EP 24: From HR Business Partner to Future CPO: Designing a Career with Purpose

[00:00:05] Lizzie: I think there are two types of people. There are those of us who end up in HR and those of us who have pursued the discipline. I was very much someone who ended up in it, but when I stopped and thought about it, and thought about the role, I was like, okay, this job is actually an N of one versus being one of 20 in a development program, one of 30 or 40. And I can see how seriously the organization takes this program. So how cool to be able to, early in my career, be in an influencing role. In HR, as an HR business partner, it’s your job to say the thing, and to say the thing in a really balanced way. The talent world is small. We’ll cross paths one way or another, and it’s better to be a net exporter of great talent than to not facilitate that conversation, because then at least you can be prepared for it. My general philosophy is to have the humility to know what you don’t know and where you can learn that from other people, and to approach it with an interest and curiosity. I thought the variety of the portfolio that you have as a Chief People Officer was so cool. I was like, man, that’s cool. Okay, maybe I want to do that.

[00:01:17] Adriaan: Ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another Leaders in Talent podcast. I’m excited to have Lizzie Weilburg here on the podcast. Lizzie, welcome.

[00:01:28] Lizzie: Thank you. Happy to be here.

[00:01:30] Adriaan: Lizzie is a Senior Talent Manager at Coinbase and currently oversees the recruitment efforts for Coinbase’s consumer and international businesses. Before joining Coinbase, Lizzie was an HR business partner at Citadel. And what was interesting about Lizzie’s career is that she actually started at Morningstar in customer service and went on to lead their overall development program. Lizzie, we met probably six months ago at one of the talent leader dinners that I host on a monthly basis in New York, in Chelsea. And it was a week before you officially moved to London to start, yeah, to start leading business at Coinbase, right?

[00:02:10] Lizzie: Before I shipped off.

[00:02:11] Adriaan: Yeah, like your last week. And I was so grateful for you to make time in a pretty hectic last week and be present at the dinner. And when I came to London, we had a cup of coffee and we chatted for a while. And one thing that really stuck with me during our conversation, and was also one of the reasons why I wanted to invite you to this podcast, is that you outspokenly said, “I want to become a CPO.”

[00:02:38] Lizzie: Yeah.

[00:02:39] Adriaan: And it’s actually quite rare, in the people that I talk to, that they are so clear in terms of their ambition, their career goals, and also articulate that to people. And now, even today, when I ask you, it’s like, are you comfortable saying that during our podcast? Right? Because I feel that with goal setting, especially with ambition, a lot of people keep it to themselves out of maybe the fear of failure, or maybe being too overly ambitious, or like, what if it doesn’t happen? There are a lot of… yeah, it’s rare actually that people say that.

[00:03:12] Lizzie: Oh gosh, that’s a good point.

[00:03:16] Adriaan: But the beauty is honestly, and this is what I keep telling my team, and also something that I learned from certain mentors, it all starts with you articulating what that looks like, right? Because once you have a clear goal or clear plan, one, other people will know about it and will support you. That’s one. Two, also for yourself, by saying it out loud, you create almost accountability and commitment to yourself and others around you as well. It’s like, hey, this is what I’m striving for. Whether I’m going to make that happen or not, but this is my intention. And it creates so much clarity in someone’s career, right? And it creates also so much clarity for me as a leader, as a manager. When people come up to me and say, “Hey, in the next five years I want to become a Talent Director,” it’s like, amazing. Okay, I know that someone’s ambitious. I know that someone wants to do this. What can we or can we not do in order to help someone progress in their career? So taking a step back, when did this clear thought around “I want to become a CPO” crystallize for you? And how has that journey taken shape?

[00:04:30] Lizzie: Yeah, absolutely. I’m trying to think of the very first time I uttered that statement and decided I would just express it into the universe. But I think exactly to your point, Adriaan, for me, a lot of saying it is holding myself accountable to the standard. And I’ll be the first to say, I could be totally wrong about that. My career might take a completely different direction. But from all the facts that I’ve gathered today, that is what I want to drive toward. And I think it has helped me really meaningfully in my career to use my mentors and leaders around me as partners, and in signaling to them what I want. I think it’s helped me build the path along the way. So I think it’s been really gratifying in that regard.

I think for me, the moment that I realized I wanted to be a Chief People Officer was working with great Chief People Officers. Ironically, I started my career, like you mentioned, in customer support. I was in a development program at an investment research company, answering the phones and helping financial advisors use our products. I moved into a manager role, and the person who was leading recruitment for that program at the time tapped me on the shoulder and was like, “Hey, I think you should come join my team. I think you’d be great at it. I think you’d love it.” I was like, I don’t want to be in HR. It had just never occurred to me. I think there are two types of people. There are those of us who end up in HR and those of us who have pursued the discipline. I was very much someone who ended up there. But when I stopped and thought about it, and thought about the role, I was like, okay, this job is actually an N of one versus being one of 20 in a development program, one of 30 or 40. And I can see how seriously the organization takes this program. So how cool to be able to, early in my career, be in an influencing role.

So I went for it. And I started in campus recruiting and I absolutely just loved it. And I think the reason it resonated with me so deeply is that I was like, it’s so interesting to see how important people and talent are to an organization and to have that lens into how decisions unfold from a business perspective, and how important people are. And the Chief People Officer at that company at the time, and I’ve been very fortunate to work with others who I consider some of my best mentors, just inspired me as leaders. And I thought, the variety of the portfolio that you have as a Chief People Officer, I was like, man, that’s cool. Okay, maybe I want to do that. And then I haven’t looked back since.

[00:07:07] Adriaan: Yeah. But was that also when you entered that first role in recruitment that you immediately thought, like, that CPO role, I don’t know how to get there, but that’s where I want to go?

[00:07:23] Lizzie: Well, I think that I spent a lot of that first year or so, or first couple of years, just trying to pay really close attention to the people around me and what they were doing and how they showed up as leaders, what their scope was. Because you’re relatively new to the workforce, you’re understanding how companies work for the first time. And as I looked around, I was like, okay, right, would I want this person’s job? What does this person’s job seem like, feel like, look like? I’ve always been an ambitious person and wanted to be a leader of an organization. I think I came into the workforce knowing I want to be important in some way. But the more proximity I had to those varieties of different roles, I think really what resonated with me the most is seeing the variety of that day-to-day and how a leader at that level in the people space, in particular, toggles from anything from what challenges our employees are facing on the ground in a different geography, to we’ve acquired a business here and they’re having a hard time integrating, to what is our compensation strategy. Watching her toggle across all those different threads, I was like, man, that’s a cool job. And I just tried to build that fact pattern of what are the things that I can see and observe? What are the roles that the people who are much more senior to me are playing, and where would I want to see myself fit into that mix?

[00:08:53] Adriaan: Were you already so outspoken as you are now at that time, or is that something you started doing later in your career?

[00:09:04] Lizzie: I think that came later for me in my career. I do remember in job interviews, probably at a midpoint in my career, expressing that kind of career goal to people as a means of anchoring. Like, here are the intentional steps I’m trying to take on the journey that I’m building for myself. I think it’s helpful in signaling ambition and just showing people, here’s where I want to go. But I don’t think that at that point in my career, and even when I interviewed for the job at Citadel when I left Morningstar, I don’t know if I was quite so direct. I think working for great leaders who have coached me to take up space and feel comfortable expressing my goals and what I’m trying to drive has helped that a lot.

[00:10:04] Adriaan: Can you give me an example of a leader or a mentor that you’ve worked with who really made a profound impact on you in terms of getting clarity, supporting you, and how that came to life?

[00:10:16] Lizzie: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I today work for the Chief People Officer whom I worked for at Citadel as well, Re Brock. I’m his biggest fan in the world. I think he’s been incredibly influential in my career. We had a great conversation not that long ago about saying the hard thing to people who are senior to you and how to do that in a clear, direct, and objective way, and the importance of doing that. Part of his coaching to me was, “Lizzie, you have to be able to do this if you want to do my job someday. You have to be able to go to your manager, go to your leader, and say hard things.” I think it’s incredibly cool to have leaders who coach you by playing back to you the career goals you’ve articulated for yourself, and tying together, here’s why this is important, this is going to help you along the journey you want to go on. I think that speaks incredibly highly of leadership and the type of organization and people team environment that he wants to facilitate and create.

[00:11:29] Adriaan: Was it Re who helped you articulate this vision, or did you come to him and say, “Hey, one day I hope to be in your position”? Help me understand that dynamic, because I want to empower either leaders or people who are ambitious to make the next step. How did that play out for you?

[00:11:53] Lizzie: I’ll give you a slightly different example of how my leaders and managers have helped shape that for me along the way. For example, one of the managers I had while at Coinbase was incredibly helpful in building my brand as a leader, at the time as an HR business partner. She always said, in HR as an HR business partner, it’s your job to say the thing, and to say the thing in a really balanced way. Sometimes as a leader, you’re in a position where you have to share uncomfortable or hard news. I’m a big believer in doing that in an objective way, not making it about emotions or accusations, but saying, here’s the impact of this thing and here’s why it matters.

A lot of times, it’s easier to build that muscle of saying hard things when it doesn’t pertain to yourself, when you’re not asking for something in your career. But building the muscle and having managers support you in doing that, whether it’s saying the thing or being willing to take up space and building a brand for yourself by saying, look, I’m here. I think it’s almost indirect versus direct, the ways we show up and lead in a meeting. You might have a bunch of people on a call, you’re moving in a direction, it might be a sensitive subject, Adriaan feels differently than Lizzie feels about this, and you know that coming in. Your role is to take up space and command the conversation and drive it in the direction of what needs to be accomplished. Having people support you in building comfort with that helps you build muscle memory. And I think that makes it easier to say, okay, I know how to demonstrate my value, and I want your support in this. Here’s how I’m thinking about my career development, I’d love your input. Building it in a business sense helped make it easier for me to do it from a career development sense.

[00:15:32] Adriaan: It reminds me of research Google did in 2014 about how managers can be better leaders. They found that out of eight traits of being a good manager, the first two were the most critical. The first one was obvious: be a good coach and mentor, hold a mirror up for your employees rather than telling them what to do. The second one surprised me: help with career progression. I hadn’t realized how critical that role was. Supporting career questions, whether you can make them a reality or not, distinguishes a good manager from a great manager.

[00:15:32] Lizzie: I think that’s so spot on. To me it’s almost not surprising because people say people don’t leave companies, they leave managers. People want to feel like they have an advocate, someone looking out for them and supporting them. I’m a believer that no one will be a bigger champion of your career than you are. It’s on you to drive that. But if you have leaders who make that safe and engage in that conversation, it helps people feel comfortable focusing on something that is important to all of us.

[00:16:26] Adriaan: I think it’s a very good point. We’re good at performance evaluation cycles. We’re pretty good at that. We at least have written down what a career as a sourcer or coordinator or recruiter at Matchr could look like.

[00:16:41] Lizzie: Yep.

[00:16:43] Adriaan: I recently found out about this research and really did a deep dive into it. I don’t think we’ve empowered our managers as well as we could, now knowing the research, to have those conversations. We’re like a 60-person organization, right? So career progression and making that next step is harder compared to an organization like Coinbase, for example. Because there are so many branches you can go into, so many things you can do. Yet we still need to have that conversation. If people say, “Hey, I want to be an Account Lead or Talent Director,” and maybe in our company we don’t have anything available because of the size and scale of our organization, at least we should be having that conversation so that we know when someone is ready for that next step.

We don’t get surprised when someone wants to leave. We can actually make that a very organic process. The beauty is that now we’re growing super rapidly, so all of a sudden these windows of opportunity are popping up, and we are actually promoting people based on their ambition and the work they’ve been doing. It is happening. But it’s something that I’m working through with our Head of HR right now.

[00:17:59] Lizzie: Yeah.

[00:18:01] Adriaan: Performance cycles are coming up in January, and we want to make sure that we’re asking these questions, that people feel supported, and that they see there’s a potential path for progression. One of the things we got back from our sourcers in particular is that they feel there’s a glass ceiling as a sourcer to develop. They feel that if they want to develop their career, they need to become a recruiter or Talent Partner, as we call them. That’s not the ambition of every sourcer in our company.

It’s something we’re working through now. What would it mean to be a 10- or 15-plus-year experienced sourcer? We have sourcers who’ve been with us four, five, even six years. What does that next step look like versus being an individual contributor? How do we set up our account teams? At least we need to give them clarity to understand, if I want to progress, I need to do X, Y, Z. Or if I want to progress in a particular field, maybe this isn’t the right company anymore. I think it’s our job and role as leaders to be frank and honest about it. Talk about the harder things or the fears, like someone might leave because of that conversation. The worst thing is if people stay and are demotivated because they feel stuck. That’s even worse.

[00:19:31] Lizzie: Totally. You just hit on two points that I think are so important. One is that we shouldn’t be naive enough to think that people’s career development is limited to the company they work at in that moment. If the next step in someone’s career is going to be external because we can’t offer them the thing they’re looking for, then we should champion them going on to do great things. The talent world is small. We’ll cross paths one way or another. It’s better to be a net exporter of great talent than to not facilitate that conversation. At least you can be prepared for it.

The other point is that career development doesn’t always have to mean promotion or becoming a manager. A lot of people, especially in talent, are experts in the craft. They love what they do and want to continue being incredible individual contributors. It’s on us as managers to say, okay, how do I give you different and new challenges within that remit that you love? What do you want to push on, and how do we reward that so you stay happy and engaged? It doesn’t have to look the way I want. You don’t have to want to be a Chief People Officer or even a people manager to be an incredible asset to the organization.

[00:21:01] Adriaan: Yeah, such a good point. How do you do this now with your own people who report to you? Are you having those conversations? Tell me more about that.

[00:21:16] Lizzie: Yeah, totally. I love to see when my direct reports come to me pounding the table saying, “Hey, can we have the career development conversation?” I’m like, absolutely, let’s do it. But it’s also my job to create space for that and strike the right balance. When I’ve taken on new direct reports, I try to initiate the conversation early on, even just to plant the seed and say, “This is something I want to take really seriously. I want to hear your thoughts and reflections.” We have a template I can send them with questions to reflect on so we can have the conversation.

My framing usually starts with: what are the things you like? What are the things you don’t like? What’s important to you over the next three to five years? That pushes people’s thinking beyond the immediate term. Sometimes what you get back from those first questions is really disparate, and it’s like, okay, let’s talk about that and connect the dots. I like asking that question because it helps push people’s thinking and shows that I want to take a longer view for them, even if the next job isn’t on my team. That doesn’t limit how I want to support their growth and development.

[00:22:58] Adriaan: Looking at your role now, how do you look at your next steps? Do you feel you need more HR experience to broaden your depth? Or maybe become VP of Talent? How do you look at your own career, and what are some of the conversations you’re having with Re?

[00:23:16] Lizzie: I’m smiling because I’m struggling to answer my immediate-term question. I’ve been very intentional about knowing when I’m in fact-finding mode. I feel like I’m definitely in information-collection mode. I’m new to talent. I’ve been in this seat for almost a year, which is crazy. I’m not the expert in talent. I grew up as an HR business partner, and that’s inherent to my DNA and how I interact with the business and lead.

I’m really enjoying building the skill and muscle to think about how we build an at-scale recruiting organization. In the advent of AI, how do we continue to drive innovation in recruiting? I’m learning that from the folks around me who are total experts. So I’m focused on building that craft. Ultimately, there are different paths to becoming a Chief People Officer. It depends on the company, the leadership team, and what they prioritize.

I’ve always believed in the tours-of-duty approach. That’s part of how I ended up in talent. There’s so much value in rotating through different disciplines and understanding what’s important in each. So I’m building out my arsenal of skills in the talent space and excited to strengthen and deepen that to inform what I want to do next.

[00:24:51] Adriaan: Cool. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Do you seek mentors? How has that played a role in your career, and how does it influence how you think about your next steps?

[00:25:03] Lizzie: Yeah. I think I’ve always sought out mentors intentionally, but organically. I’ve never formally signed up to be part of a mentorship program, although I’ve tried to build them in a couple of places and had some success and some learnings along the way. I think the people who have been most influential in my career from a mentorship perspective are the ones where those relationships developed organically just by working around or working for them.

There are a couple of people at Citadel who come to mind, who are still the people I would call for career advice when I’m thinking about making my next step. I would say my general philosophy is to have the humility to know what you don’t know and where you can learn that from other people, and to approach it with interest and curiosity. In a work setting, what has helped me build some of those relationships is showing up for the people who I want to learn from, even before I realize I want them to mentor me. Showing up to deliver for them and add value to whatever their day-to-day mandate is makes asking the question later, “Hey, what do you think I should do with my career?” a little easier. You’ve built credibility and trust with that person and hopefully added value to their day-to-day. That’s how I’ve approached it, rather than formally labeling it. I think when you formally label it, it can feel a little scary. So I’ve gone the guerrilla approach.

[00:26:30] Adriaan: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And in terms of networking, are you very intentional about going to networking events and meeting people who might be able to help you progress? Or does that happen organically?

[00:26:43] Lizzie: I’m trying to be more intentional. You helped me be more intentional. That’s why I came to your dinner and thought, okay, Lizzie, we’re doing more of this.

[00:26:52] Adriaan: Let’s do it.

[00:26:52] Lizzie: And Adriaan’s dinners are really fun, for everyone listening. A great place to network. I try a couple of times a year to be intentional about going to something that seems like it would be high value from a networking perspective. I should probably do a better job of this, but I’ve worked with some incredible people in HR and talent over the course of my career. Developing deep relationships with those people, regardless of what industries they move into, and maintaining those connections, whether they move into consumer tech, stay in finance, move into healthcare, those deep connections stay deep connections.

I want to lead more by example by being willing to make those connections more actively. The other thing that has been helpful is that if you have strong business relationships, your business partners will link you in with people you should know. That’s a helpful way of expanding your network as well.

[00:28:17] Adriaan: To wrap up the conversation, Lizzie, if you could give one piece of advice to people listening, what would it be? Should they be very ambitious? Should they be outspoken? What have you learned over the last couple of years in your journey?

[00:28:33] Lizzie: That’s a great question. I’ll borrow from Greg Garrison, our VP of Talent, who has been really helpful for me. I think Greg helped me think about the fine balance you need to strike when you’re pitching something to an organization. A couple of the roles I’ve had at Coinbase are jobs I pitched Coinbase on. Part of the reason I was able to succeed in doing that is framing things in the context of how they add value to the business. You’re always striking a balance between your own development and what’s good for the business, what’s going to drive it forward. Keeping both of those priorities in mind is a good recipe for success when you’re asking for something that might seem bold. It’s a helpful grounding tactic.

[00:29:14] Adriaan: I love that example. I remember a good friend of mine who worked for Heineken. He always had this entrepreneurial spark. He was a senior marketing manager. At one point, he wrote his own job description within Heineken because he noticed they were losing market share to small startup microbreweries. He created his own role under the Heineken umbrella to run one of those microbreweries, with a budget and a team to develop smaller, cool, different brands. If one really picked up, they could leverage Heineken’s distribution. That role didn’t exist. It was an issue senior leadership was struggling with. He saw an opportunity, created his own job description, and six months later he was running a 10-person team launching mini microbreweries. It was a testament to creating your own opportunity by thinking about what the business needs.

[00:30:31] Lizzie: I love that example. What a cool job to pitch. It’s such a good example because sometimes someone comes to you and says, “Hey, I want to do this,” and you think, that’s great for you, but there’s clearly not a need for that right now. There’s an element of reading the room. It’s infinitely more exciting when you can spot an opportunity that others haven’t spotted yet. I had the great fortune of doing that when I first moved to the UK to be our EMEA HR business partner. I looked at our team and said, we have 350 people in EMEA and we don’t have anyone local on the HR team. So I pitched that. You have to find the right opportunity and an organization that’s supportive of that level of risk-taking and innovation. But it’s inspiring to think about it that way.

[00:31:24] Adriaan: And that’s how you ended up in London, right?

[00:31:26] Lizzie: Yeah, exactly.

[00:31:29] Adriaan: So understand what the business needs, act upon it, and create your own destiny.

[00:31:36] Lizzie: Yeah.

[00:31:42] Adriaan: Awesome. What a great way to wrap up. Lizzie, thank you so much for this conversation. Thank you for being open. Thank you for articulating your ambition. As the saying goes, if you aim for the moon, you might not make it, but at least you’ll be among the stars.

[00:32:03] Lizzie: There we have it. I love it. Awesome. Thank you, Adriaan. This was so much fun. It’s great to see you.

[00:32:07] Adriaan: Ciao.

[00:32:08] Lizzie: Bye.