Diversity & Inclusion, Leadership & Management
Earlier this year we awarded 10 Innovation By All honorees at a gala event before the Great Place To Work For All Summit. Award recipients inspired us to clear roadblocks for employees with ideas and let them go!
We shared the first five innovators in June and are excited to share the remaining five.
From idea to IPO
Nate Walkingshaw is the Chief Experience Officer at Pluralsight Inc. He oversees the people -- from product development to data science -- who understand the customer experience and innovate products.
Nate’s risk-taking and data-driven leadership drove Pluralsight to rebuild its entire platform. As a result of his innovations, the company has launched several first-of-its-kind products in more than 150 countries.
Pluralsight serves over 65% of Fortune 500 companies and has 15,5000 customers with yearly revenue above $166 million. Pluralsight executed one of 2018’s most successful IPOs.
Innovating on a global scale
Gaby Thompson is Cisco’s SVP of HR Acquisitions and Total Rewards. She has two decades of experience leading global teams for Fortune 500 companies.
This global lens has influenced her focus on creating inclusive employee rewards that support Cisco’s diverse workforce. She has focused on building Cisco’s foundations to deliver programs more effectively and enable more data-driven decision making.
Cisco credits Gaby with increasing engagement scores and inclusion that raised the company’s share price. Despite the complexities of operating in a global environment, Gaby ensures that all new innovations include the employee voice. Not only through feedback mechanisms. But by making cross-functional teams partners in the design process. Global teams who can bring their differences to the table.
To the cloud and beyond
Lisa Pratt is Kronos’ Vice President of Customer Engagement Marketing. In her previous position as Senior Director of Business Transformation she steered a 5-year journey to shift Kronos’ 40-year-old business model from on-premise software provider to a software-as-a-service vendor.
Lisa lead an enormous culture change, encouraging Kronos’ people to embrace this transformation. Lisa played critical roles in overseeing the multi-phase change process. She oversaw the project management office, operational changes, retraining staff and partnering with customers.
Because of Lisa’s efforts, Kronos was able to migrate its entire business model without any significant dip in revenue growth.
In 2012, Kronos’ cloud presence was essentially non-existent. Today, Kronos has more than 28,000 customers in the Kronos Cloud. Kronos crossed $1 billion of annual recurring revenue (ARR) at the end of Fiscal 2018. All without any year-over-year revenue loss.
Sharing internally and externally
Greg Pryor is Workday’s SVP, People & Performance Evangelist. He has a dual role. Greg innovates talent and culture initiatives internally, while sharing best practices with Workday customers and prospects.
Two of Greg’s many innovations helped Workday maintain its best company culture through hypergrowth. These are People Leadership Summits and Best Workday surveys.
The survey provides weekly bespoke insights and coaching to Workday’s people leaders, enabling remarkable employee experiences. Because Greg is exceptionally collaborative, he is able to integrate ideas in many directions. He partnered with GPTW to design the Best Workday survey.
Greg partners with Workday staff to get feedback across the business on a weekly basis. He shares these learnings with his customers along the way. His innovations are inclusive and drive others’ success at Workday and beyond.
Let the innovator manage innovation
Derek Bang serves as Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer for Crowe LLP. He is responsible for assisting the CEO with developing, communicating and executing Crowe strategic initiatives.
Derek also leads the firms’ innovation and new solution development. Because he was given the room to innovate, he now runs a system-wide program that helps Crowe employees innovate for the future.
It was the RCA project that first lit the fire of innovation within Derek. His original vision was to get 5 hospitals in Indiana to participate. Today, RCA has generated more than $100 million in revenue for Crowe and is used by about 1,000 hospitals.
When it comes to innovation projects that Derek oversees, last fiscal year, there were 83 in the new product development pipeline. $125 million revenue was driven from just a $7.2 million innovation investment. 1,165 ideas were submitted through the Crowe Idea Portal since its launch in October 2014.
