Rachael Sullivan, VP, Human Resources VP at CWT, has extensive experience in designing and delivering transformative strategies, building organizational capabilities, and enabling inclusive and highly engaged cultures, with more than 20 years in HR leadership roles and more than 10 years partnering with C-suite executives.
Before joining CWT, Rachael worked for three distinct medical device companies: Boston Scientific, Accellent, and Medtronic. She most recently worked at Medtronic, the world’s leading medical solutions firm, where she held increasingly responsible human resources leadership responsibilities for 16 years. Rachael built organization, personnel, and culture strategies for her company partners in collaboration with several of their top executive executives at the C-Suite level.
Before are highlights of the interview:
Tell us more about CWT.
CWT is one of the world’s leading corporate travel management companies, which companies and governments rely on to keep their people connected around the world. Across six continents, CWT provides their employees with innovative technology and efficient, safe, and secure travel and meeting and conference experiences. The company is 150 years old, headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and has a global footprint, operating in over 45 countries.
What are your responsibilities as the Vice President, Human Resources of the company?
I ensure strategic HR partnership for four members of our Executive Leadership Team: our CFO; Chief Partnership Officer; Chief Growth Officer; and Chief Strategy Officer. My primary responsibility is to ensure we have robust and sound HR strategies that will enable and deliver on our business strategies and objectives. I also provide executive coaching, evaluate and develop sound organizational design, ensure organizational optimization/effectiveness, drive diversity and inclusion, and participate in building a highly engaged culture.
How do you ensure that your organization has a culture of integrity and innovation?
Creating a culture of integrity and innovation starts at the top. Working with my executive leaders and their leadership teams to ensure we are modelling integrity in all we do and say, as well as holding each other and our teams accountable for behaving with integrity, is an ingrained part of the company. As far as innovation goes, this too must be supported at the top. Investing in technology as well as people, then encouraging exploration and risk-taking is something I talk about often with my leaders. As a company, we have a strong employee engagement commitment, and by keeping a finger on the pulse of the workforce through surveys and feedback channels, we’re striving to continually improve as well as build on our strengths.
What do you specialize in and why should someone work with you over the competition?
My areas of specialty are organizational design and effectiveness, executive coaching, leadership and team development, and developing and executing talent management strategies. I routinely use data to inform and shape my HR strategies, as well as influence the business to take action. I have spent a great deal of my career in global roles, having site responsibilities in Europe and working closely with HR colleagues and business partners in Asia Pacific, China and Latin America.
What have you failed at and how do you overcome challenges?
As many HR Partners can attest, developing relationships with clients is essential to achieving success. Throughout my career, I have built strong relationships with many extraordinary leaders. However, I have had the occasional difficult business partnership to contend with. In these few instances, relationships simply failed to develop the way I am typically accustomed, which is to say, into deeply trusting, productive, and enjoyable partnerships. Despite trying various approaches, I stayed true to who I was, ultimately having faith and confidence in my abilities. In these scenarios it was difficult to find success. This caused turmoil for me personally and only with reflection was I able to put into perspective what I could have done differently and what I learned from the situation. I don’t consider these situations failures because they reinforced the need to be resilient and resist allowing external voices to shape the way I think about myself.
Kindly describe how you will specifically know what success looks like for you.
I’ve always defined success by the impact I have been able to have, not just on business results, which, of course, are important, but on the people I interact with. Secondarily, I strive to elevate the conversation so that we don’t just focus on tactics but on strategy—identifying the vision and assembling the right set of actions to deliver outcomes.
What advice would you give to the next generation of female leaders?
Identify your own set of “signature strengths”. Understand what they are, nurture them, develop them, and set yourself up in roles so you can leverage them greatly. So many women downplay their strengths. Some are at a loss as to what their strengths are, let alone how to use them. They may be overly humble about them, or even embarrassed by them. Without arrogance or ego, I’d encourage women to understand these strengths, talk about them with others, put them on full display and use them. Celebrate them! These strengths will be a continual source of opportunity and success. They are enduring and will get better with time and experience. Focusing on your strengths will deliver a far great return on investment than focusing on your development areas, and it’s far more fulfilling. So, the more one’s strengths are known, leveraged, and continually developed, the more successful and satisfied one will be.
What are your future plans to sustain the company’s and your success?
As a relatively new employee to CWT, my immediate plans are to immerse myself in learning the business. Understanding our value proposition and business model will help me become the most effective and efficient HR leader I can be. The more intimately aware I am of our business, the more effective I’ll be at shaping and deploying HR strategies to enable our strategic priorities.
Another area of focus is to become highly familiar with our talent. Getting to know our talent individually, strengths/development needs/career aspirations will help me position the right leaders at the right place at the right time. Getting to know our talent collectively, meaning evaluating talent data and understanding the strengths and gaps in our succession plans, will help me ensure we are poised for the future. This will help me also understand where we have gaps, either in succession planning or capabilities, so that I can develop a strategic workforce plan to address critical needs.
Lastly, partnering across the HR organization in our pursuit to create and sustain the right culture is a critical priority. Ensuring we have a diverse, inclusive and highly engaged culture is of utmost importance. Our business leaders are committed to this endeavor as well, so really this is a shared responsibility between the business and HR.
Website: www.mycwt.com
