpower is marked by her bi-vocational career as both, a social justice theologian and an HR leader, through the metaphor of wine. Wine brings people to the table, to be in conversation. The text of “not pouring old wine into new wine skins” reminds her of the fact that if we want to change systemic issues, we can’t continue to do so the way we have in the past.

Steve’s superpower is the ability to put people at ease by providing a safe space for shared humanity. He was raised by his grandparents in Memphis and his family had a tremendous influence on shaping who he is today. By moving to Chicago, Steve became part of a global community which he cherishes. Being part of this “diaspora of humanity” helps him, an African American man, to feel supported when faced with inequities.

In this episode of "Talent Tales", talentimperative.com founder Nicole Dessain brings back three former Talent Tales guests (Angela Howard, Elles Skony, and Steph Ryter) to discuss “Design Thinking for HR in 2022 - Predictions, Practices, and Pitfalls”.

In this Talent Tales episode, talent.imperative Founder Nicole Dessain had the honor to interview Adam Cochrane, a Senior Product Designer at Zalando in Berlin, Germany.

Adam’s superpower is “thinking in a service mindset” and bringing people together over the customer journey.

Adam’s interest in ritual design stems from his religious upbringing in Australia where he learned how powerful rituals can be in bringing people together and uniting them around a shared vision.

In this Talent Tales episode, talent.imperative Founder Nicole Dessain had the honor to interview Lee Kim, the Global Congress Lead PIH & Innovation at Pfizer.

Lee’s superpower is jumping off a cliff and not knowing what’s going to happen.

Lee is a mechanical engineer by training who pivoted to design thinking seven years ago. This transition came with a lot of self-reflection around how to interact with people differently and develop solutions in new ways.

In this Talent Tales episode, talent.imperative Founder Nicole Dessain had the honor to interview Diana Marchese, the Director of People Experience at Snyk.

Diana’s superpower is taking ambiguous ideas, clarify them, and then turn them into tangible results.

Diana shares that she entered the design thinking world as an art teacher. She feels as though she organically applied a design thinking mindset when collaborating with her students and thinking holistically about the experience of the student. In 2015, Diana pivoted her career and moved into the field of workplace experience. She realized that students and adults have the same needs and wants: to be heard, to feel safe, and to have an impact.

Diana joined her current company, Snyk, in January of 2020 - right before the pandemic hit. She spent her onboarding months helping to transition the company to a virtual organization.

In this Talent Tales episode, talent.imperative Founder Nicole Dessain had the honor to interview Damon Deaner, the Director of Employee Experience & Design at IBM.

Damon’s superpower is blending design and technology. He now applies his superpower by using design and tech to enable people experience.

Damon started his journey in design thinking in 2012 when IBM announced that they would bring design back and build a culture of design thinking. Damon joined the newly formed design organization and helped bring developers, engineers, and designers together to use design thinking. From there, he ended up leading all design talent at IBM and conducted several employee lifecycle projects. That caught the attention of the CHRO and eventually Damon was asked to join the HR team to build an employee experience practice.

In this Talent Tales episode, talent.imperative Founder Nicole Dessain had the honor to interview Maike Kueper, an Agile Culture Development Coach at Dr. Oetker.

Maike’s superpower is curating evidence-based HR approaches which in her mind provide a better way of designing HR programs and processes rather than using a “we’ve always done it this way” approach. An example she shares is how there is research that supports the fact that if performance management only focuses on using extrinsic motivators it can discourage those employees who are mainly motivated intrinsically.

Maike has a humanities background which affords her with a unique point of view around culture and organizational development in her role as Agile coach.

Maike’s focus is on fostering a human-centered and agile mindset at Dr. Oetker rather than just following rigid methods. One way that manifests is in a relentless focus on defining the problem space well before jumping to solutions and iterating small experiments.

In this Talent Tales episode, talent.imperative Founder Nicole Dessain had the honor to interview Tyler Carroll, Executive Director of Organizational Climate at UChicago Medicine.

Tyler’s current superpower is (or at least she aspires to it) to stay awake for 24 hours to get everything done that needs to be completed – both a work and at home. BAM! I think many of us wish they had that superpower right about now…

Tyler’s career story is marked by progressing in the field of change management across various functions and organizations. She joined UChicago Medicine six years ago leading a team that is responsible for making this purpose-driven healthcare organization an even better place to work.

Tyler was first exposed to human-centered design when she realized that HR communications were very functional and not so much crafted with the user in mind. She realized that the greatest HR programs can be ineffective if the message is lost because it was not tied to the employees’ experiences.

In this Talent Tales episode, talent.imperative Founder Nicole Dessain had the honor to interview Shira Ben Cohen, Global Experience Designer at Intel.

Shira’s creative superpower is service blueprinting. A service blueprint is a diagram that visualizes the relationships between different service components — people, props (physical or digital evidence), and processes — that are directly tied to touchpoints in a specific customer journey.

Shira is not only spearheading experience design at Intel, she also writes and speaks about it externally and has built a local community of service designers in Tel Aviv.

In this Talent Tales episode, talent.imperative Founder Nicole Dessain had the honor to interview Halima McWilliams, People Operations and Culture Leader at Corgan.

Halima’s creative superpower is being strategically creative - connecting the dots with an out of the box approach.

Halima describes herself as a “family reunion aficionado” making family tradition and legacy particularly important to her. She aims to create that same level of connection and belonging in the workplace.

In this Talent Tales episode, talent.imperative Founder Nicole Dessain had the honor to interview Christopher Lind, Head of Global Digital Learning at GE Healthcare.

Christopher’s creative superpower is to take complicated or fragmented topics and make sense of them for others. He models this in his own podcast show, Learning Tech Talks.

Christopher is a self-proclaimed people development geek who has always been fascinated by technology’s possibilities in support of learning.

In this Talent Tales episode, talent.imperative Founder Nicole Dessain had the honor to interview Stella Ioannidou, IT Workforce Management Lead at Eurobank.

Stella’s creative superpower is applying the concept of analogy. She often draws from another context to gain inspiration for the current problem she is trying to solve.

After having worked a decade in project management, Stella recognized that what set apart good projects was how people were engaged in the process. She started to include some coaching practices into project management. Stella then realized that it was even more important to engage people in a cultural context overall instead just on a project. That realization sparked her interest in learning more about how people perform, what makes them tick, and what skills they need to succeed.

In this Talent Tales episode, talent.imperative Founder Nicole Dessain had the honor to interview Danielle Crane, Chief Talent Officer at GreenPath.

Danielle’s creative superpower is connecting humans and ideas.

Danielle describes herself as “the girl who almost didn’t enter HR”. She quit her first HR internship after 48 hours. Her career counsellor challenged her to try for another internship and encouraged her to help design what HR might be versus the reactive function she initially experienced.

Danielle was first exposed to design thinking by her CEO who had used it previously and brought it with her when she joined GreenPath. Danielle was intrigued by how she might apply this method for complex problem solving with her internal customers – leaders and employees.

In her own practice, Danielle combines design thinking with behavioral economics principles when designing HR programs at GreenPath.

In this Talent Tales episode, talent.imperative Founder Nicole Dessain shares ten design thinking resources and hacks she learned from past Talent Tales guests.

In this Talent Tales episode, talent.imperative Founder Nicole Dessain had the honor to interview Kelli Koschmann, VP of People at Sittercity.

Kelli’s creative superpower is keeping an open mind through the lens of empathy.

Kelli discovered design thinking by attending HR.Hackathon Chicago hosted by the HR.Hackathon Alliance, a community of HR rebels that believe in the power of design thinking to tackle our most pressing workplace challenges.

Kelli leveraged the practice of ideation facilitation that she learned at the hackathons to impact change inside Sittercity.

In this Talent Tales episode, talent.imperative Founder Nicole Dessain had the honor to interview Elles Skony, Vice President of Talent Management at Centro.

Elles’ creative superpower is “communication”. She believes that HR can come up with the best programs or initiatives but if they are not articulated in an engaging and humorous way then they are not going to be embraced by employees.

Elles is passionate about enabling every HR professional to become excited about the employee experience. One of the ways she fosters this is by networking with other HR professionals of mid-sized start-ups in Chicago. While there is competition for talent, this collaboration encourages taking a systems perspective towards making people’s work lives better by sharing best practices and lessons learned.

Elles leverages design thinking as a framework to prioritize HR initiatives at the beginning of each year and to define the employee experience at Centro.

In this Talent Tales episode I had the honor to interview Jennifer Dewey , Global Talent Management Lead at BASF Colors & Effects.

Jennifer’s creative superpower is “flexibility”. She has always been very flexible in her approach and mindset which certainly is evident in her impressive career trajectory.Jennifer graduated with a degree in social work and was a case worker where she ran a very lean team and learned how to problem solve on a daily basis. After a while, Jennifer was looking for more development opportunities. So she decided to interview her friends to learn about related fields where she still could work with people. That’s how she discovered Human Resources. Her first job was as a Recruiting Coordinator. From there, she worked her way up by keeping an open mind about new opportunities which included working in different geographies including in Asia.

For the last eleven years, Jennifer has worked at BASF.

Jennifer discovered design thinking as part of her late night Google searches where she was looking for inspiration for career development in a turbulent time when her business unit BASF Colors & Effects was undergoing a divestiture.

In this Talent Tales episode I had the honor to interview Katharina Krentz , Sr. Consultant New Work & Digital Collaboration at Robert Bosch GmbH.

Katharina’s creative superpower is being “chancen-intelligent”. It’s one of those German words that does not really translate into English, but it means something to the effect that she has a talent to uncover opportunities and bringing them to life by connecting the right people.

Katharina is also widely credited with popularizing the Working Out Loud (#WOL) method in Germany. [You can read more about Katharina’s personal #WOL story here.] In a nutshell, Working Out Loud is a peer-supported method that helps people to share their work with others which fosters a culture of open communication and collaboration.

In this Talent Tales episode I had the honor to interview Laura Winegardner, Employee Experience Manager at cleverbridge. Laura’s creative superpower is “infusing the big picture with nitty-gritty details”. She has the ability to dream really big but is also able to think through every little detail that goes into making that big picture a reality.

Laura’s background in interior design is what continues to keep her interested in human-centered design methods. In her current job, she applies the method to the employee experience.

Early on in her career at cleverbridge as an Office Manager, Laura realized the importance of bringing together Facilities, Marketing, IT, and HR to create a seamless employee experience and space that fits the needs of employees. In her next role in Marketing, she took those learnings and applied them to bringing the cleverbridge brand to life for the company’s clients and prospects. That is also where she learned the art of storytelling which she is now able to leverage in her current role as Employee Experience Manager. The impetus for creating this new role was that employees provided a lot of feedback but there was no place to analyze what really would make an impact on engagement.

It quickly became clear, that collaborating across functions in the growing organization was key to providing a seamless employee experience. Initially, collaboration was organic but as the organization grew to 350 employees, a more structured collaboration effort was needed.

In this Talent Tales episode I had the honor to interview Angela Howard, Director or Talent Management & Culture at Kaiser Permanente. Angela’s creative superpower is “connecting the dots”. She likes to collaborate across functions to deliver an awesome employee experience.

During our conversation Angela shared how Kaiser Permanente is looking at the employee experience not from a traditional programmatic approach but by focusing on what the journey looks like from the employee perspective. The company has a dedicated employee experience team that ensures all HR programs connect to provide a seamless employee experience, from the minute someone learns about Kaiser Permanente to the time they leave the company.

In this Talent Tales episode I had the honor to interview Robert Ritchie, Head of Organizational Development at the University of Salford. Robert’s creative superpower is being a “shape shifter” – he can adapt to different situations in order to get things done. Sounds like a regular superhero to me!

The University of Salford has an entrepreneurial culture which lends itself to experiments in innovation and design thinking. The team recently defined ten core behaviors (incl. to be “daring”). This gave employees permission to be creative about the things that they can accomplish and enabled managers to lead towards creating an innovative, modern university.

When it comes to design thinking, Robert and his team have especially embraced empathy to connect with employees as “real humans” and to find out what is important to them. The university also embraces a “prototyping” mindset in that it’s ok to try something and to learn from mistakes, to be curious.

In this Talent Tales episode I had the honor to interview Soumee De, Head of HR for Consumer Banking Technology (EMEA/APAC) at Citi. Soumee is a self-described creative “artiste”, human professional, and technophile. Her creative superpower is bridging gaps - between technologists and those who are not that inclined, between business and HR, between the world of art and science.

In our conversation, Soumee describes how she discovered design thinking a few years ago through a workshop her company offered. To her surprise, she experienced herself struggling with applying the concept of empathy to our work. As HR professionals we get paid to pass judgement on people – when we interview them for a role, evaluate their performance, or assess their potential. Her personal takeaway was to unlearn some of the behaviors she’s honed in HR and apply more of an ethnographic research lens when trying to solve a people-related challenge.

In this Talent Tales episode I had the honor to interview Christina Chateauvert, Design Thinking Learning Lead at Ford Motor Company. In her role, Christina focuses on building design thinking capability inside the organization.

Christina’s passion is to educate others on how to use human-centered design in their business and personal lives through her work at Ford, her teaching in the “Learning Design and Technology” graduate program at Wayne State University, by providing professional development workshops for women at SheHive, and by hosting the Detroit hr.hackathon.

Christina’s creative superpower is “From Abstract to Action”. She thrives in the creative problem solving space and loves to translate insights from user research into tangible solutions.

If you are new to the design thinking method, Christina has a great definition of “human-centered design” for you: The way we introduce the people we are designing for into our design problem, so we make sure they are always the focus when we are trying to solve that very problem.

Yes, Professor Chateauvert!

In this Talent Tales episode I had the honor to interview Steph Ryter, Creative Culture Leader at Arity.

Not only did Steph get to create her own job title (who doesn’t want to be a “Creative Culture Leader”?!), she also has a superpower: “Reading the Room”. Yes, that’s right, Steph is able to sense the energy in the room. BAM!

Steph started her career in Broadcast News after having studied Communications but soon was looking for other ways she might help people. Hello, Human Resources!

In her current role at Arity, she is tasked with making the company the Best Place to Work in Chicago.

And she is applying design thinking to make it happen…