EP 217: How Every Chapter Builds the Next

Mary Price grew up as a first-generation American, learning early lessons in grit, integrity, and trust from her family and her uncle’s shoe repair shop. Today, as the founder of Penfield Talent, she brings that same people-first philosophy to talent leadership, executive search, and helping companies build high-trust teams. In this conversation, she shares how she balances empathy with high standards, what AI can and can’t replace in recruiting, and the inside story of leading GTM hiring at Slack through the Salesforce acquisition, when her team doubled the sales organization in one year during COVID.

Connect with host James Mackey on LinkedIn!

Intro (00:00)

Background (00:46)

Career (09:02)

TA (37:38)

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Transcript

Welcome And Mary’s Roots

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey everyone, welcome to the show. Today we have Mary Price with us. Mary, thanks for joining us.

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Thank you. I'm excited to be here. So excited to chat with you. We always have good conversations. So exciting.

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Yeah, it's going to be great. And um, yeah, very excited to talk to you about some of the experiences you've had throughout your career and get to know you a little bit better. Um, but yeah, as I said, the first question we usually uh start out with is just to get a sense of uh our guest backgrounds. I'd love to know where you grew up.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

Uh I grew up in San Diego, California.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Oh, that's so lucky. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

Greatest city ever. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Wow. Wow. Yeah, I went there for the first time a couple of years ago. It was very nice. I didn't want to leave.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

That's how most people feel. I know I want to go back. I'm actively trying to convince my husband to move back. So we'll see what happens. Where are you now? Uh, we're in Connecticut now, so total different change of weather. Still coastal community, which is really great, but like the weather is the big difference.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Yeah. Northeast weather is uh a little bit different in Southern California.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

Yeah, a lot different. I'm finally seeing the sun in like two weeks. So I'm like, oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

Yeah, well, you're entering like the nice part of the year. So that's at least that's like we did the do you uh do you visit San Diego often or did you ever get back?

SPEAKER_01 1:19

I get back a lot, actually. Um, it's sort of a longer story, but my son is in an allergy treatment program out there in Southern California, so I get to go out every couple months, which I always make into a nice long weekend so I can spend time with my family. But I love it. It's always home. You know, the second the plane lands and I get out and I see the palm trees and smell the fresh air, I'm like, I just feel like myself again.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

Yeah, no, that's uh that's awesome. It's good you're able to get back somewhat frequently.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

Yeah, agree.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Yeah. Do you um I would try to load that up so I am able to go in the winter as much as possible? I don't know if you try to organize it that way.

SPEAKER_01 2:00

Uh um, yeah. I do actually like we try always like in the winter, whether it's Christmas or Thanksgiving, to go back, but I'm there, I'm there frequently now, which I'm so grateful for. But yeah, honestly, it's like I want to have a house there one day and just live there the entire winter. I actually want to live there all the time, but if I had to divvy up my time between East Coast and West Coast, I'd be there during the entirety of the winter.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Oh, yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

Which now feels like it goes through April. Right.

SPEAKER_00 2:30

So, what were you like as a kid?

SPEAKER_01 2:32

As a kid, I was very observant, which I I think translates and still holds true today. Quieter, also probably the way I am today. I was firstborn, first generation American. So my parents were both from two different countries, um, my mom from Greece, my dad from Iraq. And I think that that really also shaped a lot of the way I sort of interacted with the world because, you know, the food in my house, the languages spoken, the music was very different than my friends, Jennifer, Stephanie, Mindy, you know, like these

Growing Up First-Gen And Different

SPEAKER_01 3:17

people that grew up, you know, American kids doing American things, eating American food. And so I always felt a little different too. And I was always trying to kind of like figure out my place in that, you know. I still played and did all the things the kids do, but there were three languages spoken in my house. I always knew I was different, you know, I wasn't like everybody else. And I think that that always sort of is something that I've carried with me and have been able, when I look at like my friends, my friends are all different. And so many of them are actually from other countries or are bicultural or have some type of mix, or even have had more of like a hardship, I would say, in their life than just sort of this cookie cutter basic, you know, Beverly Cleaver kind of thing growing up. But nothing against anyone that had that. It's just I always kind of knew I was different. But I think that that also, you know, as a kid made me realize like I could also relate to a lot of different people. And I am one of those people, even since I was little, where people will just tell me like their life story, you know, whether now today it's like a mom on the baseball field or whatever, she's just suddenly telling me her everything. And I'm like, okay, you know, like you can do that, which probably made me perfectly set up for recruiting, to be honest with you, because that's what we do.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

Yeah. Yeah, it's um probably. And then probably the longer you're recruiting, the more we develop that I suppose persona or ability to communicate with people or this peer is kind of open, right?

SPEAKER_01 4:52

Yeah, it's like a safety place. And I think people they want to talk to you, they want to connect with you, they, you know, and that's your job too, is to get that out of them, you know, is like who is this person really? Because you see the resume, you see the logos or whatever, but like who who are they really and will they be a good match in this environment? You know, whatever it is that you're trying to do. So yeah, yeah, as a kid, I would say that that that that was me. I was I was different, you know, I was smart, I loved school, I loved playing outside. I was really good at tetherball, you know.

SPEAKER_00 5:30

Nice. You were telling me that you always had a desire to grow up quickly, right? Like you really wanted to get out there and work and make money and these types of things. I'm curious, like, where did where do you think that came from?

SPEAKER_01 5:43

Yeah, so that came from my parents. Well, my whole situation. So my parents got divorced when I was nine, and I had to grow up pretty quickly. You kind of play these roles in your family, and the role that I played was in some ways like a co-parent with my mom for my sister and even myself. My mom had to work, she had three jobs after my parents got divorced. So I didn't really have that luxury of like childhood carefree thinking. Things got really serious when I was nine.

Divorce And Learning To Cope

SPEAKER_01 6:22

And so I had to grow up pretty quickly. And the story that I was sharing with you was that, you know, because I think I had some exposure to some really serious, sort of harder things of like, you know, my mom's struggling. I remember the night that she left my dad and moved us to a different place. I remember her counting change to pay for the pizza that night. You know, and so I think when you see these things at such a young age, it really like shapes your view of the world and fear and also what you want for your life. And so at a very young age, I remember thinking and feeling I want better than this for myself in all of the ways, right? Like I hope to find a partner I can trust. I hope to have a situation that is like stable where I'm not having to count change to feed my kids, you know? And so that eventually translated into a yearning for making money, working, wanting to contribute because the pressure, the financial pressure when you don't have it, it leads to you can't do things, you can't go places, you can't buy things, you can't have what other kids have. So it was this weird place of like, I don't have what other kids have, but my mom's trying to provide for us. And I want to be able to do this for myself. So at 13, I actually started working. I always wanted to work to be in charge. I wanted to better my circumstances. And I just knew at a young age, I was like, this isn't gonna be the rest of my life. I'm gonna do better than this. I have to, I want to, I think I'm I'm gonna do something with my life. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:15

And so looking looking at your career to date, I mean, you've worked at a lot of really impressive companies. We're gonna get into this a little bit more late later, but you you started off at Apple as a uh a Mac specialist, and then you you uh ended up as project manager, global talent development, moved to LinkedIn, ultimately senior manager, head of talent acquisition, um, moved to Slack, worked with them through the acquisition, uh Abnormal AI, uh, OneTrust, you know, a lot of a lot of big logos here, um, and a lot of a lot of promotions along the way at all of these companies. And so I'm curious, I mean, is it do you feel like these these experiences as a a kid

Ambition, Money, And Work Ethic

SPEAKER_00 9:01

growing up in terms of wanting to make money and like that ambitious ambition, do you feel like that's what led to your success, or was it was it more than that? Like what what do you think has enabled you to do so well?

SPEAKER_01 9:13

Yeah, that's I I love this question. I remember watching a Barbara Walters interview, if you remember Barbara Walters, and she interviewed the CEO of Oracle, and she had said to him, you know, this multi-billionaire, and she says to him, How did this happen? A kid that was basically, if I remember the story correctly, an orphan. And he said to her something that I never forgot, and I actually got engraved in a ring. Um, he said, Barbara, I had all the right disadvantages to be successful. And I believe that wholeheartedly. I look for that when I hire people is what is their fight, what is their why? Why do they care? Everyone has struggled in different ways, but I feel like when people have really struggled, they want it more. They they want to work hard. They know that they know what it's like to be without. And so they put so much into it. So I feel like I had all of the right disadvantages to be successful. I wanted it more. I wanted it and I needed it more than the next person next to me. And so I was fighting for it. I think the other thing was that like work became for me in a lot of ways. I don't want to say an escape from my circumstances, but a place where the good, the good kid, the good behavior, the hard work was really recognized and rewarded. And so that's why I kept getting promoted and ascending in my career because I took responsibility, I took accountability. I I gave a shit a lot more than other people. Um, and sometimes I was criticized for that, honestly. Um, but I think that, you know, when you are working for a company, they want people that are committed, they want people that are going to go the extra mile. And I'm someone that did that because I wanted to and I had to. And I was getting the reward for doing that, you know. And I think there's a lot of careers where that exists. Like sales is one of them, where the harder you work, the more you can make it's what you put into it. Um, I think I'd also just relate it to sports. It's like you don't just get good by showing up, you have to practice, you have to put in the hours, you have to outwork everybody else if you want to be the best. And that's what I that's what I did.

SPEAKER_00 11:41

Um, and I was like it's very clear like the it's like the work ethic piece, right? Like, so it's just like this ability to the capacity to to just push yourself, right? Yeah. And it, but it's it's not just that, it's like you were getting the reward from it. Like, would the reward, would you say, is like over the years, it's the financial aspect, or it's got to be more than that, too. Cause at some point, right, like you've gotten to the point where you you have that level of stability, or you've achieved like you've reached surpassed that threshold. Do you feel like it was just so ingrained in you at that point to work hard that it it didn't matter? You just continued that it was like a habit at that point, or was there is there also something else beyond like wanting a better financial situation that was driving you?

SPEAKER_01 12:27

Yeah, you you're touching on something I think is really important because earlier in your career, as you're ascending, you know, you're like, okay, and now I'm making 20,000 more or 80,000 or 100,000 more, or oh my gosh, way more than that. Then you kind of get to the point where you're like, the money is the money. And then you realize actually the way that like people can't change their shape, you know, square is a square, triangle is a triangle. Um, a star is a star. The the corners can be softened a little bit, but you don't really change who you are. And what I realized was I work my ass off no matter where I am. That's just how I'm cut. It's one of the reasons, also, why now I'm working for myself because I'm like I've made these multi-billion dollar companies successful. It's my time, you know. So so now I'm gonna bet on me. And if it worked that hard for them, I'm probably gonna work even harder for myself, you know. So I think that there's just a there's I've never in my life seen someone that just doesn't work hard and doesn't care suddenly work hard. You either have that or you don't. You're either motivated to achieve, accomplish, fight, drive, or you're not. And I think there can there can't be everybody in the world like that. That that actually there wouldn't be room if everyone was like that. You know, it's good to have, I think, a mix of people that are or are not. But for me personally, I I loved my work, I loved what I did. And I think as you get to those higher levels of leadership, it does become more than the money for sure. And I had that hard lesson making make I made a choice and I went to a company that really wasn't for me. The culture wasn't for me, it was toxic. Um, and I was still working hard. But what I learned from that was okay, now I've ascended to like the top level that I could get to, right? Like the VP level. I don't want to be chief people officer. I did a little rotation in that role and I don't want that role. Hats off to anyone in that role. It's a very hard job. But what I realized was what's really important at the end of the day, yes, we're all trying to make money. You can have insane results in a company and in leading your team, but you have got to be a person first. You've got to be a great leader. And so for me, the most important thing is being a great leader, getting the best out of my people, honestly, leading with love. Like they know I love every one of them. My last team, especially, will tell you this. And my job was to bring out the best in them because if I could bring out the best in them, they would do the best work. They would feel good about their work, they would want to give more. And I feel like that's then what it becomes. You get to this level where you're like, it's not about me anymore. It's about me driving results and belief through my team, you know, and leadership became like the more important thing for me at this point in my career.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

Well, I'm curious to get your thoughts there, because I mean, you've worked in like super competitive hyper-growth environments, and you know, one of the stories that I would love to talk a little bit about is your experience at Slack through the acquisition of Salesforce. And you had told me that you had to go essentially after the post-acquisition, the contingency, or maybe not a contingency, but one of the things that followed was uh that uh Slack needs to double the size of their sales organization in one year. I mean, like that type of growth is incredibly intense, and the standards in which you have to uphold for I feel like your team in those types of uh situations is incredibly high. And it's it's uh I think it particularly for these hyper-growth category-leading companies, it's it's of course like a challenge of like leading with high

High Standards With Real Empathy

SPEAKER_00 16:18

empathy and incredibly high standards. And um, you know, I'm curious how in some of these environments that were scaling incredibly rapidly, or you said like with Apple, you guys were opening like 50 stores a year or something while you were in talent there. I mean, how do you like how do you do that? Because I mean, you can't make everyone happy, like you have to have incredibly high performance expectations. Sometimes we have to let people go. I mean, we can't be everybody's friends. Like, I I mean, particularly, and I think you just given your own work ethic and your own kind of psychology and and worldview, I feel like that's probably I mean, I'm curious to get your perspective on this, but I'm assuming like you've had to make hard decisions when it comes to staff and maybe make decisions that other people wouldn't want to make, and and as a result, probably didn't make it as far as you have. So, I mean, I'm just curious, how do you how have you balanced those things throughout the years from a leadership perspective? High standards and high empathy, right?

SPEAKER_01 17:14

There's a lot there, and I will tell you, I I really like anyone, I had to learn my way through that. And I did make some mistakes, and I I didn't get it right every time. Um, but I would say that, like, you know, earlier in my career, so here's a very, very vulnerable story. Um, but I think a lot of people can relate to this, and I I feel like this is very real as part of the learning journey as a leader because I believe leadership is a practice in the same way that medicine is a practice. Like, and there's a distinction between leaders that are know-it-alls or learn-it-alls, right? And so for me, I was always like, I I had these sort of mentors that didn't know they were mentors to me. Um, people that I admired in my company, uh, Oprah, watching Oprah, you know, like people like that. Um, and I think that what I learned was that you really need to be um honest and and direct and like don't mince words because people can be confused if you don't do that. And what it's what I learned was that it starts with listen, you've got to have clear expectations, you've got to share those expectations with your team. If there's a gap in between what someone is is doing and what your expectations are, you need to call it out. And either they want to be coached or they don't. And so I learned early on the difference there. The vulnerable story I was gonna share was that when I was early on when I was promoted into a leadership position, the company that I was working for did these like manager surveys, manager effectiveness surveys. And I had just gone from peer to manager of a team of like 12 recruiters, and I got destroyed in the survey. Someone even went as far as say, it's clear she has no idea what she's doing. Wow. And it was brutal. I mean, I remember like just being in a puddle of tears, being like, oh my God, like I thought I was a good person, and you know, like I read all these leadership books and I think I know. But I think what I was doing, and my husband said it to me at the time, he said, You're just not being yourself. You're not being yourself, you know what to do. Do it. You're not you're not doing that. And he was right. I was trying to be everyone's friend still, you know, versus like the boss. And so I took that feedback and I said, Okay, well, I'm in the job and I need to do what I know is the right thing. And so I basically went back that next week. I had a whole new plan. One-on-ones, clear topics. I communicated what I expected everyone to do in those one-on-ones, be prepared to deliver. I was like, I'm running this thing, like the leader that I know I am and can be. I just wasn't doing it. I was holding back, I was scared, you know. And so fast forward a couple of years, I was nominated for, you know, manager of the year. It was, you know, I did what I needed to do. Um, and so I think at the end of the day, like it is a journey, but not everyone is gonna like you. And listen, that's leadership. Like you're put in those jobs to make the tough calls. You're not put in those jobs to be everybody's best friend. So there's that. Um, I would say that of that team at the time, probably half a trident, either me coaching them out of the business or them moving on. And it was definitely for the best because, you know, when you come into a role, your job is to get the results. People are not always gonna sign up for your mission, your vision, and that's okay. Um, so I feel like the directness is kindness because you got to be straight with people. Don't bullshit people, let them know what you expect, let them know what you're like. One of the tools that I've used is an operating operating manual. It's a personal operating manual where you it's it's very it requires a high level of like self-awareness. And you're you just basically list out what it's like to work with you, what are your pet peeves, you know, how to how to work best with you, how to communicate with you, those kinds of things, right? Things you don't have tolerance for, things you expect, who you like working with, that kind of thing. And I had everyone in my team do the same thing. And so we would have a conversation about it and talk about where we see alignment and synergy and where we might have to work a little harder around certain things or drive some clarity. Um, I've had people that, you know, most of the time when I've come in as head of TA, whether it's go to market or the whole Function or whatever, it's like I let everybody know straight up. I'm like, you're gonna get to a point where as you get to know me and you start to see things change, where you may think to yourself, I'm not sure if I want to be here. And I want to let you know that is okay and that is normal. And I've been there too. In getting a new leader, I just want us to talk about it. And I my commitment to you is I will help you find the next thing, whether it's here or whether it's somewhere else. And I feel like if you're able to that first of all, that takes like a different level of maturity on both sides. That's not just something anybody can do. But I think that it's an important conversation to have because as the business leader, your job is to maintain business continuity and to get high performance and high results for the business. That's why you're there. That's why they pay you. You can do that by being an empathetic person at the same time, where it doesn't have to be this dramatic separation or anything like that. You know, it's just two adults having a conversation about what's best for each other and the business, right? So that's how I've balanced it. Um I I try to have tour of duty conversations with everyone on my team. This was something I learned from LinkedIn, um, from Reed Hoffman's book, The Startup of You, where it's like, think of your career as a tour of duty, especially in the more recent roles I've had, I've thought of it this way. Where it's like they need me to accomplish this set of things. The mission in this job is this. And so that's why I'm here. And I think in a lot of heads of TA roles, I think the mission is usually a couple of years long, where it's like you come in, you need to turn around the team, you need to get them AI-enabled, more productive, more efficient, you need to build a strong culture, get ops locked in, and then you move on to the next one. It's almost like a little bit of a Mary Poppins mindset. You know how she likes goes to the bank's family and they need her for that period of time. And then she gets her umbrella and she goes off to the next family. That's how I think of my career now is like, I'm here to help. I'm here to achieve the objective, the mission. And in that time, I'm also gonna love my team and help them achieve their goals, their outcomes, the business outcomes. And if it's here, great. If it's somewhere else, great. But that's what I talk about, like leading with love. I think you can do both. It doesn't have to be contentious, dramatic, aggressive. Like it's it's about being human, I think at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_00 24:42

Do you feel like you also um I know your um your uncle was a small business owner and he, I believe he was, right? And he owned um is that a shoe rep shoe repair? Yeah. Do you feel like that this leadership style is something that you learned from him, or was it I there was some other elements I think you learned from him as well when it comes to like attention to detail and going above and beyond. But um, I'm just curious, like, how much of this do you think comes from your experience of working in his shop when you were growing up?

SPEAKER_01 25:14

Yeah, I would say that the shop attributed the most in terms of like integrity. So doing the right thing even when no one's watching, you know, you you've you've got these shoes that people love. They're they're broken, they're beat up, they're disheveled. They could go buy a

Integrity Lessons From Shoe Repair

SPEAKER_01 25:32

new pair, but for some reason they care about these shoes, and they're giving you these shoes to bring life back. And that was his whole thing was like, I I bring and give life back to these shoes. And so I would watch him spend a lot of time resoling, restitching, shining, and making that shoe as close to new and perfect. And I would then watch him hand them across the the counter and the customers just be like, whoa, I can't believe this is my shoe, you know, and something as little as uh reviving a shoe built trust, you know, repeat business, loyalty, clientele. He had customers for like 20, 30 years that would always come back to him. And so this idea of like craftsmanship and attention to detail, doing what you say you're gonna do. I also watched him turn down business many times. He would get shoes that he knew he couldn't repair, not because of his skill, but because it was impossible. It was just so far gone. It was like just buy yourself a new pair of shoes at this point. And I learned a lot there too, where it was like, don't bullshit people, you know, be real, keep it, keep it 100. Tell them like it is, because that also builds trust. And guess what? Those people would then look around the shop and buy a bag or a purse or a wallet or a whatever, you know, like so. There's relationships matter. That was a thing I learned. Um, integrity. So always just doing the right thing, even when no one's watching. He did the right thing, he always did the right thing. The attention to detail and craftsmanship, just so real and significant. And I feel like those early learnings at 13 years old, one Saturday a month for a few years, just taught me the value of good business. And so those are the things I'm carrying with me now as I'm building my own business. And as I went on to work for these companies, it was one of the things I always looked to validate was that they had strong values. Because when you're rooted in values, people can lean on something to make the right decisions, the tough calls, and do the right thing for the company.

SPEAKER_00 27:55

I also wanted to double back to your experience at Slack and specifically during the acquisition, uh, because of just how aggressive, for lack of a better word, the growth goals were, and you were leading GTM hiring at the time. They said, okay, well, all the work you did in you know for the past seven years, you have to double in one year. And for our other heads of TA that are tuning in, I I think we're all very curious on on the from an like actionable step perspective, how you accomplish that. So I was hoping you could give us a a lay of the land in terms of where things were at the beginning of that year and and the challenges

Scaling Slack Hiring After Acquisition

SPEAKER_00 28:40

and and step by step how you were able to help Slack double the size of the sales organization in such a short amount of time.

SPEAKER_01 28:49

Yeah. So let me lay out the the challenge for you as you as you just touched on it. So part of the terms of the deal were that we needed to double the sales team. And so we had a year basically to do that. And it was, I would describe it as mission impossible. We were in the thick of COVID. So, like the first year in. Okay. I would say that I think the deal closed September of 2020. And remember, in April of 2020, shit hit the fan. Italy closed, right? Like things in our lifetime that we had never heard of with the pandemic. So we got the pandemic landscape. We were 100% remote. We had subpar recruiting dashboards. When we looked at the growth targets for headcount, we were short, 60 people. So that was our capacity planning gap, huge. So we needed to close that gap. And that was across everything operations, sourcing. Cause at the time, this is like pre-AI, you know. So we had sourcing, all this stuff, right? Um, and then we get handed to us a hundred and thirty-three percent increased headcamp plan. And we're like, holy shit, how are we gonna do this? And by the way, funded 50% of what we actually needed to deliver on this. So in our conversations with finance at that time, we were like, we need more money, like we can't just do this. So, and and 75% of our recruiting leadership team at that time was brand new. Brand new. So we had, I think, everything working against us. And in my conversations with the um Salesforce corp corporate development teams, this is the team that works with all the acquired teams and the businesses, and they keep pulse on how they're performing, especially when there's headcount growth targets. They had told us it's unlikely that you're gonna hit this target. We expect that you won't, because no team in the history of any of our acquisitions has hit their headcount growth targets. That is something I love hearing because give me a good challenge, and I'm gonna prove you wrong. Um, is sort of the story of my life. And so it was a the epitome of everything. Teamwork makes the dream work, you know, people, process, systems, tech, insights, like everything. It was truly a 360 strategy. And I would say that we did a lot of things at different stages. There were a lot of crawl versions of things that turned into a walk that turned into a run. There were a lot of things that stated a crawl. You know, it just kind of depended. But what we had built was we knew immediately we needed to get our arms around our numbers and know our numbers. So we built entire dashboards around the data and the reporting and what would help us understand working backwards from that end state, what were the weekly run rates and the targets we had to hit? What were the offer accepts? What were the funnel ratios we needed to see across every single recruiter? What were the recloads? You need the full picture. And then you need to be able to report that to the CRO. And also in this case, these reports went up to Mark Benioff. So these reports went all the way up to Mark Benioff that he looked at every Monday morning. Um, because when you're paying about $28 billion for something, you want to know it's gonna work. So I felt like an insane amount of pressure, um, which was good because that drove me. I was like, okay, we're gonna do this. And so I would say also rallying my team around this was a really important part of the strategy. And I would communicate with them weekly over a pre-recorded video where I'd give them the stats on like where we are. I would shout out people on the team. I made sure every single person was recognized throughout that year multiple times. We still gave people PTO. We still took time off. We worked our asses off, but I didn't, you know, make people work on weekends like I've heard Facebook or Meta doing these kinds of things. We didn't do that. You know, we just paid attention to the most important things. We did talent mapping. I mean, all the things that people do, but I'll still say we did talent mapping. We had a location strategy, we even had to open new entities and new states in that year. So we worked very closely with our people operations team. We did interviewer and onboarding enablement. So we had to build that out and execute quickly so that all of the new 60 recruiters we were hiring were going through the same standard procedures. We even had to do the same thing for hiring managers because this was a flywheel where we could not stop the momentum. Um, we had to just increase our cadence, not decrease it. So we had to build all of the systems that were gonna get us there. We did um one of the creative things we did was like, and I don't know if people are gonna think this is creative, but like a referral spiff program to incentivize people to really think about recruiting as a team sport. And so talent knows talent. Um, that was something that our finance team funded. Um, and we helped do all the math behind what that would be. Um, interview process changes. So we really looked at like what the process was, what were the non-negotiables from our CRO, and then what could we cut? We also pushed on the business because we need to increase hiring manager capacity. So you can't just increase recruiter capacity without increasing hiring manager capacity. So we had to leverage Salesforce. So we were then training Salesforce managers to help hire for Slack. So it was like all hands on deck, a mindset shift, recruiting as a team sport. We're all in this together. Our best friends were finance, sales operations. On Monday mornings, where the sales teams would be doing their forecast calls for all their deals and review, the first thing before that was their recruiting forecast. So we built a whole new emotion and mindset around everyone calling their number on their recruiting forecast, what their commit was, what the miss was going to be, why, and what they were doing to close the gap. We were maniacal about it, literally maniacal about it. And we did it. So at the end, the very last day of the year before the deal closed. And I have a screenshot of this message that I sent out to the company. We landed exactly on the number that we were supposed to hit. I don't have goosebumps telling you this. Um, Stuart Butterfield, who was our founder and CEO, was praising us. He even joined my team meeting. That was like one of the ways we celebrated together with Stuart, thanking the team. Um, and I thanked everyone, you know, my team, finance, sales ops. There were so many people that needed to be brought along, believe in the strategy, get alignment, and like support each other. And we did it. And we were the only acquisition in the history of Salesforce, you know, circa 2022, um, to do it. And I'm very proud of that because we built the systems, the team, the process, all the things. We also built an incredible culture, and that team is still close today. Many of them work together at Anthropic or Notion or other companies that are going on to build these other companies at hyper gross scale and speed. And they learned that here. They learned that when we did it together at Slack. So it's really cool to see.

SPEAKER_00 36:34

That is really cool. Such a cool story.

SPEAKER_01 36:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:37

I'm excited to talk to you a little bit about today, right? I mean, um, in 2026, what's your obsession?

SPEAKER_01 36:44

I am obsessed with AI like everybody else, but building a company that is founded on everything that I believe, respect, and and aspire to be, you know, and everything that I've built my career around. So um I'm building my own talent firm where we're doing executive search, fractional work, um, we'll do executive coaching as well and leadership development, but it's all this stuff that I love and believe in. I believe in people first. I believe if you can get the best out of your people, you can build the best companies and get the best results. Um, and so I am obsessed with that

Using AI Without Losing Trust

SPEAKER_01 37:26

and AIing as much as I can while keeping people at the center of it because I'm in the people business. You know, so there are things you can AI, of course. You can AI a lot of things. I'm I've turned Claude into my own chief of staff. So every morning we have a conversation and um Claude Plodette, Plaudine, whatever you want to call her, she gets me ready for the day. She blocks my calendar, she helps me draft certain, you know, emails or communications. I'm a one-woman show at this point, but I am absolutely on a mission to make my company successful and at the core of it, high bar, high trust, high quality work, and build a talent firm that people really trust and know that like they're gonna get great people in and through working with me. Um so yeah, I would say that's what I'm pretty obsessed with right now.

SPEAKER_00 38:22

How do you think about leveraging AI and maintaining the human side and talent acquisition?

SPEAKER_01 38:27

I think about this a lot because every day I'm kind of met with, you know, a new article, a new prompt that's like you could do this and automate and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's I just watched this guy. I'm not gonna name any names, but like he just did a training video on Claude, which I appreciated and I'm learning a lot from it. It was just funny. He was being, he was adding some humor too. He was like, Hey, Claude, I'm hungover. I got a lot of things to do today, but like you just, you know, set up my day and write my this and my emails. And so it was funny, but it's like, and he's like, All right, I'm going back to take a nap because I'm hungover. And you know, he's being funny, but like I was like, wow, you know, how much of this can I AI? And I think that there's a there's a reality of the things you can AI. There's if you're paying attention and you're learning, I think we all should be learning right now every day with AI, but I'm trying not to overwhelm myself. And I'm also trying not to outsource humanity to AI. There is just there, I will, I will, I will be quoted, and I'm happy to be wrong one day. Doubt I will be. This is one of those things that I'm like, no, I'm not gonna be wrong about this. AI cannot build trust with another person. People still want to talk to people. People still want to know who am I working with? Are we gonna vibe? Like those connection points, the trust, the instinct, that is something no machine is gonna replace. I think where AI is gonna definitely replace things is like, you know, sourcing or giving you short lists of candidates or things like that, or automated replies. Even those still need to sound like human and more personal. Um, so I think that, you know, I think there's a bit of a mix, but I just I was telling you a story earlier where I literally walked a candidate off the jet bridge. He was about to board the plane. That's something AI cannot do. He had texted me earlier that morning, excited to get on the plane and have his final interview with the CHRO in person, fly across the country for it. And he texted me and said, I just want to be transparent in that last night I received a very competitive offer. So I'm getting this in the middle of like morning rush hour with the kids, and I'm like, oh my God. I'm like, okay, and I know he's at the airport. So I text him, I'm like, can you chat? And he's like, Yeah. And so I call him and I'm like, hey, how's it going? Um, and he basically says, I'm literally on the jet bridge. I'm like, okay, don't get on the plane. He's like, okay. So he's literally standing on the jet bridge. Everyone's passing him. He's like, Yeah, yeah, go ahead. I'm just on the phone. And I said to him, I was like, I in my mind, I'm like, look, I have I have minutes here, probably seconds to like figure out if he should actually get on that plane. Because the balance here is like the CHRO's time, you know, investing in the right places, me finding her someone who's actually gonna take this job. And then also being human and having a conversation with my candidate and just being real and being like, what are you gonna do? And so I didn't say, What are you gonna do? I said, let's talk about this. And he was always transparent. I'm multiple processes, I'm trying to find the best thing for me, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it wasn't about money, it was like the right fit. And so I said to him, My question was, is there a world where you don't accept this offer? And he said, No. He said, My heart is telling me that this is the right thing. And I said, Don't get on the plane. And he said, I just don't want to burn bridges. And I said, I totally understand that. And I believe you. I I'm talking to you while you were on the jet bridge, about to get on the plane, even though in your heart you know you're not gonna say no to this other thing. And that's okay. Um, and I said, But I do think the right thing to do is let's get off the plane and let me spend time trying to find the right person for you know this CHRO. And do you have any referrals?

unknown 42:35

Right.

SPEAKER_01 42:36

He gave me a referral and we automatically switched together into recruiting mode because it's ahead of talent role. He knows, but AI cannot do that, right? AI cannot walk someone off a plane, AI cannot, you know, turn that moment into long-term trust and relationship. Like we are in the people business. We will need people to do jobs. People aren't going away suddenly because the machine can think. And by the way, the machine is stupid sometimes and it makes really dumb mistakes. And so I think, you know, there are aspects of recruiting we can optimize. Scheduling is one of them. You don't, if you have schedulers in your company, I don't know why. Literally, why are you spending your money on that? So that's the stuff we should be AIing for sure. Maybe top of funnel screening, I see that happening too. Okay. But there are when you get through the process at the end of the day, we still have to work with people, especially in leadership. There's trust, there's decisions. We're not working for the machine, as far as I can tell, unless we're in the matrix and I just don't know it. Um, but you know, there's things you can and can't AI. And so I really do think about. I think about where trust, connection, human judgment come into play. No one should be depending on the machine. Treat the machine like an intern, not the expert. And I think if you do that, it can create a lot of leverage for you. And also to think about what are The, I ask myself, I'm like, what's the objective? Like, what am I trying to do? Am I trying to save myself something, improve some type of metric, be clear on that before you AI something? Because what I'm seeing and hearing from my peers and people that I'm coaching right now is like, I'm getting a lot of pressure to like AI all this stuff. And some of them are just jumping and saying, sure, but now they're wasting their time and they're losing productivity because they're trying to build something without an objective. And so I would encourage everyone to be very clear about the measurable objectives that you're trying to accomplish by building an AI solution. And it should be around either saving time, improving productivity, saving money. You know, those are business metrics. You know?

SPEAKER_00 44:50

For sure. I really want to talk to you too about like the future, right? Over the next few years, right? You're building your company. It's like this really exciting new chapter. Um to zoom out a little bit though, I I'm curious to get your thoughts on your own, like your thoughts on your own development. Like, what does the the next best version of yourself look like? Who are you striving to become at this point in your life?

SPEAKER_01 45:16

Yeah, I love this question. So I think so. Penfield talent is the name of my company. And as I'm building out Penfield Talent, I would say that I'm going through an experience that I didn't really expect, which in a lot of ways, and you know this, having started your own thing too, it is the epitome of facing fear.

Building A Firm With Zero Apologies

SPEAKER_01 45:42

Really is because you are every day having to hunt for your food, you know, skin it, cook it, the whole thing, right? And there's a lot of fear in doing something or wondering what people will think. Are you starting your own thing because you failed this? Are you starting your own thing because you don't want to do that or what whatever questions people are gonna have? And I think the chapter in my life that I'm in, in terms of who I'm becoming, is a I don't give a fuck what anybody else thinks. I don't know if I can say the F-word on your podcast. You could say it as well.

SPEAKER_00 46:21

Yeah, as it turns out, a lot of five-year-olds don't like listening to this show. It's not really perfect. Yeah, so we can say whatever we want.

SPEAKER_01 46:29

Um, I literally do not care because I love Beyonce. If you know me, you know I love Beyonce. Even Beyonce has haters, and she's Beyonce, so you know, people are gonna say whatever they want, they're gonna think whatever they want. I can't control it. I don't think I don't live for for you or them, or you know, I live for myself, and I want to live my life without regrets. And I'm I'm betting on me. I'm in this place of like, I know what I know, I am always learning, I will outwork anyone in the room, and it's my time, it's my time to build something for me and not give a shit what anyone else thinks cares. I'll tell you something I found that has really surprised me in this time. How many like how human people are in this chapter? And and you know, people have been so good to me. I actually had a one-on-one with someone yesterday, um, just catching up. I call it a one-on-one. We were just catching up. He saw that I had posted, you know, I haven't even announced my company yet. By the time this airs, I will have. But he said, Hey, I saw you started your own thing. I also started my own thing three years ago. I would love to catch up and compare notes. Now, this is someone who was on my team in London, so reported to a manager on my on my team in at Slack. And he was so kind and generous with his time and with his wisdom. And the teacher became the student. I was learning from him, and I had so many questions for him, and he was so excited to share with me lessons, tips, um, transparently about money and all kinds of things. And I was the student. And I feel like the best leaders have no ego with that stuff, and they are excited to learn from anybody that can teach them something. And that that's personally my mindset. And so I feel like I'm in this chapter of this, you know, eager beginner while standing on the collected experience that I have over the last 20 years, but still a beginner's mindset. And I feel like that hungry, curious mentality is is what will help shape the success of my company. Um, and being in this place too, of like, you know, in my 40s, I'm like, oh my God, like I don't feel it. I still feel like I'm 28, but I am definitely in this chapter of like middle of my life. And it's time for me to do and build something and not be afraid of anything. So it's like that that time where you're just like, I believe in me, you know, and I know I can help people. And my network has come through so hard. I have such an amazing network of people that I've collected along the way, and I'm excited to give back and help people and connect them with awesome opportunities and like change lives. And I gotta tell you something, like, it's so fun being a recruiter again because I'm remembering why I fell in love with this in the first place. And it goes back to my childhood and all that stuff. It's like a job is just a job if you treat it that way, but it can be a life-changing experience that connects you with some of the most amazing people you will ever meet. Uh, you may marry one of you one of them, like I did. Um, and economic opportunity that can truly change your circumstances and like your future, your life experience. And it's what you put into it. And so I love hearing people's stories again. And it's bringing me back to why I got into this in the first place, which is like I get to change people's lives, you know, and I love that.

SPEAKER_00 50:30

Yeah, for sure. I love this. This has been a lot of fun. I really enjoyed getting to know you and hearing your story and your personal backstory and some of the really cool professional experiences that you've had along the way, and you've just developed, of course, this amazing expertise uh in our space, right? And um, I just want to say thank you for coming on today and sharing your experiences with everybody because there's uh definitely a lot of good takeaways here for other leaders tuning in. So thank you, Mary.

SPEAKER_01 50:58

Thank you. This was a lot of fun, and thank you for inviting me to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 51:02

Yeah, it was a really good time for sure.