Connie White

▶0:00HostWelcome to the Built by People podcast, where we share the stories and insights of the world's top HR leaders. Join us as we dive deep into the minds of HR executives, uncovering their strategies, challenges, and triumphs in shaping today's workforce. I'm excited to welcome Connie to the Built By People Podcast. Connie, thank you so much for joining us today. And as a starting question, I always love to ask if you could share a little bit more about your career journey.

▶0:48GuestI would describe my career journey as steady, varied, exciting, and meaningful. So what I sought in every position I've had, whether in human resources or working in various functions, has been I've really approached my jobs with what can I learn? You know, how can it be meaningful to me? I've always been interested in increased contributions, like how can I make the most of this opportunity? How can I learn the most that I can? When you think of the term lifelong learner, that's a really good way to describe me. I'm just an endlessly curious person.

▶1:25HostConnie, can you share a story about a time when you successfully built a strong organizational culture? What were the key elements that contributed to its success, and how can others replicate that in their own organization?

▶1:38GuestI'm thinking about a couple of things. One, right now I'm working for Altos Labs, and we're in process of continuing to build our culture. We launched in January 2022 we had a high spike of growth of employees. And then we had a lot of thoughtful conversations as to where our culture went and where it should go because we have a very ambitious mission. And our mission includes reversing disease and disability. It's a very profound and highly ambitious mission. So with that, how do we set the culture to make sure that we achieve that in all sorts of ways? Like, how do we— communicate with each other in a way that helps us achieve our mission? It all goes to achieving our mission. How do we focus on the impact we can make? But this is in process. And I would say start with good fundamentals, start with good alignment in senior leadership, start with ways in which you integrate culture as so important, but just know that you have to build. It's a tend to everyday thing. Culture isn't on a slide. It can be on a slide. I have a placard behind me about our culture. But it's something that in everyday moments, when you speak to a colleague, when you help somebody, you think about— you have it woven into your day-to-day. And that's the way culture comes alive. It's always a work in progress.

▶3:06HostConnie, can you tell us about a specific case where your efforts in building relationships and coalitions within an organization led to significant positive changes? How did you approach these efforts, and what were the outcomes?

▶3:19GuestI had a role— there's two occasions I can reflect on at my former company, Genentech. It was such a great place. And one role was I was asked to take on, or invited to apply for a job, and it was called College Programs. It had early career interns. And I said, wow, when I was approached about the job, I said, oh, that's so interesting. It's an area that I hadn't had an intense focus on. So a new opportunity, a new way for me to build upon my natural curiosity, innovation. That's what I always seek in all my positions is do I have the opportunity to innovate? And my manager at the time said, things are going well, but how can they even get better? And how can it be something that we haven't even realized? So I found that tremendously exciting. And with that, we not only increased the program, had a great team, increased the program to, I think, at one year, God, we had hundreds, literally hundreds of interns early in career, including MBA. But not only that, but we had a larger, which many organizations face, as to how we can have a diverse workforce, especially in the sciences. You want to make sure that it's, you know, you have a good societal impact as well. And I was able to, with great support from senior leadership, great support within the human resources function and the leaders there, and great support from just a fabulous team, we built out really intentional strategies on making sure that our opportunities were available maybe to people who hadn't considered our company. And with that, I continue to this day to hear from people who graduated from programs who are now doctors, who are now directors, senior directors, and who have stayed within biotech and the sciences, professors who are making a phenomenal impact. And that was a focus on culture, on innovation, on partnerships within the company. So once in a while, I reflect with such positive thoughts on that whole experience and the impact that it had on many people.

▶5:28HostCould you describe a scenario where fostering curiosity within a team led to unexpected and beneficial results? What steps did you take to encourage that culture of curiosity?

▶5:39GuestYeah. So we had— I was the first head of people at Altos Labs in my current job, and now I'm the chief people officer. So we needed to set things from the very beginning, from the ground level, starting from how do we onboard employees? How do we hire? How do we stay compliant with what's required? How do we develop people, but also How do we manage career development and performance? There was a team that was formed. It was myself and a colleague in Cambridge and members of my team, people strategy directors. And it was a whole team effort, both from people who are within the sciences and the institutes at Altos. My colleague in Cambridge and my team got together. And in that summit, we spent a couple of days intensely talking about how can we build a system and process that's relevant, interesting, that will help us achieve our mission by people being clear as to what the criteria is for advancement, what the criteria is to be evaluated. And we're still continuing to iterate on that, grow it. But I'm really— we asked hard questions. We had some difficult conversations. We had a lot of fun with creativity. We came up with a, what I think is a unique and even fun name. And we really, as much as we always can, engage employees and tell them the whys and obviously celebrate accomplishments. A huge part of this is celebrating the good work that our employees do.

▶7:07HostConnie, what advice would you like to share with our community?

▶7:11GuestI think that it's really important to stay very open to other perspectives. I think what I've tried to do is have a good foundation myself, but have people around me who I can learn from. Also being very open, I would say, in my role and in prior roles, being really open and curious as to what can I learn in this moment from somebody else, and being very open and saying, gosh, I would love some help in how to do this, or tell me why, or help me understand. For example, I'm really super curious and invested in our science. I'm not going to be a scientist, but I really care very much. Because it relates to our mission. I think that's everything what I do. So I even really try to attend as many as possible seminars, keep on top of news. So I would say just be really deeply curious about your surroundings and the people that work for you, above you, who you report to, and just always be open to their perspectives and use every job and every opportunity as a way to grow.

▶8:14HostConnie, thank you so much for joining us today on the Built by People podcast.

▶8:17GuestThank you so much.