Just off camera, Darcie Henry’s home office is dotted with her own paintings.
Darcie Henry
Permission granted by StackAdapt
The new chief people officer for StackAdapt, a multi-channel advertising platform, has no formal training in painting but grew up watching her mom create oil paintings of ghost towns from Minnesota, where Henry grew up.
“I just enjoy it. I’m hoping that people who look at my painting will treat me like I hope I treat people, which is allowing me to fail safely,” Henry said.
Henry joined StackAdapt in July, after working in various executive HR roles at tech companies like Amazon, Snap Inc. and Flexport.
This conversation was edited for clarity and length.
HR DIVE: What are your goals at the company?
DARCIE HENRY: A lot of people will say, “HR needs to be a business leader and start with business first.” But genuinely, I’ve been sitting here understanding what is going on in the business and where are we headed so we can develop our people plan and our strategy.
[Recently], we sat together with the people leadership team and identified the larger boulders that we’re going to go after, and a lot of it’s infrastructural. Because we’re scaling so fast, we need to make sure that we have the tools, systems, technology, people and philosophies all ready to go, and that everything can go as fast as we need it to. Right now, it’s getting that infrastructural layer set in the most elegant way, so that we can scale up business and deliver for the customers.
What changes have you seen in the HR industry?
The biggest thing I’ve seen is the need for adaptability. We need to understand what’s happening in our business, and then quickly understand what that means for our people, faster than I think we’ve ever had to.
I think that also means we need to understand deeply and be compassionate about our people so that we can help build their confidence and skills to grow and build in their roles. I think that that probably has always existed but never like it has in the last several years. All of the various major issues that have come up in the world at large have brought that to the forefront: just the ability to be so nimble and adapt with the business and help our people.
How do you do that?
Staying connected, for one. Making sure that we actually understand what’s happening with the workforce and identifying the biggest opportunities within your workforce. Don’t just follow trends. Don’t just know what’s the latest thing, but know what your business needs to deliver and what the people in your workforce need to do to deliver that. Finding those ways to unleash talent is probably the biggest way to stay connected and help the workforce really realize what they never thought was possible for themselves.
What’s your favorite thing to do outside of work?
I have so many things I love to do, but the thing that I do most is spend time with my family. I have three kids and a husband. They’re big tennis players, so I spend time on the tennis court. I play games with them, do homework and all that. And when I’m not doing that, I really love to read, I love to paint, I love to play piano, I love to learn languages, I like to exercise, things like that, but mostly kind of quiet things where I can hunker down and be quiet for a little bit.