Becky Cantieri’s journey to the top of the HR world began, unexpectedly, on the sales floor of a Nordstrom department store. While pursuing her undergraduate and graduate degrees, Cantieri honed her skills in customer service, sales, and HR, laying the foundation for a career dedicated to creating exceptional employee experiences.
Her passion for helping people reach their full potential was ignited during her time recruiting and onboarding new employees at Nordstrom. The thrill of setting new hires up for success sparked a desire to delve deeper into the world of human resources.
From there, she progressed through her career at Yahoo and, ultimately, to her current position as Chief People Officer at SurveyMonkey. Today, she leads a team responsible for crafting exceptional experiences for both candidates and employees, while also overseeing real estate and facilities.
With over a decade of experience shaping corporate culture and driving employee engagement, Cantieri’s story is a reminder that even the most successful HR leaders often begin their journeys in unexpected places.
In our latest Faces, meet Becky Cantieri.
Who is/was your biggest influence in the industry?
There have been so many critical influencers in my career, starting with my parents who demonstrated a great work ethic. David Windley, who led the HR function while I was at Yahoo!, always recognized my potential and invited me into work that was beyond my comfort zone. The former CEO of SurveyMonkey, Dave Goldberg, tolerated me as an M&A rookie and gave me a shot at my first top job. He modeled for me the immense value of assembling diverse teams, caring deeply about people, and being an exceptional person, leader, and entrepreneur. Finally, my friend and guiding light, Lorna Bornstein, has modeled what a bad-ass female entrepreneur and leader looks like, and how to raise other female leaders up alongside you.
What’s your best mistake and what did you learn from it?
Wow–there have been many mistakes over the years and I’m sure there will be more! One that is burned in my memory is from my M&A days when I accidentally exposed confidential information. It was terrifying, unfortunate, and embarrassing. I tried to quit that day presuming I was a failure. Luckily, Dave (Goldberg) was understanding and sympathetic to how new I was in the role and the fact that I was learning. He kindly told me to get over it and get back to work as we had a lot to do. It will forever serve as both a reminder to be cautious with confidential information and as an example of how great leaders respond to mistakes.
What’s your favorite part about working in the industry? What’s your least favorite part, and how would you change it?
I love working for a beloved brand in technology, for a company whose product has fundamentally changed the way I operate as an HR leader, and with talented and inspiring colleagues that I learn from every day.
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.
Very much so. Employees can feel authenticity, and prioritizing people will always be paramount to helping them realize their full potential, which ultimately is a business benefit. My team’s goal is to help SurveyMonkey employees feel inspired, understood, and valued while cultivating a true sense of belonging for them and empowering them to do their most fulfilling and meaningful work. And while increased investment in AI has many benefits, I strongly believe that taking a people-first approach, especially in HR, is critical to achieving these goals.
How can HR most effectively demonstrate its value to the leadership team?
HR leaders are tasked with a massive goal: illuminating the company’s mission, vision, and strategy. That starts with prioritizing people (as I already mentioned) and fostering healthy, inclusive, and productive teams where individuals feel as important to company success as they truly are.
Recent years spent living, working, and leading companies through challenges like the global pandemic shone a light on the criticality of HR as an agent for change. Never has this role been more important than now, when we are tasked with adapting to rapidly changing expectations and influencing others to do the same. No function is better suited to take a leadership role in strategizing dynamic plans for such times than the one with a pulse on organizational talent.
As HR teams grow into our role as change agents, we are responsible for fostering a positive culture, growing trust, and amplifying employee voices in more authentic ways. This is a fundamental shift to a profession that was once misunderstood as primarily operational.
Where do you see the industry heading in five years? Or are you seeing any current trends?
I expect HR teams will continue rebuilding and reimagining culture and the employee experience across many types of distributed work environments. Corporate offices still play an important role, and I anticipate we’ll continue to see a variety of work environments in the future.
Gathering insights will continue to be important to a successful HR strategy, and HR teams will need to feel confident using data to make decisions. Similarly, AI will continue to change the way we work, and our goal is to keep people at the center of AI’s function within HR. It can be an invaluable differentiator, especially when paired with the “other” AI—authentic human input—which cannot be digitally produced.
I also anticipate leaders will continue focusing on executing a comprehensive, multi-year DEI strategy. The cultural landscape is always evolving, and building a flexible DEI plan driven by ongoing feedback allows us to accommodate that ongoing change. For example, the conversation around the inclusion of LGBTQIA+ experiences has grown significantly in recent years; our plans can (and should!) hold space for those conversations.
Ultimately, success in HR still centers on people, and it always should! It requires embracing new expectations, listening to understand, and finding creative and impactful ways to make employees feel essential to mutual success. People provide the critical insights needed to make business decisions and inspire new ideas. It’s up to HR leaders to ask, listen, and act to effectively illuminate the way forward.
I am most proud of the teams around me–my team, the broader team, current team members, and company alumni, alike. Each of these teams has solved hard problems, grown exponentially, and developed a resilience that I admire. They are what has made and continue to make the greatest impact on the SurveyMonkey business and culture, and on me, personally. I’m grateful for them and hope to have taught them even a fraction of what I have learned from being their teammate, colleague, and leader.
Do you have any advice for people entering the profession?
First, welcome! You are in for a wild ride. A few recommendations: Take a multi-disciplinary approach to your HR career, spending time in recruiting, total rewards, learning and development, and in a people partner role. Discover your strengths and lean into them. Always take on the hardest, most complex work that puts you outside your comfort zone–that is where you will experience exponential growth. Finally, listen more than you talk. You will learn about challenges, hear the best ideas, and nurture meaningful relationships that will be invaluable to you in making a lasting impact.
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