After seven years at Peoplesoft, Heidi left the HR tech giant at its height to co-found her own HR consultancy, Knowledge Infusion, with no consulting experience whatsoever and sold it to Appirio in 2012. In this Q&A, she describes how representation in the workplace is essential to cultivating innovation and why every leader should embrace their unique strengths early in their career.

In our newest Lieutenant’s Q&A we interview John Cowan, who is currently the VP of finance at the technology company Tile. We discuss his professional curiosity, why it’s important to make mistakes and learn from them, and how his "healthy sense of paranoia" and growth mindset has served him over the years.

Paula-Jo (PJ) Oleksak, the chief business officer at Slice, talks about her transition from finance to operations, how she builds successful teams by keeping things simple, and the need to empower people while allowing them to be full humans, especially in today’s world.

I had the privilege to work with Yamini Rangan, Chief Customer Officer at HubSpot, during our early days of Appirio, where she held multiple roles including a year stint as my head of development and Chief of Staff.

Earlier this month I had the privilege to moderate a panel on entrepreneurship for my alma mater Bates University and its Center for Purposeful Work.