Following Clues, Creating Belonging: Andrea Robb

Andrea Robb is a talent advisor, designer, and leadership coach. In her conversation with Jesse, she draws on her experiences as a talent executive and consultant to lay out a vision for the future of the workplace experience and of talent management. Andrea shares her views on post-COVID working realities and how forward-thinking teams might improve the employee experience and promote greater empathy and inclusivity. She shares deep insights from her time at Airbnb, including how they turned the company’s external purpose around Belonging into a distinctive employee culture. Andrea discusses the relationship between company purpose, belonging, diversity, and inclusion, talks about lessons learned early in her career at Lucasfilm, and reflects on the importance of discovering and acting on clues that one finds during their career and life. 

How will COVID shape the workplace moving forward? How do you help creative talent develop their skills? How do companies create an inclusive culture where employees feel belonging? How can belonging be incorporated into diversity and inclusion programs? How can you start discovering your purpose?

Guest Bio:
Andrea is a former HR leader at Lucasfilm, Airbnb, and Autodesk--with a focus on Organization Development and Learning. She is now an entrepreneur and advisor to organizations on the future of work and education, as founder of Andrea Robb Consulting. Current and former clients include Dive Studios, Lucasfilm, Airbnb, Stanford University, CompassPoint, and Weebly.com. She is also a founding partner at HumanCentric Labs, which seeks to redefine and design how organizations work, using agile, self-management, and human centered design research. 

She works with organizations in the public and private sectors that seek modern ideas for work - including organization design, talent strategy, recruiting, learning + development, people analytics, and diversity + belonging. Andrea also holds a board position on The Alumni Association of the University of Michigan.

She holds a Bachelor’s in Psychology from the University of Michigan and a Masters in Education and Public Policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and two children.

Building Blocks:
Think about your life right now and also to take a trip back in time.What clues there are in your personal, educational, and professional background that might hint at what you could go build or how you could build. Are you somebody who really enjoyed being a camp counselor as a teenager? A swim coach and you've loved nature your whole life? Maybe that implies something about a career move related to improving our planet, climate, or great outdoors. Maybe you're a person who finds Zen in reading or writing, but so far you've only taken on blogs and papers. What would it look like for you to consider writing your first book? Take an honest and complete look back, and maybe do it over the course of two or three settings and see what clues you come up with and write about some of the possibilities those clues might portend for you.

Helpful Links:
Andrea’s website: https://andrearobb.com/

Qualtrics’ latest research on the importance of belonging in the workplace

Airbnb co-founder Brian Chesky on Airbnb’s identity of “Belong Anywhere”

Dr. Lauren Aguilar, leader of the Inclusion, Diversity, and Belonging Practice at Forshay Consulting, who helped develop the Airbnb Belonging Index and Sally Thornton as Founder/CEO

Belonging Researcher, Dr. Greg Walton at Stanford University

Research on Belonging and Diversity for women, with highly practical applications, at VMware Women's Leadership Innovation Lab. In particular, Shelley J. Correll, the Faculty Director and Principal Investigator has developed a "Small Wins Strategy" to quickly improve diversity and belonging.

Harvard Business Review article on the benefits of building on employee engagement to achieve greater outcomes