When Gina Hartigan began her HR career building a university recruitment program at an engineering company in the early ’90s, she was given some now-dated advice: Always wear high heels, have something in your hands, and walk with purpose.
Fast-forward more than 30 years, including a decade-long break to be a stay-at-home mom, and Hartigan is now the chief people officer (CPO) at Kantata, a 500-person, remote-first software company. While much has changed in that time, some sexist attitudes continue to persist in the workplace, and those who take time away from the workforce to care for a family can still face hurdles to success.
She recently spoke with HR Brew about her experience returning to the workforce after a 10-year break, and how taking time away has informed her leadership today.
Finding her way to HR. Hartigan earned an MBA from the University of Kansas in 1991 and began her career in marketing at Fluor Corporation, a large engineering firm. She excelled at explaining the company’s complex concepts to salesmen, a skill that “caught the eye of our CEO…and he said to me, ‘Have you ever thought of going out on college campus and telling our story to new college grads?’”
That simple proposition opened a new door in her career. She joined the HR team, where she designed the company’s college relations initiative, built a rotational internship program, and led compensation and benefits development for early-career hires. In doing so, she said, she realized that entry-level roles are the first step in a company’s talent pipeline, and started planning for the skills Fluor would need in the future.
“That threw me into the deep end of having so many rich HR experiences all in my very first assignment,” she said. “I spent the next 12 years there and rotated from every single HR discipline throughout that experience.”
Stepping out and in. In 2003, with four children at home, Hartigan had a wake-up call. Her children’s nanny was frustrated because Hartigan was working 12+ hours a day. Meanwhile, her coworkers were frustrated because they thought she was ending her workday early. She was trying so hard to be perceived as the perfect wife, mother, and colleague, but felt like all she was doing was disappointing everyone. “Most importantly, I [was] disappointing myself.”
She decided to step away from work, a choice that was met with many opinions. “People were very vocal with me [saying] I had made a career-limiting decision…I could only hope for a job one day,” she said, adding that she believed some of what she was told.
But Hartigan held firm to her belief that she was making the right move for herself and her family, and took the next 10 years off. She spent that time volunteering at her kids' schools, taking them to various extracurriculars, and even coaching women on digital storytelling.
By 2017, her kids were in middle and high school, and “it just felt like the right time to start talking to people about what could be next,” she said. Hartigan’s network proved fruitful, and she began spending her Fridays taking connections out for coffee, learning about the job market, seeking advice, “and asking them who they could introduce me to that I didn't already know.”
Later that year, her approach led her to tech company Ingram Micro, where she was an HR business partner for more than three years. While invigorating, she said returning to work was challenging. She was afraid of appearing old or outdated to her new colleagues.
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“The challenging part was the nuances of new norms, new technology, and new terminology,” she said. “People talked about pinging each other, work was expected to be delivered in a deck, and we saved the planet by not having trash cans.”
Merging and moving a new team forward. In 2020, Steve DeSantis, a mentor and then-CFO of Mavenlink (now Kantata) told Hartigan he wanted her to lead HR at the software company. It would be a leap forward in her career, but she was afraid she wasn’t quite ready to take it.
“The thought of leading HR scared me to bits, because I didn't have recent experience with executive comp, with designing a fully funded benefit program, and all these things that I thought had to be prerequisites for being a CPO,” she said, explaining that it took her more than two months before she said yes. “He really saw something in me that I didn't see myself.”
Shortly after joining Kantata, Hartigan learned she’d have to navigate a merger—a task that can be stressful for an HR leader to manage. It requires melding two workforces with two employee experiences—from onboarding and technology, to wages and benefits. And at Kantata, employees had different levels of enthusiasm and confusion about the process and multiple work streams.
“Thinking about the people factor and keeping it top of mind,” is what made the process go well Hartigan said, noting that she focused on what flexibility, culture, talent acquisition, and compensation would look like going forward. “We believed that it was critical to assess the company’s human capital with the same rigor that we applied towards assessing other liabilities, [like] financial statements or other significant assets.”
Since then, Hartigan said she has continued to focus on culture with her team and leaders across the business. “Building a culture is really the sum of everything, and so it requires every leader, every department, to show up and be present and capable and live your values.”
She’s also tried to lead with a mix of strategy, compassion, and empathy. Staying at home for 10 years taught her to not take work, or herself, so seriously, a skill that, she said, has served her well as CPO. “[I’m] more open to a different leadership style than I had been rewarded for in the past,” she said.
Supporting other women. Hartigan has made an effort to be intentional about networking, planning virtual or in-person events every month, and taking time to connect with and support women in particular. It’s not her job, but she sees it as her responsibility to offer women the opportunities and guidance she wished she had when she was starting out.
“Now that I've been in the field a little bit longer, I'm really much better about intentionally reaching out to people…and being able to talk about life, careers, work assignments,” Hartigan said. “One of the things that ends up holding some women back, is we get so focused on doing our job, we forget about building our career.”