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.

After a brief hiatus to focus on a few other endeavors, we're back with the latest installment of our Lieutenants Series. Hiral spent more than 14 years at one of the largest IT services firms on the planet where he led a $3B portfolio but wasn’t afraid to write himself into an active role on a customer contract or take career inspiration from a gym poster.