Latest / Chief Officer / Andrea Cooper, Chief Officer at Talkspace: Surround Yourself With People Smarter Than You

Transcript

Andrea Cooper, Chief Officer at Talkspace: Surround Yourself With People Smarter Than You · Chief Officer

• 0:00
  Hi, Andrea. How are you? Good. Thanks, Tiffany. Thanks for having me. I'm so
• 0:04
  delighted to have you and super excited for everyone to hear your story. I
• 0:09
  just find it such a delight to talk with you each time. So really excited
• 0:14
  for this. Thank you. Me too. I'm excited to just have the conversation. You
• 0:19
  are such a--
• 0:20
  I don't know, like a good, like somebody to look up to a model of like
• 0:23
  entrepreneurial ambition and success. It's so cool. Thank you, Andrea. And,
• 0:28
  you know, I wish everyone could see you right now. My favorite joke to
• 0:31
  Andrea is to say to her that she looks exactly like Zooey Deschanel. So if
• 0:36
  you're not watching, you're only listening, you're missing out because you
• 0:40
  would see on screen she looks like. Well, I object to that assessment, but
• 0:44
  I'm also flattered. So thank you.
• 0:46
  Wonderful. I'm excited to get to hear your story. So I think I'm excited to
• 0:50
  just hear from you about your incredible journey prior to your Chief Officer
• 0:54
  role. And then of course we'll dive into that role itself shortly, but
• 0:58
  excited to hear about where you grew up and how you grew up and the journey
• 1:02
  that you undertook before that Chief Officer role.
• 1:05
  Yeah thank you so it's funny i was in a conference about a week ago and i
• 1:09
  knew we're gonna have this conversation something that conference really
• 1:13
  struck with, or stuck with, me which is people were talking about their
• 1:17
  origin story and they were talking about in terms of corporate origin.
• 1:21
  And it really resonated with me so I was thinking about like my origin story
• 1:25
  I grew up in a small town in Kentucky and a very religious you know pretty
• 1:30
  religious family but you know also a big family I have four siblings and
• 1:35
  didn't grow up with a whole lot of financial means and so I don't recall my
• 1:40
  parents really ever talking about work.
• 1:42
  My dad was a salesman, my mom stayed home and took care of us. And so I
• 1:46
  never really knew like what corporate was. I wouldn't have even known the
• 1:51
  words human resources. Like that would have been like completely unheard of
• 1:55
  concept to me. And so when I started at Walmart when I was 19 and I was a
• 1:59
  full-time student at the University of Kentucky at that time and I was going
• 2:04
  to be a social worker. I was super excited.
• 2:06
  And I think I shared with you before Tiffany that my store manager came to
• 2:11
  me. And at this point I was like a front end supervisor. So, you know, I
• 2:15
  supervised the cashiers and I don't know what I made, but call it like
• 2:19
  probably five 25 an hour is my guess. And that's $5.25 just for clarity. And
• 2:24
  I was talking to my store manager and reminding him that I needed to go part
• 2:28
  time for my practicum in my degree program.
• 2:31
  And he asked me, he said, "How much are you gonna make when you get out of
• 2:36
  college?" And I was like, "Probably 16, $17,000 a year." And just for those
• 2:41
  listening, if you can't see me and realize my age, this was in the mid-90s.
• 2:46
  So many, many years ago.
• 2:47
  But he said to me he said well did you know if you decided to do the
• 2:51
  management training program at walmart and became an assistant manager you
• 2:55
  can make like thirty thousand dollars a year. And i just will never forget
• 2:59
  that moment i was like i said i think i was twenty at that point and i've
• 3:03
  been working walmart probably year ish.
• 3:05
  And i went home call my mom and just was gushing about can you imagine what
• 3:09
  it would be like if i made thirty thousand dollars a year i was salary like
• 3:14
  i wasn't like.
• 3:15
  you know, counting on every hour and doing the math and thinking about how
• 3:19
  well I get gas, how I'll pay my rent, how I'll pay my tuition. Like all of
• 3:23
  that goes away. I'm making $30,000 a year. I'm like, set. And my mom being
• 3:27
  the loving, practical mother that she is, she said, you know, I support
• 3:30
  whatever you think is best for you. I'm excited if you're excited. And also,
• 3:34
  and you know what she shared is in her experience, we adjust our lifestyle
• 3:38
  to match our income or our means.
• 3:40
  And I was like, oh my gosh, I'm going to be fine. That's so much money.
• 3:44
  Don't even worry about it. So I proceeded to quit school, became an
• 3:48
  assistant manager trainee, did the whole training program. And I was an
• 3:52
  assistant manager for a few years and it was hard. I'm not going to lie. It
• 3:56
  was very different than the life I had imagined for myself as a school
• 3:59
  social worker. I was like,
• 4:01
  carrying out muzzleloaders from the sporting goods department. I was mixing
• 4:05
  paint, I was working overnights, unloading trucks. It was just really hard
• 4:10
  physically and mentally and just so different than how I had imagined my
• 4:14
  professional life to be. And I remember there was moments that I definitely
• 4:18
  thought, yeah, my mom was right. I have a car payment now, I have a nicer
• 4:22
  place to live with higher rent now. It all kind of changed in that way.
• 4:27
  But anyway, so I went to this training program and it was for leaders at
• 4:31
  Walmart and I remember it was just I don't remember exactly the content
• 4:35
  other than it was like leadership development and it was in the training
• 4:39
  room in our store. And after that I was like, okay, I want that guy's job.
• 4:43
  And suddenly I could see a path for myself, right? Like it wasn't like,
• 4:47
  I knew that being a retail manager long term just wasn't going to be the
• 4:52
  right fit for me, but I also didn't want to feel like I had made a mistake
• 4:56
  and I didn't know how to restart. And so seeing that person training others,
• 5:00
  investing in others, and really connecting with people really like gave me
• 5:04
  hope. And so kind of fast forward a couple of years later, I was able to
• 5:09
  pursue a trainer job.
• 5:10
  And that was like my first foray into HR. And again, I probably still didn't
• 5:14
  know the term HR because at Walmart, we just called it the people team.
• 5:19
  And I didn't know human resources was a thing. But I knew I wanted that job.
• 5:23
  And I moved from Kentucky to North Carolina to be a regional trainer for
• 5:28
  other managers. And that just really kind of began
• 5:31
  my true enjoyment and joy in working in HR. Through the years, I was
• 5:36
  with Walmart about 20 years. >> 20 years, wow. >> Yeah. >> You
• 5:40
  would rise throughout your time at Walmart? >> Yeah. I was that
• 5:45
  trainer role, the step out of being a retail assistant manager. By the
• 5:50
  time I left, I was the Senior Director of HR.
• 5:53
  And I did different roles. I would say probably the biggest roles in scope.
• 5:58
  I was the head of HR for the health and wellness division. So that's like
• 6:03
  the pharmacists, the vision centers, you know, and that's that part of
• 6:07
  Walmart. So, you know, I don't know, 50,000 plus employees in that space.
• 6:12
  And then I would say the most complex opportunity I had
• 6:16
  at Walmart was in global procurement or like the global sourcing
• 6:20
  division. That was an opportunity to build a division that didn't
• 6:25
  exist at Walmart and to then hire and develop people across, gosh, I
• 6:29
  don't even know, we were like 25ish countries at the time. And so like
• 6:34
  those are just two like of my favorite experiences.
• 6:38
  And then the last role that I had at Walmart, I was a leader in the
• 6:41
  diversity and inclusion area. And I know it's not something we hear a lot
• 6:45
  about right now, right? This inclusion and belonging. - They'll come back
• 6:49
  probably in some way. - It will, it will. And to be honest, I'm not
• 6:53
  convinced it's gone. I just think it's gone underground because it matters,
• 6:57
  right? It matters. So to do a job like that where it's truly all about
• 7:00
  inclusion and belonging and...
• 7:02
  Thinking about the benefit of diverse talent and what that means to the org.
• 7:06
  It was a good note to leave on right like after all those years with walmart
• 7:10
  Yeah, and I would say the other thing that I found I loved during that 20
• 7:15
  years. I really love leading teams
• 7:16
  It was really fun right to lead you know i mean i would say you know
• 7:20
  sometimes they were small teams but sometimes they were global team
• 7:23
  sometimes are bigger teams but no matter the scope or the number of people
• 7:27
  it was just so much fun. There was this cultural value i picked up on early
• 7:31
  days at walmart and i don't even remember the leader who said it but that
• 7:35
  you should surround yourself by people that are smarter than you better than
• 7:39
  you more you know like just more capable than you.
• 7:41
  And I took that like sincerely to heart. And now fast forward to
• 7:46
  Talkspace, like never has it better been illustrated in my career than
• 7:50
  that. Like I have the most like intelligent, creative, like scrappy team.
• 7:55
  And they're always smarter than me. And I feel like really grateful for
• 8:00
  that. So yeah, so leading is definitely one of my favorite parts of HR. -
• 8:05
  That's amazing. I, just to...
• 8:07
  to chime in on what you just said. I think about that a lot about how people
• 8:11
  share, there's that popular quote that like you're the average of the five
• 8:15
  people you hang out with. - Oh yeah. - So I always think about that like,
• 8:18
  oh, who are my five? And am I the average of them? I think so. - Yeah,
• 8:22
  they're raising my average. Like I feel like, you know, like again, when you
• 8:26
  surround yourself with like really smart, creative, resourceful people, like
• 8:30
  it's just, it makes you better.
• 8:31
  Yeah, absolutely. I do have a question about your Walmart days. When you
• 8:35
  were training people, was the opportunity given to you or did you have to go
• 8:39
  after the opportunity to move into corporate? That's a great question. It
• 8:42
  wasn't just given, no. It was definitely something I had to, you know, in a
• 8:46
  big company, you have to learn to kind of figure out like how do you get
• 8:49
  information. And it took a little time, right? Like I said, it probably took
• 8:53
  a couple years of me being an assistant manager in different stores and then
• 8:57
  asking and kind of like I don't remember if it was my district manager I
• 9:01
  don't recall like how I finally figured out. Walmart has a really strong
• 9:05
  culture of internal opportunity and internal promotion. And so they post all
• 9:09
  their openings. So I would have been looking at the intranet and finding
• 9:13
  that opportunity that led to the interviews that ultimately so yeah it
• 9:17
  definitely wasn't given it took some some like resourcefulness on my part to
• 9:21
  figure it out.
• 9:22
  But i will say that in that twenty years probably every two to three on
• 9:26
  average i was moving into different role often up but sometimes across as
• 9:30
  well right just to kind of continue to build out like the areas of passion i
• 9:35
  had with an hr talent diversity you know like and then obviously just kind
• 9:39
  of that business partner space.
• 9:41
  Yeah, but I think that you had to pursue it, but it wasn't
• 9:46
  too hard because there was an openness and an invitation
• 9:51
  to continue to try new things. Amazing. Were you
• 9:55
  somewhere in between Talkspace and Walmart? Yeah. Let's
• 10:00
  see.
• 10:00
  I left in 2015 and as much as I learned and grew in those 20 years,
• 10:05
  I would say that in the 11 years since I've left, I've grown so much
• 10:10
  more. I think that's just the diversity of experiences that I've
• 10:14
  navigated. I left Walmart, I went to work for an Amazon subsidiary
• 10:19
  in Madison, Wisconsin, which is where I am. We love it here.
• 10:24
  and after i left amazon decided to work for myself and doing that for about
• 10:29
  three and a half years and i'm just gonna say being a corporate girl like my
• 10:33
  whole adult life and i'm. Stepping away from like a regular paycheck took a
• 10:38
  ton of nerve on my part was not like natural but once i got into it.
• 10:43
  It felt so energizing and I met some of like amazing people like different
• 10:47
  entrepreneurs and different consultants and you know like I realized that
• 10:51
  all those years of like diverse experience let me say yes to a lot of
• 10:55
  projects from a consulting perspective so I could kind of continue to be
• 11:00
  scrappy and you know get business and it was really fun really hard I'm not
• 11:04
  gonna I'm not trying to sugarcoat that I was like oh I was amazingly
• 11:08
  successful
• 11:09
  I never had any struggles, like no. But I learned about myself and I
• 11:12
  realized like, I think I had been carrying this like fear of getting like,
• 11:16
  what if I got fired? Like if somebody ever said that, and especially in a
• 11:20
  big corporate, you do a lot of RIFs, a lot of layoffs over the years. And
• 11:24
  you know, I often was in charge of like executing on those things. And so I
• 11:28
  always had carried this like, oh my gosh, what if that happened to me? And I
• 11:32
  think that working for myself those years,
• 11:34
  took away most of that fear. It's like, if it happens, I'll be fine. I have,
• 11:39
  I can, I can figure this out. Yeah. Yeah. That's such a blessing that I have
• 11:44
  figured that out. I love that. Um, I actually rarely hear someone else
• 11:48
  outside of my own family talk about that. Really? Yes, it's such a, it's so
• 11:52
  wonderful to hear you talk about it. It just reminds me how my own father
• 11:57
  Growing up part of why we kind of had entrepreneurship instilled in us as
• 12:02
  children across our my family was because my father used to always talk
• 12:06
  about that like in corporate America and how there's always this trust you
• 12:11
  had to put into others that really maybe wasn't well deserved necessarily
• 12:15
  and that
• 12:16
  you know, the person you could most trust was in yourself. And so therefore,
• 12:20
  that's why he always like vouched and advocated for entrepreneurship. You're
• 12:25
  lucky. You're lucky. Your origin story in that way is so amazing, because I
• 12:29
  didn't know that right. And I and I grew up like kind of in all these
• 12:33
  systems, right? Like, I mean, whether it's public school, whether it's
• 12:37
  church, whether it's work, you know, you kind of, you know, you
• 12:40
  Abdicate some of that ownership right you you follow the rules you accept
• 12:44
  that this is the reality and and it was terrifying to me to think that that
• 12:48
  wasn't gonna be the case. But it also you know like going through it made me
• 12:52
  realize like okay i had you know i have three kids there were you know
• 12:55
  school age like elementary then i was like ooh, this is really hard to
• 12:59
  balance all this and so when opportunity came to be back in a corporate
• 13:03
  setting it felt strategically smart.
• 13:05
  It felt like an opportunity to lead a team again, which I really missed.
• 13:09
  But I will never forget that that's an option for me, right? And I don't
• 13:13
  know at what point in my career I will go, you know, that entrepreneurial
• 13:17
  spirit, I think when you have it, it doesn't just like go away. So yeah,
• 13:21
  you're really lucky that you had that learning early in your life. And I'm
• 13:25
  really glad I got it eventually. - Yeah, and it probably makes you a better
• 13:29
  leader now today in corporate, like you said, you know, because now you
• 13:33
  don't have that potential kind of,
• 13:35
  Subconscious underlying fear or anything like that everything you do is for
• 13:39
  the betterment of whatever you're doing because you have that feeling of
• 13:43
  freedom probably that you can always rely on yourself if needed. That's a
• 13:47
  good way to say it. I think you're right. Like I've said to friends before
• 13:51
  that like.
• 13:51
  I can't zip up my corporate suit anymore, like, like metaphorical suit, not
• 13:55
  real suit, right? I'm definitely not wearing heels or suit anymore, but
• 13:59
  like, it doesn't fit me anymore. And there's times that I try, right?
• 14:02
  Because I know I should in a certain setting, but it just, it feels so, it
• 14:06
  just doesn't fit me anymore. And I think it's what you just said. It's
• 14:10
  because I want to do things for the reasons that align with my values and
• 14:14
  that make employee experience better and support my team.
• 14:17
  But I'm not necessarily motivated or inspired by like do it because this is
• 14:21
  the way it's done or this is what you're supposed to do to get by and
• 14:26
  succeed in a corporate culture. Exactly. No, absolutely. And so was then
• 14:30
  after your entrepreneurial journey, then that the time that you got the
• 14:34
  phone call to join Talkspace and how did that happen? Like, where you know,
• 14:39
  Chief Officer, was there a role before Chief Officer?
• 14:42
  Yeah, sorry to interrupt you. Yeah. So there was one job in between. So I
• 14:46
  worked for myself and then in doing that work and being on panels and
• 14:49
  speaking, I made some good contacts. And there's an organization here in
• 14:53
  Madison, financial services insurance organization, and they were looking to
• 14:57
  create like a leader for their talent function. And that was like recruiting
• 15:01
  and succession planning and leadership development.
• 15:03
  Their CEO was retiring in a couple years so it was really fun opportunity to
• 15:07
  really say like what's the plan for the future of the org. So I did that
• 15:11
  actually that's where I was when I got the phone call.
• 15:13
  And candidly, it was just one of those random phone calls. I think the
• 15:17
  recruiter maybe started with a message on LinkedIn and then I replied and I
• 15:21
  did a little research on Talkspace. I listened to a lot of podcasts, so I
• 15:26
  definitely was familiar with Talkspace. And it was just, it felt like this
• 15:30
  kind of, and I think I shared this with you before, it felt like this full
• 15:34
  circle moment.
• 15:35
  It was like, okay, here I was as 19 year old social work major barely
• 15:39
  getting by, but I really loved where the work of social work. I love that
• 15:42
  impact that makes. And then to be able to have an opportunity all these
• 15:46
  years later to be leading the people function for a mental health company is
• 15:50
  just, it's like the dream, right? Like it's, you know, being able to do work
• 15:55
  that really matters.
• 15:56
  beyond just the nice to work with people stuff, but like the stuff that
• 16:00
  really people's lives are getting better has been really fun. I don't know
• 16:04
  candidly, like why that recruiter thought that, hey, Andrea might be the
• 16:08
  right fit. I think probably it's a combination, right, of the Walmart
• 16:12
  experience and some of the kind of all the things we've just talked about,
• 16:16
  right, that
• 16:16
  I could probably navigate a scrappier health tech company and would be able
• 16:21
  to be successful there even if a lot of my time had been in a very large
• 16:25
  Fortune 500 company. I appreciate that recruiter. Not every recruiter would
• 16:30
  think that. >> Yeah, I appreciate that recruiter as well. I do see it as
• 16:34
  obviously Mogul as executive recruitment amongst other things that we
• 16:38
  support on. Your background is the perfect melding for
• 16:41
  for making you the right leader for Talkspace and full circle moment for me.
• 16:45
  Actually, I should share with listeners today.
• 16:48
  It's really fun to become friends with Andrea because actually earliest
• 16:53
  days of Mogul were spent in the same headquarters building as
• 16:57
  Talkspace. They were our neighbor and we were the two kind of, a decade
• 17:02
  and a half ago startups that were taking off across the floor. And so
• 17:07
  it's really fun and full circle to be friends with Andrea now who leads
• 17:12
  Talkspace. So yeah, excited.
• 17:14
  And so what was that moment like when you got that phone call that you were
• 17:18
  the one selected, that you were going to be able to join as the chief
• 17:22
  officer? Who did you call? What was that moment like? Oh, yeah. That's it. I
• 17:27
  haven't thought about that for a while. It was exciting. I mean, I think
• 17:31
  that's probably like the-- I was also super nervous because I wasn't sure,
• 17:35
  can I really do this job? Would I be able to be successful in this role?
• 17:40
  going back to my Walmart story, of course, the first person I call is my
• 17:43
  mom. And you know, we talk it out. And that always makes me feel grounded
• 17:47
  and calm and like I can do this. Yeah, and and you know, then be able to
• 17:51
  share with friends, I would say that a number of my friends as they found
• 17:55
  out were like, Yeah, this makes sense. Like this, this aligns with you. And
• 17:59
  so that was a huge compliment to me to that people would feel that
• 18:03
  those kind of values of Talkspace in my personal values would go well
• 18:07
  together. I love that and so what was your first week like? Oh, it wasn't
• 18:11
  easy. it wasn't like i make it sound like sunshine rainbows right now but
• 18:15
  like the reality is the business was struggling at that point right i mean
• 18:19
  the company was public.
• 18:20
  had been in the last year-ish. I don't remember exactly because it just
• 18:25
  gone public pretty recent when I joined in 2022. And business was not
• 18:30
  great or not meeting plan. I shouldn't say was bad, but it was a growth
• 18:35
  mode. We were really stretching kind of that post COVID world of how
• 18:40
  employers were thinking about.
• 18:42
  providing you know mental health benefits their employees with shifting and
• 18:46
  our stock price was declining so like there was a lot of really tough things
• 18:51
  you know within my first two months we had to do a pretty significant
• 18:55
  reduction in force which i didn't know was going to be on the path so soon
• 19:00
  but all that to say like
• 19:01
  There is something very satisfying and meaningful when you get through
• 19:06
  those really rough moments with, you know, with my peers, you're now my
• 19:11
  friends, you know, my colleagues and
• 19:13
  we see it on the other side right we get through we we fight hard you know
• 19:18
  we really kind of fight hard for the business and to see the outcome of that
• 19:22
  has been really good but it wasn't it wasn't all sunshine rainbows the first
• 19:27
  week or two or a couple months candidly and you let it to rainbows and
• 19:32
  sunshine maybe right like now you've gone through an incredible exit and
• 19:36
  and you're an exciting moment of the company journey. - True, that's really
• 19:40
  true. Yeah, and it's really fun to see that, right? And what, selfishly,
• 19:43
  what a great experience as an HR leader to be able to go through that
• 19:47
  learning curve, 'cause it is a learning curve. I'm learning a lot and now
• 19:51
  being part of a large public company, it's a different full circle moment,
• 19:54
  right? Like I'm kind of being back in that space and lots of learning, lots
• 19:58
  of personal and professional growth, and I'm really grateful for that.
• 20:02
  And is there anything you're excited about in the years
• 20:07
  ahead for AI future of work? Oh, definitely. Like I would
• 20:12
  say we have a new AI tool called Tee and
• 20:15
  It's funny that you know Gil from your days back, our chief technology
• 20:19
  officer, and he and his team have built a new AI tool, and it's just really
• 20:24
  exciting. It's that opportunity for people to have touch points in between
• 20:29
  their therapy, or maybe to be able to have an entry point before they're
• 20:33
  ready for therapy. And just seeing that tool, and it is all supervised by
• 20:37
  our clinician, so kind of having real humans
• 20:40
  that are licensed therapists, part of that tool, I think is really exciting.
• 20:44
  And it's, again, it's exciting because it's another opportunity for people
• 20:48
  to be able to get help for themselves, get support for themselves in the way
• 20:52
  they're ready. So yeah, yeah, lots of exciting stuff. Like it's never a dull
• 20:56
  moment around here. Amazing. And what's your final advice for someone who's
• 21:00
  looking to follow in your footsteps and become a chief officer themselves
• 21:04
  one day?
• 21:05
  Thanks Tiffany. Well, I would say don't follow my footsteps. I would say
• 21:08
  follow, you know, figure out your own path. And I don't mean that in a
• 21:12
  cliche silly way, but like truly, I think I spent a lot of my career early
• 21:15
  in my HR career trying to follow and trying to find like, okay, how do you
• 21:19
  do this? How what's the next step? And ultimately, what I've come to believe
• 21:23
  is like finding what aligned with my personal values and my professional
• 21:27
  aspirations meant I had to chart my own course, right? You know, like figure
• 21:30
  it out and
• 21:31
  So I would say the advice I would give is really the people you surround
• 21:35
  yourself with makes all the difference. You know, and it doesn't need to
• 21:38
  just be people that you like are mentoring you, it's some of that. It can
• 21:42
  also be people that are early in their career and reporting to you like that
• 21:46
  whole like ecosystem of people that you surround yourself with makes you
• 21:50
  better if you let it and probably helps lead you to
• 21:53
  follow the path that is best suited to who you are as a person. I love that.
• 21:58
  And I feel like your journey beautifully exemplifies that. So thank you so
• 22:03
  much again for your incredible and inspiring story today. It was such a
• 22:07
  pleasure to talk to you as always. Always so much fun. And I feel like we
• 22:12
  resonate so much because of similar values and life paths.
• 22:16
  It's always a wonderful time. So thank you again, Andrea. Thank you so much
• 22:21
  for the opportunity.