Why I Founded Lacey Lake Leadership - And Lessons Learned

International Women’s Day is especially important to me as the founder and managing partner of Lacey Lake Leadership. It’s also a day of reflection about where we’ve been and where we’re headed as a female-founded and led company.

My entire professional career has been driven by helping other people succeed regardless of the role I’ve held in a company. For much of the past decade, I’ve specialized in talent management. At organizations such as Spencer Stuart, Korn Ferry, and Allstate, I’ve taken pride in helping talented executives find rewarding positions in leading companies, while also improving the way businesses manage and grow their people.

But in 2020, everything changed.

The pandemic upended lives everywhere. Ways of working were disrupted overnight, including where we work and how we work. Suddenly our homes became our offices. Our personal and professional lives converged – a change that disproportionately impacted women and caregivers. As a result, something else happened: people wanted something more from their careers. Financial rewards and a promotion path were no longer enough. Now, employees wanted purpose and meaning. They took a very hard look at how well their employers aligned with their values – and how well their place of work helped them be their full selves. They didn’t always like what they saw. Many began to seek shared values and purpose elsewhere.

I saw an opportunity for the Human Capital function to play a more important role in responding to a collective need for purpose-driven people. Human Capital could also help companies find and develop people who could in turn help the business fulfill its corporate purpose beyond the profit motive. I examined how I might personally play a role in connecting people with purpose to unlock business potential.

I looked around me and saw a void that needed to be filled. So, I talked with some trusted advisors about the feasibility of launching a different kind of leadership advisory firm. Fast forward to June 2, 2021, and Lacey Lake Leadership was officially launched.

You learn a lot about yourself when you launch and run a company, and being a female founder adds additional perspective – specifically, the importance of flexibility, humility, and empowerment.

Balancing motherhood and running a fast-growing organization often means that I need to be flexible in my days and in balancing expectations of my team, clients, family, and myself. Some days this means bringing my 2-year-old son to the office, meeting with clients, and building office furniture between meetings. Embracing flexibility has shown me that perfect is the enemy of really good and that taking chances and pivoting quickly when things aren’t working out as expected can lead to greater outcomes.

I’ve also found that acknowledging what I know, and more importantly, what I don’t know about managing a business, has unveiled a wealth of knowledge around me if I ask for help. We all have strengths and we all make mistakes – owning where we are and working as a team is more important than getting it right the first time. Embracing humility has helped me to acknowledge when I need time and space for myself – and while I haven’t perfected it yet, this is something I continue to work on.

In alignment with these learnings, I encourage the team at Lacey Lake Leadership to bring their full selves to work. We embrace a come-as-you-are, all-hands-on-deck approach to growing the business and empowering our team. We know we can rely on each other when pulled in different directions, and I’m proud of our roll-up-your-sleeves culture.  

At Lacey Lake Leadership, we’ve quickly built a team of talented women and men who are united with a mission of bringing a purpose-driven approach to talent strategy, executive search, and human capital management to transform teams, cultures, and businesses. It’s the most exciting journey I’ve ever been on. Each day we challenge each other. How might we do a better job helping businesses redefine what a successful employee experience looks and feels like? How might we champion Human Capital as a transformational function? For us, success is not about designing a better employee engagement survey (although those tools are important). It’s about helping companies realize their full business potential and empowering their people to bring their full selves to work.

We’re building a culture that is focused on making the world better through shared purpose, one person and company at a time. We’ve already been helping women and men land more meaningful roles and companies respond to the seismic changes in the workforce happening now.

On International Women’s Day and every day, I encourage you to unlock your own potential through purpose.