Jessi Marcoff, Chief People Officer at InvoiceCloud, didn’t take a traditional path to HR. Her journey began in change management at Portland General Electric, where she discovered a passion for connecting people with purpose. This early experience ignited a spark, leading her to explore the intersection of business strategy and human potential.
After honing her skills in organizational effectiveness and change management, Marcoff transitioned to consulting. This move allowed her to bridge the gap between the utilities sector and the tech world, expanding her HR expertise and deepening her commitment to creating positive employee experiences.
Marcoff’s unique background has equipped her with the ability to see the bigger picture, empathize with diverse perspectives, and align people strategies with business goals. Her approach to HR is rooted in understanding the human element and driving meaningful change.
In our latest Faces, meet Jessi Marcoff.
Who is/was your biggest influence in the industry?
My biggest influence and advocate in HR has been Jeannine Lombardi, my former boss at Crimson Hexagon. When I first joined the company, I was working in learning and development. Jeannine noticed the relationships I was building throughout the business and asked me to take on more responsibility in a slightly different role—one with more HR responsibilities.
I worked my way up to a vice president position, and when Brandwatch acquired Crimson Hexagon and Jeannine decided to move on from the company, she put my name forward as her successor. She was extremely encouraging, and her belief in me was essential to my confidence as I stepped into a larger role as Chief People Officer. With the acquisition, we went from less than 100 employees to 600 overnight and had to broaden our People Operations across nine countries, all of which required a great deal of work. Jeannine had deep experience on a global scale, and her ability to help me understand where to focus and how to leverage cultural nuances was critical to this effort.
What’s your best mistake and what did you learn from it?
My transition from focusing on change management and training to HR functions more broadly provided me with a lot of opportunities for learning. Because HR is all about connection, there’s a strong desire to cultivate relationships with employees—and I believe that relationship-building is truly essential for any business to succeed.
But at the same time, we have a responsibility to hold onto confidential information in the interest of the business, and to present ourselves as a partner and leader, rather than a friend or therapist. People working in HR can often end up feeling pigeon-holed into acting as unofficial counselors or therapists. But we’re not trained to do that work, and when we’re put in that position it often creates an unfair circumstance for both us and the employees we’re trying to help. We want to do right by our team members, and the organization we all belong to.
What’s your favorite part about working in the industry? What’s your least favorite part, and how would you change it?
As a natural extrovert, I love that my work is fundamentally focused on connecting with people. Many of the situations we face in HR can be sensitive or overwhelming, so being able to offer levity and support to colleagues is incredibly gratifying. No matter the size of the company, working in HR presents an opportunity to truly get to know every team member, and better understand how everyone fits into the business.
HR can also be a tough sector to work in, and it can be lonely to provide a listening ear for so many people while also maintaining strict confidentiality. Our conversations often revolve around mentally draining topics, which can be extremely tiring. At the same time, supporting people through these situations is deeply rewarding.
Over the years, I’ve learned a lot about balancing what is right for the employee and what is right for the business. Having access to significant information that’s often deemed confidential or sensitive can be a bit isolating. Finding HR communities and connecting with others who share the same responsibilities early on in your career/role is important, as these connections can provide a professional and confidential outlet for common pressures.
It sounds like through your experience you really care about people, and you want to help them feel safe and comfortable, which is important in the industry. Please elaborate here.
I owe so much of my ability to provide safety and comfort for others as an HR professional to those who have provided the same to me throughout my career. Earlier in my career, when I was working in the electric utilities space, I was often the only woman in the room. This could create a sense of exclusion, but I’ve been fortunate to have many wonderful mentors—many of whom are male— recognize my potential and help foster my career growth. They encouraged speaking up by creating an environment in which everyone’s successes were celebrated, and mistakes were framed as learning opportunities. In doing so, they modeled the kind of environment I now work to create: nurturing diversity of thought and allowing employees to feel safe and confident in their ideas and decisions. I’m grateful for the opportunity to pay it forward through my work today.
How can HR most effectively demonstrate its value to the leadership team?
Research consistently shows that more diverse teams, made up of people who feel confident and safe, are more successful. HR helps create that environment—and then it’s all about tying those results back to the business in a way that leaders can see clearly, with direct connections to the product.
We can collaborate with leadership to create roles, teams, and an overarching company structure and organizational design that reflect the needs of both our employees and our customers. If there are gaps internally around certain skills or functions, we can leverage technology and shift team members’ responsibilities and training to meet needs without creating gaps elsewhere. This helps create a more effective team and product.
This is also part of why I’m such a proponent of facilitating career changes internally. Companies invest so much in employees. Helping a person evolve while remaining under your organization’s umbrella means you get continuing, tangible returns on that investment. So many core competencies are transferable across the business, and it’s often more economical to transfer employees within than to hire externally. Providing these kinds of insights and following through with action tailored to the needs of the company and product demonstrate HR’s value to leadership.
Where do you see the industry heading in five years? Or are you seeing any current trends?
We’re hearing a lot about the transformative effect that artificial intelligence will have on all sectors, and I’m excited about the possibilities it holds for HR. Recently we were able to leverage an AI tool in the creation of multiple policies for a new office we’re opening in India. Streamlining the more basic facets of the task with automated outlining made it possible to focus attention and care where it was needed most.
We’ve also added a chatbot feature utilizing AI to our employee portal. It has access to our benefits guide and can help answer employee questions, and our aim is to have it eventually lead employee training as well. As automation evolves and becomes more sophisticated, HR teams will be able to offload manual workloads onto AI so that they can focus on more rewarding and skilled work, and employees will be able to solve their own problems more quickly. Ideally, this will improve efficiency and employee experience across the board.
In terms of trends, the use of surveys is becoming much more sophisticated and standardized. By ingraining data-gathering into our processes and using AI tools to parse responses for common themes, we’re able to implement timely, meaningful changes based on employee feedback.
What are you most proud of?
I’m very proud of my transition from a career focus on learning and development, to holistic HR leadership. It meant a lot to me when Jeannine and the leadership at Brandwatch saw and nurtured my potential by elevating and expanding my role. I had to hit the ground running and quickly create a comprehensive people strategy for the business. Knowing I truly had the tools to succeed while taking on a challenge like that and ultimately boosting the company’s image was very rewarding.
I’m also so proud of my work at InvoiceCloud since I joined in May. We’re opening our first international office in India—through our own legal entity rather than a third party—while also building out our team in the United States. There has been a lot of change, and I think our employees are really starting to see the larger plan coalesce.
Do you have any advice for people entering the profession?
HR is such a broad space. Focusing on getting in as a generalist and hanging your shingle early in your career, while also remaining curious about more specific opportunities, is a great way to start. You can shift your niche as you learn more and figure out what you’re passionate about, and then really focus on pursuing opportunities in that niche. Don’t be afraid to follow your passion.
Once you’re working with a specific business, take the time to understand the product or service, how the company is run, and where revenue comes from. There are so many career paths that dovetail with HR, like project management, operations, and consulting. Having a comprehensive understanding of the environment you’re working in will equip you to identify and pursue those opportunities as they arise and build meaningful partnerships with the business leaders.
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