Episode 387: Understanding the Business, Influencing, and Design Thinking With Gabrielle Lorestani
I love that your advice came from a CEO, a head of HR, or, you know, your mom. No offense, Mom, but like, it’s, I think it’s so great to have a mentor who is in that Chief Executive Officer level role because they can really help give you insights into what they want and need from their HR person and their partner in business. Episode 387: Understanding the Business, Influencing, and Design Thinking With Gabrielle Lorestani Welcome to the Workology Podcast, a podcast for the disruptive workplace leader. Join host Jessica Miller-Merrell, founder of Workology.com as she sits down and gets to the bottom of trends, tools, and case studies for the business leader, HR, and recruiting professional who is tired of the status quo. Now here’s Jessica with this episode of Workology. Jessica Miller-Merrell: [00:00:51.81] Hey there and welcome to the WorkoPogy podcast powered by Ace The HR Exam and Upskill HR. These are two of the courses i offer for HRcertification, prep and recertification for HR leaders. This podcast is part of a series on the Workology Podcast focused on the roles and responsibilities of the Chief Human Resources Officer or CHRO. The CHRO is sometimes called the VP of People or the Chief People Officer, and it is an executive or C-level role that deals with managing change, human resources, as well as organizational development. It’s really designed to help improve the overall efficiency of the company. The CHRO podcast series on Workology is sponsored by HR Benchmark Survey. Share your insights at HRBenchmarkSurvey.com. One of the reasons I have wanted to do this series is because there is so much mystery around that CHRO role, and I want aspiring CHROs to know the types of skills and experiences they need to promote into that future CHRO role. Along with hearing from senior HR leaders, our peers, find out how we’re partnering and collaborating with our executive peers. So before I introduce our guest, I want to hear from you. Please text the word “PODCAST” to 512-548-3005. Ask questions, leave comments, and make suggestions for future guests. This is my community text number and I want to hear from you today. I’m joined by Gabrielle Lorestani, People Operations consultant and founder of Gabrielle Lorestani Consultant. Gabrielle has spent more than a decade as a strategic people leader and operator in CPG, ad tech and health tech at companies in various stages, from global fortune 500 to early stage and hyper-growth startup. She now works with clients to design and execute People and Talent strategies based on their goals and grounded in their values. Gabby, welcome to the Workology Podcast. Gabrielle Lorestani: [00:02:56.61] Thanks so much for having me. Jessica Miller-Merrell: [00:02:58.26] So let’s start with some background about how you got your start in HR and how your work has evolved into launching your own consultancy. Gabrielle Lorestani: [00:03:06.99] Yeah, so I, when I talked to a lot of people, oftentimes folks say they kind of fell into it. This was very much an intentional career choice for me. So I, when I graduated, I was all about looking for entry level HR roles and I got really lucky with my first job out of college. So I graduated in 2010. The economy was still not in a great place from the 2008 recession. So I applied to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of jobs, only landed two interviews of which I got one job. And it happened to be at a company called now called Danone North America. But for us in the US, we’re probably familiar with the brand Danone,