Regina Bradley’s two-decade tenure at the Ad Council has been marked by her unwavering commitment to fostering a positive and supportive work environment. As Chief People Officer, she oversees a small but mighty team responsible for both People and Facilities operations.
Bradley’s expertise extends to a wide range of HR functions, including talent management, succession planning, change management, organizational and performance management, training and development, and compensation. She works closely with senior leaders to develop and implement strategies that align with the Ad Council’s mission and values.
Beyond her administrative responsibilities, Regina is passionate about building and maintaining a strong organizational culture. She focuses on optimizing the employee experience, ensuring that every team member feels valued, supported, and empowered to contribute to the Ad Council’s mission of educating, uniting, and uplifting.
In our latest Faces, meet Regina Bradley.
How did you get your start in the field?
It was my real fascination with people that led me to study psychology and eventually pursue a career in HR – I wanted to understand what makes people tick. My first role at Price Waterhouse Coopers gave me a glimpse into the benefits side of the industry and then I followed my curiosity to the advertising world at Bates Advertising. It was there that I found my footing in HR and learned the job by trial and error. I stepped into my boss’ role not long after I started, and spent those years focused on absorbing as much as I could through on the job training and learning from those around me. After five great years at Bates Advertising, I ultimately found my way to the Ad Council, and I’ve been here ever since.
Who is/was your biggest influence in the industry?
My journey through HR has been all about seeing a need and trying to find a solution more than following any one big influence. I have been inspired by people-oriented frameworks in the industry, like the approach of Claude Silver, Chief Heart Officer at VaynerMedia.
What’s your best mistake and what did you learn from it?
I would actually phrase this more as my best learning moment – my eyes wide open, my c-change. As we know 2020 was one of the most trying years for many in our field, both with COVID-19 and the racial reckoning that the country faced. At the Ad Council, it was a time when our staff truly spoke up about how they were feeling, where the organization wasn’t fully supporting them and clearly shared what change they wanted to see. It was difficult to hear at first, but this feedback led to a moment of change that needed to happen for us to evolve as an organization. For me personally, I see everything now through such a different lens and I have such a drive and intentional purpose for my role that is supercharged from this initially uncomfortable experience. I try to lead with curiosity and empathy before anything else. You have to see the person before you see the business. When you have this people-centered approach the result is a business that flourishes. We don’t always get it right on the first try but we keep refocusing, listening and continuing to do the work so this people-first approach becomes engrained our DNA.
What’s your favorite part about working in the industry? What’s your least favorite part, and how would you change it?
What is so special about the work I get to do in People Operations, specifically at the Ad Council, is helping to translate hard skills into social impact careers. We operate at the intersection of so many high-skill industries, and my team serves as that connecting piece that brings talented candidates from a wide variety of skills-based roles into purpose-driven work. Each day, we are lucky to play a role in empowering the best talent to make an impactful difference on some of the most pressing issues of our time. My favorite part of this job is helping people to see that their careers can make a meaningful difference.
I see opportunities for growth in how we can continue working with and learning from our colleagues in each of the different industries we touch. Even though the Ad Council is not a traditional advertising, media or tech agency, many of our staff come to us from those fields, among others. We’re lucky to be deeply entrenched in day-to-day work with leading organizations and talent from so many disciplines. We can learn a lot from each other, and I hope to continue looking for opportunities to strengthen that knowledge sharing across people operations teams in our network of great partners.
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.
People are absolutely at the core of everything my team and I do, and at the end of the day I want the Ad Council to be a place where people feel like they have flexibility, stability and safety. Throughout the entire employee life cycle, I’m always thinking about the development of our people. To do that well, you have to ask questions and really listen. I want to know, do our people feel they get to touch fulfilling work? Do they feel they have access to the people and things that will allow them to achieve their goals? My team does an incredible job of not just asking these questions consistently but listening beyond the surface to keep our staff’s best interests at heart. This is of course a cross-functional effort, working with each and every department at the Ad Council to ensure those support systems exist everywhere throughout the organization.
How can HR most effectively demonstrate its value to the leadership team?
In People Operations, we have to balance the needs of the business and the needs of the people who make the business possible, so demonstrating the value of HR to leadership is an important element of our job. I’m lucky to have a truly great leader in our president and CEO Lisa Sherman who understands the importance of a people-centric approach and empowers us to do that work.
We also don’t shy away from feedback. We conduct engagement surveys and stay interviews as helpful touch points to surface insights about the issues that matter to our employees. This allows leadership to focus our attention on those themes and continually improve the employee experience.
Where do you see the industry heading in five years? Or are you seeing any current trends?
This work is always changing, and keeping up with the industry requires evolution. What keeps me in this role is the ability to always try new approaches and not stay in old practices. I’ve evolved myself so many different times throughout my career because the workforce has changed and the way we focus on people has changed. The same is true for the industry, we must keep adjusting and trying new things. I hope we continue to prioritize the people-centric approach and keep finding new solutions to evolve what that looks like.
What are you most proud of?
I’m incredibly proud of the transparency that my team has built at the Ad Council over the years, especially through a few transformative projects we’ve rolled out recently. Together, we’ve implemented a new career development framework to provide equity and clarity into the criteria and competencies expected at each level of the organization. This process allows all employees to work collaboratively with their manager in identifying the skills and qualities necessary for their growth. To compliment this framework, we also developed a learning management system that provides employees with a direct learning path to help them achieve their advancement goals through on-demand courses. The system also streamlines internal and external training resources and provides new hires with an immersive onboarding experience. When you marry the two together, you see that the career development framework sets the direction of where you are while the learning management system provides you with the road to help you get where you want to be.
My team is also deeply dedicated to optimizing our employee experience at every stage of their journey. In addition to the career framework and learning management system, we’ve made strides in the last few years to update our recruitment and onboarding framework, clearly define salary bands for compensation transparency and increase feedback touchpoints through engagement surveys and “stay interviews,” which help us uncover what motivates our people to continue their time with the Ad Council. I take pride in the hard work of my team to bring each of these initiatives to life, all to ensure we’re providing our people with the best experience possible.
Do you have any advice for people entering the profession?
HR is really a service industry. We are charged with serving our staff in constant learning and development, supporting the key functions of the organization and ultimately helping to grow the business. Just like any service industry role, keeping that people-centric focus must be your north star. This was part of the inspiration for our team at the Ad Council to change the name of our department over the years from Human Resources to Talent and now, People Operations. You have to stay focused on the journey of your people, and naming that mission helps to keep their experience at the center of everything. Keep humans at the heart of what you do, and you will go far.
Anything else you’d like to add? We can talk about anything you’d like to discuss here.
While DEIB is formally a separate department at the Ad Council, our teams are closely integrated with the work we do and the goals we share. Almost all the initiatives we each spearhead almost always involve the other team. Our Chief Equity Officer, Elise James-DeCruise and I have a standing status each week so we can work in tandem to build community and strengthen the working experiences of the full organization. We are so close that when we do team bonding events, our two departments are always together. It’s a testament to the way we see the work we do and the ways we support the people. My advice is if these two teams are separate at your company, find ways to collaborate more. Start with even the smallest of initiatives. It’s surprising how big the effect can be when you join forces.
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