BUSINESS PROFILE
SKILLS , IRRESPECTIVE OF HOW OR WHERE PEOPLE DEVELOP THEM , SHOULD BE WHAT DETERMINES AN INDIVIDUAL ’ S OPPORTUNITIES .
What has your career looked like so far ?
Fresh out of an internship , I started out in the
UK in Learning and Development and was fortunate enough to work for some amazing people centric companies where I got a great grounding in HR , working across various areas of HR , Global Career Mobility , Talent Acquisition and Employer Branding . Over the course of my career , I became evermore engaged with the technologies that were being established and which enabled us to support our teams at scale ; and this shift led me to join LinkedIn to help establish its first ever Customer Success Team . I have had the pleasure to work with LinkedIn for the past eight years working in their London , Dublin and San Francisco locations and developing teams that eventually supported over US $ 2bn in revenue . Early this year , as I was looking for a new challenge , I was lucky enough to learn about the CCO opportunity at Degreed and since this business was high on my watch list . I was excited to find out more and have been blown away by the people , the product and the fantastic clients that we have the pleasure to serve .
Which market do you provide services for ?
Degreed ’ s main audience is HR and learning leaders in large organisations ( of over 10,000 employees ). To a lesser extent , we also work with IT teams and other business leaders ( and people managers ) as stakeholders .
How do you equip your staff with skills and knowledge ?
Every Degreed employee is provided with a flexible budget to spend on any kind of skillbuilding . We call it FlexED ( flexible education ) and we ’ ve had people spend it on everything from language lessons to coding , to leadership training and even an acrobatics class . We see every kind of upskilling and reskilling as valuable to Degreed , and everything is tracked through an online , learner-owned profile that follows someone through their career . This gives an accurate , up-to-date picture of someone ’ s current skills and can inform discussions with their managers about next steps and skills to work on to grow their career . It also informs the internal work opportunities that they are offered , which reinforces their new skills and gives them an incentive to learn .
How do you work with other executives within the C-suite to make sure your voice is heard ?
I have been incredibly impressed by the collaborative and customer centric approach that the C-suite adopts here at Degreed . While in the role of Chief Customer Officer , one of my core functions is to advocate for our clients , I have to say that this is a shared key focus and responsibility of the whole team . In terms of making my voice heard , in my career I have always sought to add value first rather than speak up for the sake of doing so . In this vein I seek to listen , learn and drive the conversation forward through relevant insight , input and questions .
How do you ensure different teams in your organisation work together ?
Effective collaboration is underpinned by clarity of purpose and open communication . We don ’ t want efforts to be duplicated , so everyone needs to be on the same page when it comes to owning a project , driving progress and who is completing what task . So , Degreed uses the DACI framework to ensure that every decision has a clear driver , approver , contributor and that everyone who needs to be informed is regularly kept in the loop .
Similarly , we use the RACI model ( responsible , accountable , consulted , informed ) for our projects . It ’ s even more essential that we are clear on who is doing what and who is responsible , as Degreed is a remote-first company with over 550 employees working in six continents and multiple time zones . x
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