How Companies Can Invest in Cultivating Leaders in a Dynamic World

BY Jessica Swenson | April 30, 2025

Cultivating a culture where all employees take a leadership role can help companies more easily navigate constant change. “It’s that concept of democratized leadership and really ensuring that everybody feels empowered to do that from their seats,” said Jyoti Mehra, executive vice president of human resources for industry-leading global biotech firm Gilead Sciences. 

In a fireside chat at From Day One’s Silicon Valley conference, moderated by Fortune’s contributing editor-at-large Michal LevRam, Mehra shared some ways that Gilead cultivates inclusive leadership across its ranks to keep the company nimble.

Part of Gilead’s cultural evolution over the last six years has included expanding its view of leadership, Mehra says. By acknowledging what has fueled the company’s success—high innovation and science—it identified two key focus areas for continued growth: first, its products and people drive innovation; and second, it wants to hold a high bar for science. While scientific development is critical to the process, Gilead seeks to lead in access, commercial delivery, and other business areas, offering an opportunity to reinvent how its medicines are delivered to patients.

In addition to its long-standing core values, Mehra says that Gilead codified universal leadership commitments across the entire workforce five years ago. These commitments are now embedded into the company’s culture, performance management systems, rewards programs, meetings, and leadership development. The goal is for each employee to aspire to and demonstrate the following statements in every aspect of their work: I am bold. I care. I trust. I own it. I listen. 

 Jyoti Mehra, executive vice president of human resources for Gilead Sciences, was interviewed during the fireside chat 

Despite a recent market trend of companies reversing their commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, Gilead’s “commitment to inclusion remains unwavering because it is a business imperative” said Mehra. The people and needs that Gilead serves are diverse. With a mission to create possibilities in healthcare outcomes for people and patients worldwide, the company does not see this pledge as an option but a requirement. Employee resource groups create and support inclusive benefit programs for their members. The company also continues to expand its definition of inclusion, Mehra says, to incorporate less visible elements of diversity like different abilities, thinking style, and functional experiences.

Another practice the company has put into place is a decision-making model that clarifies roles and responsibilities across decision-makers, advisors, and informed parties to drive high-speed, high-quality decision-making. Gilead emphasizes the role of the advisor, Mehra says, because the advisor has “a big responsibility to provide input into the decision maker.” In the course of making important business decisions, Gilead’s CEO has been known to ask everyone in a given meeting for their opinion, regardless of their functional area of expertise, ensuring that every voice counts.

To navigate ongoing market and industry shifts, Mehra says that change enablement needs to be grounded in the future direction of the business. This can be composed of external factors like changes in drug pricing, program funding outside the U.S., and industry-specific issues. It also includes support for diversification initiatives, like the recent expansion of Gilead’s product portfolio that required 25% growth in its workforce. 

Gilead does strategically embrace technology and AI to streamline complex processes like product development, clinical site selection, or data analysis, and drive efficiency where nuanced human judgment remains paramount. AI has helped the company analyze anticipated changes in the next 3–5 years to understand where existing skills and programs may need to be reimagined, says Mehra.

Transformation and diversification are two key themes that come forward as the company pursues its goal to develop the best products with the best people. To support these initiatives, Mehra says, Gilead has developed a specialized leadership development experience for their top 200 company leaders, and another high-impact experience that has been completed by 4,500+ leaders. “We believe that our leaders have a disproportionate impact on the culture, and that's why we have made these investments,” said Mehra. The company is already seeing early impacts of these trainings in how their leaders are exhibiting the company’s leadership commitments and navigating current business challenges with their teams.

Jessica Swenson is a freelance writer based in the Midwest. Learn more about her at jmswensonllc.com.

(Photos by David Coe for From Day One)

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How Microsoft Innovates: An Inside Look at the Culture Behind Some of the Biggest Breakthroughs

Contrary to popular belief, “innovation” is not synonymous with “invention.” Instead, innovation is all the hard work that comes after invention to bring that idea to life. Tech giant Microsoft has long thrived on this energetic cultivation.  Two veteran Microsoft engineers and entrepreneurs are offering a rare inside look at how one of the world’s most influential companies unlocks human creativity and collaboration. JoAnn Garbin, former director of Innovations at Microsoft and now founding partner of Regenerous Labs, and Dean Carignan, partner program manager in the Office of the Chief Scientist at Microsoft, co-authored The Insider’s Guide to Innovation at Microsoft. In a fireside chat at From Day One’s Seattle conference, they shared key lessons for anyone looking to thrive in an era defined by rapid change and innovation.The Joy of Innovation Despite living in unusual times, with the future of work seemingly powered by AI, Garbin and Carignan found throughlines about innovation that can help workers across a variety of eras and job descriptions. “We felt like there were core lessons that transcend time and technology and industry and role. It doesn’t matter if you’re in HR or in engineering or research, there are practices that everybody could benefit from,” Garbin said. One of these universal truths they discovered about innovation is team dynamics. “We discovered this incredible joy and collegiality in the teams that were innovating,” Carignan said. “And so that was our motivation: to make people better innovators so they could be productive, but also so they could be happier.” Innovation, Garbin says, is a fundamental human need. “We are builders. Since the dawn of humanity, we’ve been creating things. And up until the computer age, we were still creators and builders,” she said. But with today’s technological advances, we don’t all always get to participate in innovation in quite the same way. And whereas most businesses are “zero sum” and looking to be cost effective, Carignan says, innovators instead have a positive sum mentality in generating new and exciting things for their constituents.A Method to the Madness “Part of Microsoft’s secret sauce is that it has embraced innovation,” said moderator Cathy Duchamp, assistant managing editor at the Puget Sound Business Journal. And that innovation, the co-authors say, is “loopy.” Playing off the notion that tech creators may get pegged as “mad scientists,” they explored the loopiness of the innovation process. “There are all sorts of patterns in the innovation process itself that are iterative. You discover, you design, develop, you learn, you fail, you iterate,” Garbin said.But that’s not to say there is no structure in place. “There is a method to the madness. If there isn’t a method, you can’t teach it to people, and you can’t bring in new people and get them into the process effectively. So, you have to make it a structured, standard process,” Garbin said. Fortunately, the linear notion of work is highly familiar to those in the corporate world. HR leaders need to look for innovators who understand how to bridge the gap.“The best innovators that we found understood, ‘I’m in an environment that wants predictability and linearity. It’s my job to explain why things are going to be loopy and prepare the people I’m working with and anticipate when it might loop back and when it’s going to loop forward,’” Carignan said. “And so fitting innovation into a corporate structure, or any company structure, is hard and it requires a certain profile of person.”Building a Culture of Innovation Garbin and Carignan signed copies of their book for attendees Innovation cannot, and should not, be limited to creative or technological pursuits alone. “We found that the best innovators at Microsoft were thinking way beyond the technology,” Carignan said. “They would innovate their business model, their culture, their processes. And it’s that holistic approach to innovation that really leads to breakthroughs.” The co-authors call this systemic creativity “architectural innovation.” Carnigan shares an HR-specific example from Bing, Microsoft’s search engine. “Bing does the candidate-driven loop. They basically leave time in a recruiting loop for the candidate to reach out to people, connect, follow up, schedule a coffee, and they look at how [the candidates] use that time and whether they’re actually using it to learn, engage, and build relationships,” he said. “It’s a good indicator of whether or not they’re going to be innovative when they hire in.”Another Microsoft example: gaming arm Xbox hires for “culture adds” rather than “culture fits,” Carnigan said, acknowledging that each new hire will fundamentally change the organization’s DNA–and that’s OK. “Adding to it is way better than fitting into it,” he said. Xbox manages its culture the way it manages a product. “They say culture is something we need to proactively shape and create, so they have reviews, metrics, and targets. It's not as definable as a product, but they've invested in a team that takes it seriously and whose sole job is to think about where the culture is today and where we need to go with it,” Carnigan said.Best Practices for InnovationPeople are essential to innovation. In the innovation loop of “discover, design, develop,” the most successful organizations have people who take part in more than one part of the process. The co-authors identified different work personalities, such as pioneers, developers, settlers, and town planners. But a group’s ability to innovate is dependent, Carignan says, on another category: boundary crossers. “The discipline is different from the role,” Garbin said. “The trick is to connect all these people together.”  Failure is key to a healthy innovative process, Carignan says, citing Microsoft’s failure to jump on the search engine bandwagon fast enough, leaving room for Google to take the lead. Learning from those mistakes, the team has taken on an early adopter approach when it comes to AI, establishing themselves as leaders on the cutting edge. The co-authors also described the concept of “re-hiring the team” at Xbox when there is a major business or technological shift. “They map [the change] down to every individual job description, and managers are then charged with going and having the conversation: ‘How do the new requirements of the organization map to your interest, background, skills, and passions?’ The vast majority see this as an opportunity to learn and grow, and become even more connected to the organization because they’ve been re-hired,” Carignan said. Ultimately, we are all innovators. “Innovation is everywhere,” Duchamp said, in all departments and across all roles. “90% of the money invested in innovation goes to technology,” Garbin said. “But 90% of the value created comes from everything around the technology: the business model and the people systems. So, the companies that figure out [how] to innovate with everyone, and bring all the roles, all the disciplines, all the parts of the business together, they’re the ones that really achieve monumental success.”Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost and several printed essay collections, among others, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, On New Jersey, and CBS New York.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)

Katie Chambers April 29, 2025

Creating an Employee Experience That’s a Magnet for Today’s Workforce

According to a Gallup study, organizations that have a strategic plan for employee development saw an 11% increase in profitability and were twice as likely to retain employees. “One of the most important factors in creating a high-performance workplace is instilling a high-development culture,” the study said.Across industries, companies are always aiming to increase fulfillment and sparking new initiatives to develop an effective work culture.  During a panel at From Day One’s Silicon Valley conference, leaders discussed how their companies are driving engagement, what challenges their organizations face and how employers can create more trust.Driving Engagement Oracle is committed to a culture around a growth mindset and “building that throughout the vein of the organization,” said Sid Deka, vice president of human resources. The company encourages continuous learning and provides employees with a safe space to experiment and drive innovation.Deka adds that by offering learning opportunities for employees of all levels to grow increases the feeling of trust that is developed within the company. It’s important for people to have authentic conversations with managers to plan out ways to improve and explore options for more opportunities, he says.Velocity Global’s Chief HR Officer Carol MacKinlay ties fulfillment in her organization back to empathy. She points out that it's important to remember that the team is human and leaders must be mindful about ensuring their employees are having the best experience while they’re at work.As companies implement new initiatives, transparency at all levels is necessary, says Sid Nayar, vice president of HR strategy, operations, analytics and talent at Freshworks. He also called for the necessity to have business leaders to own company shifts and transformations so “the onus is also on them to cascade it down.”Subadhra Sriram, Independent Journalist, Workforce Expert, right, moderated the discussion MacKinlay says the company is also investing in the growth and development of employees while they are with them. “There may be people here who have career paths that are outside the company, and that's okay. So we're going to develop you. We’re going to grow you. We’re going to tell you what you’re doing well, we’re going to get you to the next place,” she said.Velocity calls these employees “boomerang employees.” Although they may leave the company, there is an incentive plan to bring them back. Challenges in ManagementFreshworks is the first India-based SaaS company that was started from a small city in India and has grown to be successful. Nayar says that because of the company’s background, many of its first employees came from humble beginnings but since the company completed its initial public offering the leadership has shifted. Now, all senior executives are in the United States.“Our biggest challenge is defining who we are now.” Nayar said. “It was a company that about 10 years ago, was the people who had a chip on their shoulder. They were not tier one at your school. They came from humble backgrounds, built this company and made this a global brand.”Freshworks is currently working on how to develop the sense of belonging and identity for those workers as the company has gone globally successful.Kelly McMahon, vice president of organizational effectiveness at Equinix, says accountability, in a sense of pushing for strategic thinking, is a struggle that the company is currently trying to manage. She believes that when employees become accustomed to merely completing day to day assigned tasks, it impedes the company’s pace of work.“I think what we’re trying to sort of engender is a little bit more of a risk tolerance around experimentation,” said McMahon. “Let's put out a perspective and see what the response is, versus trying to build consensus.”Larger companies such as Oracle are seeing challenges with managing and strategizing engagement for multigenerational, multicultural and multiregional employees. Deka says the work environment is three dimensional and pushes the company to think of how to best engage with a diverse group of people in various ways.“Simplicity is the ultimate form of sophistication,” said MacKinlay, a quote she once heard from Velocity’s CEO. She’s referring to the company’s pursuit to simplify communication between leadership and employees. MacKinlay says 90% of her job is spent on communication issues and addressing challenges around communication is best done through providing clear and concise ideas.Building TrustCompanies are seeing that investing in building leadership skills in frontline managers is important to ensuring that down the hierarchy, employees are feeling engaged and trust is being built.Velocity is currently holding roundtables with all employees in small groups to obtain actual feedback on the programs they are implementing. The employee success team is holding 20 sessions around the world with different groups in various languages. “What it does is build trust and it builds a bond to be able to have the faces of the people who can actually affect change for the employees,” said MacKinley. From these meetings, the company is learning about whether their offered benefits match employee needs and if there are any “glaring things that the company has missed,” she said.Velocity is also kicking off an initiative that encourages employees to give anonymous constructive criticism. The idea behind this is to give people a chance to have an outlet to report issues in the workplace and push for others around them to improve.McMahon emphasized the need to invest in employee experiences the same way that companies do for customers.“Organizations who do this really well, map the employee life cycle, prospect to alumni, and then within that say, what are the moments that matter and how are we going to invest in repeatable, scalable, predictable experiences for employees that you know are going to meet their needs,” said McMahon.Jennifer Yoshikoshi is a local news and education reporter based in the San Francisco Bay Area.(Photos by David Coe for From Day One)

Jennifer Yoshikoshi April 25, 2025

How Leaders Can Personalize Employee Recognition and Rewards

While data is a powerful tool for driving engagement, it’s most effective when paired with genuine human connection. Fleur Tang, vice president of human resources in biosciences at BD, highlighted the value of combining analytics with direct employee interactions to create a more complete picture of the workplace experience.“ In order to really understand associates’ needs, one big part is to really get quantitative feedback,” she said during a panel discussion at From Day One’s Silicon Valley conference. “But we are so very big on gemba—meaning that you go to where work happens.” By spending time with employees where they work, managers can uncover insights that surveys alone can’t provide.Employee expectations are shifting rapidly—so how can companies keep up? Has the role of recognition and rewards in the workplace ever been more vital and complex? Tang and four other panelists explored how companies can empower managers to lead with empathy, purpose, and personalization. Moderated by David Thigpen of UC Berkeley, the discussion illuminated the evolving responsibilities of today’s people leaders and offered actionable insights for organizations of all sizes.Recognition efforts, Tang says, must align with company culture and be rooted in purpose. “Let’s be clear about the behaviors we are trying to recognize. That should be absolutely aligned with the culture we are creating for the organization.” It’s not just about the reward—it’s about reinforcing the right behaviors and supporting long-term engagement and retention.Tang also emphasized the growing complexity of middle management. “I think middle-level people managers have the most difficult role nowadays,” she said. These managers must navigate top-down mandates while keeping their teams engaged and productive. That’s why BD has made a conscious effort to support mid-level leaders through initiatives like “second circle meetings,” where leaders one level below the executive team receive direct communication and context from the company president.Purpose, Recognition, and Well-BeingCertainly, effective recognition requires data—but not just from a single point in time, says panelist Florencia Porcaro, senior human resources director at Google.“Data is the guiding principle by which we make decisions,” she said. Google uses a variety of touchpoints—including annual, weekly, and initiative-specific surveys—to track the evolving needs of employees throughout their life cycle. “A single employee may have different needs at different times,” Porcaro noted, emphasizing the importance of understanding those shifts in order to personalize support.The panelists spoke about "Employee Recognition and Rewards: How Managers Can Be Empowered."That personalization takes many forms. For instance, Google’s annual benefits selection period allows employees to reassess their priorities and choose options that best match their current life stage. “It’s a moment to figure out what’s changing in my life, what I value more now,” Porcaro said. The company also offers funding to help make those choices more accessible, empowering employees to tailor their benefits in a way that supports well-being and engagement.Today’s managers face unprecedented challenges, from geopolitical shifts to navigating the AI era, all while being expected to coach, support, and scale teams effectively. Despite the growing demands, Porcaro noted that employees increasingly seek more than just monetary rewards—they want growth, fulfillment, and visibility.“We do things like design recognition programs tied to organizational OKRs,” she said. Top contributors have opportunities to present their work directly to vice presidents in open-floor sessions. “It creates experiences where employees feel seen, valued, and that their work is adding up to something bigger.”That sense of care and intentionality became even more evident during Covid, when Google rapidly mobilized to send Covid tests to employees’ homes. “That speaks loudly about a company thinking about the well-being and needs of a community.”Personalized ManagementWhat does employee recognition and rewards look like at a smaller company? Panelist Abhishek Budhraja, talent business partner (engineering) at Groq, says the company’s approach is to rely heavily on managers to meet each person’s unique needs.“Most people join startups because they believe in the mission—so the real magic happens when we align individual preferences, learning goals, and personal needs with the company’s direction,” he said.Budhraja emphasized the importance of recognizing employees as multi-faceted. “Take me—I’m a millennial, but also a parent and an immigrant. You can’t just look at one label and assume it tells the whole story. That’s why it’s in a company’s best interest to offer autonomy and flexibility, guided by empathetic managers who help individuals find what works best for them.”While tools and offerings have evolved, the fundamentals of good management remain the same. “Empathy, perceptiveness, and helping people feel connected to a greater purpose are still core,” he said. “Those are timeless.”He’s also seen how people’s choices can surprise you. “I’ve had employees turn down promotions because they weren’t right for their life stage. Or at Uber, we’d give two types of offers—one with more equity, one with more cash—and you couldn’t predict what people would choose. That’s why understanding where someone is coming from—and giving them a choice—is so critical.”The Affordability GapOne of the most persistent—and often misunderstood—challenges in employee benefits is the affordability gap: employees want to engage in benefit programs but simply can’t afford to participate.Panelist Aaron Shapiro, founder of Carver Edison, sees this gap firsthand in his work with companies of all sizes, from biotech startups to Fortune 500 firms.“A lot of times, lower-income employees get written off as not being interested in programs because they’re focused on other issues,” he said. “What we found in our data says that is not true at all.” Shapiro says participation drops when payroll deductions make programs inaccessible to those who need them most.This affordability barrier has a direct impact on retention. Many employees are seeking only modest increases in pay, but without support, even small gaps can lead to turnover.“Seventy-eight percent of people looking for a new job right now are primarily interested in just making more money,” Shapiro said, citing recent Federal Reserve data. “The answer was basically a 10% raise on average.” While that increase may not seem significant on an individual level, it adds up quickly for employers—and makes the case for more creative compensation strategies.Carver Edison addresses this gap through its product, Cashless Participation, which allows employees at public companies to join stock plans without upfront payroll deductions.“Last year that delivered about a seven-and-a-half percent raise to the average employee using our product,” Shapiro shared. “And what we found is that not only did 18-month retention rates go up by about 50%, but also click-through rates on simple things like emails were up 500%.” That kind of impact on both financial wellness and engagement shows what’s possible when companies think beyond the traditional benefits model.Customizing BenefitsAs companies work to improve employee engagement and retention, one truth remains clear: there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Customization is key.Panelist Jeff Hermosillo, northern California health solutions practice leader at Aon, emphasized that understanding employee needs starts with asking the right questions—and then placing the answers in context.“You survey, and you get as much information as you can,” he said. “But then you benchmark. Maybe you’re a tech company and want to know how you stack up. What your employees say matters, but context, comparing across companies or industries, helps you make sense of everything.”Aon’s employee sentiment study sheds light on generational preferences. “We tallied information across four generations and asked, ‘What are the most valued benefits?’” he said/ “Gen Z put health insurance first, followed by work-life balance, time off, career development, and retirement. Baby boomers, on the other hand, ranked retirement highest—and work-life balance came in fifth.”While preferences may differ, Hermosillo says there’s usually a shared core of value. “Even though baby boomers ranked health care third, they still care about it,” he said. “So you look to optimize the areas of common ground, then ideally provide some customization so people can choose what matters at their stage in life.”That personalization also extends to how rewards and recognition are delivered. “It’s like throwing a party—someone’s not going to like the meal or the venue,” Hermosillo said. “It’s the same thing with recognition programs. People have different preferences, and that’s okay. The key is understanding who you’re working with and having some flexibility.”Among the panelists, one thing was clear: the most effective recognition and rewards strategies are rooted in flexibility, empathy, and a deep understanding of employee needs. Whether it’s closing the affordability gap, personalizing benefits, or empowering middle managers with better tools and support, companies must move beyond one-size-fits-all solutions. By equipping managers to recognize their teams in ways that are timely, meaningful, and aligned with company values, organizations can foster a culture where employees feel truly seen, supported, and inspired to stay.Carrie Snider is a Phoenix-based journalist and marketing copywriter.(Photos by David Coe for From Day One)

Carrie Snider April 24, 2025