Jennifer Christie has built a career at the intersection of leadership, service, and transformation. From her time running presidential personnel in the White House to senior posts at American Express and Twitter, she’s now Chief People Officer at Docusign.
In this episode, Jennifer explains:
She also shares practical advice for interviewers: look past the résumé to understand motivations and transitions, not just bullet points.
Connect with Jennifer on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-christie-5254866
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[00:00:00] Jennifer Christie: Employees definitely can feel very nervous. They're excited about the technology, but at the same time, they're like, well, wait a minute. What does this mean for me? And it always comes down to that, right? At the end of the day, people you know wanna understand what does it mean for them?
[00:00:13] Dave Travers: So what does it really take for your business to attract world-class talent today?
I'm Dave Travers, President of ZipRecruiter, and on Talent All Stars, we shine a light on the people and the day-to-day processes behind recruitment and retention at some of the world's most influential businesses. Today's Talent All-Star is Jennifer Christie, Chief People Officer at DocuSign, the global leader in e-signature and digital agreements.
Jennifer had a fascinating journey from working inside the White House to high-profile roles at American Express and then Twitter. Today, she shares her approach to modern people leadership, including how her team is embracing AI and the one HR role she recommends above all others for any future Chief people Officer.
So let's bring her in. Jennifer Christie, welcome to Talent All-Stars.
[00:00:58] Jennifer Christie: Hi. Thanks, David. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:00] Dave Travers: So excited to have you. There's so much to talk to you about. I would really love, though, to start at the beginning and maybe not all the way at the beginning, but the beginning of when? A long time ago.
Yeah, exactly. You felt, when did you feel like, and you're this big, high and mighty chief people officer at this company. People know and admire now, but when did you feel like being a people leader and leading people teams was something that, like, Hey, this might not just be what I'm doing or my next opportunity. This might be a path I can really identify this and see myself doing this.
[00:01:35] Jennifer Christie: Well, it's interesting, you know, I started my career in government service, public service, and really spent about half of my career there before I started to transition into what you would call hr, and I did that through executive recruitment, starting in the White House and then a firm, and then I moved to American Express where I was leading executive recruitment.
It was my first real corporate function within an HR team. And it was funny. I felt a bit like an imposter. I'm like, yeah, I'm in hr, but I'm really just doing executive recruitment. And I remember I was at a function and someone asked me what I did, those real fun things that you go to, and everyone's like, So what do you do?
And I said, I lead executive recruitment at American Express. And they said. Oh, you're in hr? And I said, well, no, I'm in HR, but I'm not really in HR. They looked at me like I was weird, and I couldn't figure out, 'cause I thought that explanation made a ton of sense. But I then went on to do things outside of recruitment, like Chief Diversity Officer and HR business partner roles, and just really started to recognize what HR was all about.
And it was really the second part of my career before I really started to think like, I'm actually in HR now, and this is what I'm doing. And I look back even in my government career with that lens, and I thought, you know, I was kind of doing some hr, I did org design and leadership and change management.
And things like that that danced on the edges of HR. But yeah, it took me a while to actually come home to, to be officially in hr.
[00:03:07] Dave Travers: If you can think back to a moment, what is your sweet spot when you think about connecting people to their great job or leading a people team? Like, give us an example, a look in what, what is one of those moments where it's like, ah, I just love being a people person.
[00:03:23] Jennifer Christie: Yeah, I mean it, again, it goes back to the, the recruitment, but I will say early in my career, I was helping people who were coming out of prison reenter into society and become successful, and it was that whole idea of helping people achieve potential and become their best version of themselves. That really got me going, and I found that in executive recruitment too, especially at more senior levels, when you're making decisions about roles that you're going to take or moves you're gonna make, those are big decisions and are life changing in many ways, and they typically affect not just you, but your family and others.
And I loved being there in the trenches with people when they were making those decisions and helping them think through it. I still love that today. I mean, I still lean towards that on the talent side, and there's a lot of things under my purview now, but I like to lean in on the pieces around talent movement and career development, and helping people connect with jobs where they can have the most impact.
[00:04:21] Dave Travers: I share that with you, that helping people through that in those big moments, 'cause it's a huge life decision, and helping people through that is really powerful. One of the things that's. So you mentioned your time in the White House and running presidential personnel, and obviously at American Express before you eventually ended up at DocuSign.
One of the things that stands out when you think about brands like the White House or brands like American Express, people come in. Already loaded with a bunch of impressions of what it's gonna be like. How is recruiting, how is connecting the right people to the right opportunity, different, more challenging, or more fun when you're in a position of representing a brand like that?
[00:05:03] Jennifer Christie: It always is easier if there's a recognizable brand, especially one that has a good reputation, where you know, 'cause you're not trying to spend a lot of your time explaining what the company does, explaining why it would be a good career move, and things like that.
You can really just start. Write in on what the role is, the impact that they can have, and the career trajectory that they can have. I spent a very small time at a startup that didn't have any brand recognition. It was really the first time I'd worked for a place that I had to spend a lot of time explaining what the company did.
And I found it a little frustrating 'cause I just wanted to get to the good stuff of like, well, this is what you're gonna be doing and this is the impact you can have. But people need to understand first, like the place that they're gonna work, what does the company do, and what's the company like. When you can't rely on brand and reputation to carry the day, it makes it a lot harder.
[00:05:52] Dave Travers: The power of having the door already cracked open in the candidate's mind and already intrigued and interested, wanting to know a little more is really powerful.
[00:06:02] Jennifer Christie: Um, it was funny when I was at American Express, it was kind of when we were making that transition and really becoming more of a digital payments organization, so we had to attract tech talent that we'd never had to attract before.
And so while American Express had obviously a really strong brand, not so much in the tech community. And so when I was reaching out to folks on the West coast to say, Hey, I'm calling from American Express, when I talk to you about a role, they immediately were asking about their card, or they're like, why are you calling me? Like, so I had a can, you know, can you get me a..
[00:06:35] Dave Travers: Black card? Yeah.
[00:06:37] Jennifer Christie: Yeah. Like, no, no, this is not a job at American Express. And they were like, what? You know, so it's brands resonate, but not always with every crowd.
[00:06:44] Dave Travers: Yes. You have to sometimes unload them from their prior impressions or biases going in about what the brand really stands for.
I totally agree with that, and I remember that from my days at Disney, and I share with you that we both worked in the White House at different times in different roles. Talk to me about that. So that's an incredible experience to have, where at the very highest levels of government for the very biggest jobs, you know, the president is looking for you to help make sure there's a pipeline of talent and all these jobs are constantly coming open.
Give us a peek inside. What is the most surprising thing about being in that position of running that process that people from the outside wouldn't think of?
[00:07:26] Jennifer Christie: It's interesting, you know, there's a dynamic within the White House. And a balance that you have to forge in terms of placing people in the administration in those political roles.
And every administration has the opportunity to bring their own folks in into those senior roles. And when they reached out to me to come to the White House to take on the portfolio that I took on, but I said to them, I'm like, I'm not. Super political, so you know it, it seems a little odd that you want me to do this kind of recruitment.
And they said, well, we actually have a lot of people here who are very political. You've been in government a long time, though, and you understand what leadership in the government needs to be and what it looks like. And so we need you to be that voice of, yes, that person was a big donor, or Yes, that person is where we need them to be from a political standpoint, but these are the skills and this is what they need to have in order to do right by this organization and to lead that department in the right way.
And so I will say it was given that hat, I did a little bit of knife fighting in the White House in terms of pushing that point of view when there was someone on the other side from the political standpoint who was trying to put someone forward who maybe donated more or maybe had closer political connections.
So every single role was something that we had to make the case for. We met with the president usually once or twice a month to present the people that we wanted him to approve, to go forward with the process. Often, that required, you know, Senate confirmation and things like that, and he would go through the binder with us, and we would present the case.
He'd ask the questions and we'd have the dialogue, and sometimes disagreement in the room and he'd make the call. But it was a fascinating experience that I learned a lot about how to assess people and how to, you know, determine the people that are right for roles that are that high charge and that high profile and come with that kind of risk.
[00:09:23] Dave Travers: Yes, it is fascinating in those sorts of roles, the people that have on paper. All the right background, and then when you meet them and talk to 'em about what they're interested in, sometimes you know there might be a good fit for a different job or whatever the case may be. So, I imagine the political and interpersonal skills that are required there must be incredible.
Okay, so now, because you have all this amazing experience, both in government and in the private sector, debunk a myth for us or two. What is it that people who spent a lot of time in the public sector, in government, think about? What it's really like in the corporate world that's wrong and vice versa.
What would people in the, who've spent all their lives in the corporate world and never worked in government, what would they be most surprised by if they saw it from the inside?
[00:10:11] Jennifer Christie: You know, I'm glad you're asking that question 'cause I get that a lot when I talk to people who've spent a long time in government, and they're fascinated, like, how did you make the transition to the corporate world, acting like it's a place that's so mythical and so far away?
And I said, listen, you know, at the end of the day, it's an organization. Based on relationships, you've gotta be really good at what you do. If you want to be successful, you've gotta be open to learning. You have to know how to lead people. I mean, there's a lot of similar traits that you need to have in order to work in either government or the corporate world.
And I do find that people really think they're very different types of organizations that require very different skills, and I have not found that to be the case. I think if you can navigate Washington, DC, and you know how to build relationships and leverage relationships and understand big picture, but understand also how to be really good at what you're delivering and the job you have.
You can translate that into the corporate world. And we, I frankly think we need more people to cross-pollinate, bringing more people from corporate America into the government to, you know, broaden the business acumen of organizations. And I think bringing people with public sector and public service type mentalities into corporate America to drive more of a service mentality and some of our organizations could also help.
So I think, I think they're very fungible across the way.
[00:11:36] Dave Travers: I completely, I having less government experience than you, but having done it for a year, I completely agree with that. And I remember very distinctly my first like, uh, internship back in the private sector. I went to business school and after I'd been in the White House, and then people would ask me consistently like, is this a big like adjustment to like.
The fast pace and the hardworking style required in corporate America, and I was like, this is like a vacation compared to being in the White House. Like, you have no idea how stressful and how fast-moving that is. Okay, that's amazing. And I couldn't agree more, but for people who get the chance to crosspollinate in, jump from government to corporate or back and forth, I couldn't encourage it more for multiple reasons, including selfish ones about becoming better at what you do and seeing things from a different perspective.
So now here you are at DocuSign. You're not just the recruiting, you're not just the personnel person, but you're the chief people officer and a chief people officer of a company that's in the middle of this technological revolution happening underneath all of our feet. How do you approach being a company that stands for not just digitizing, but using AI to get smarter and insert all the technology buzzwords?
We're all hearing all the time and thinking about all the time, and have our bosses asking us all the time. So you're at the forefront of that. That's what you stand for as a company, and yet you're the people person, and people have all these concerns about what's happening. Well, how does it affect me?
What happens to my job? How do you juggle those two things? How do you think about it?
[00:13:09] Jennifer Christie: Well, I think it definitely helps at DocuSign. As a company, is really leaned into AI and has been for a long time. So that's really something that it's not a new thing for us. And having that so hardwired in how we operate and our product, and being able to leverage all that we can leverage and our customers being able to leverage all they can leverage from our agreements through AI is something that I think makes our employees really proud to be at a company that is on the forefront of that.
So that's great, and that's something that helps us certainly attract talent, but you're right. Internally, employees definitely can feel very nervous. They're excited about the technology, but at the same time, they're like, wait a minute, what does this mean for me? And it always comes down to that, right?
At the end of the day, people you know wanna understand what does it mean for them. So what we've tried to do, and I've partnered really closely with our CIO to help think about how we roll out. Products and tools to our employees and help them just get it in their hands, and help them learn how to use it so they can really understand how they can be more productive, how they can leverage it for insights, and all the different ways and use cases that they can use AI themselves.
So that's on the CIO side. On my side. What I've been doing, starting with my people team, is to say, let's focus on what you're going to do instead of that. So don't focus as much on what this is gonna take away, and maybe more the mundane type of work, or just rapidly helping you understand insights that you're not gonna have to spend a wee figuring out that you can just accelerate.
What are you gonna do instead? What are the things that you can do to elevate the role that you have and lean in to help us figure out all the ways we can expand your role and expand your impact now that you have the leverage of AI to do some of the things that have dragged you down and not allowed you to do the things you wanna do.
So, I've had them ideating on that. And they've been getting really excited about it because I think they recognize, wait a minute, this is taking away some things that probably aren't that value added, and I'm gonna be able to show how much more value that I can add. And look, we're a pretty lean organization.
We've been operating with very lean and very scrappy, I would say. And so I think they recognize that, listen, there's so much more that we can do now and expand our ability to be productive and have an impact, 'cause of AI, and it's not gonna be as much what takes it away. Let's talk about what we're adding.
[00:15:38] Dave Travers: I think that is such a great frame. If you think about, whereas today, you might go into your boss's office and explain to them how busy you are. Like, how do we create a future where you walk in and talk about how much you're getting done now because you're not? So busy with all the mundane parts of tasks that are now automatable, and I think that's, that is a very exciting vision for what this can be.
I think one of the things that brings up, though, is how do you get people to make good decisions about in this cacophony, in this world of being pitched all the time and seeing ads all the time and having friends and colleagues tell you all the time, Oh, we're doing this new amazing thing with technology.
How do you decide which ones are we doing right now and which ones not now, maybe later, or no in, in this, you know, sea of ever never-ending pitches about all the different things we could be doing? How do you decide what's your framework?
[00:16:35] Jennifer Christie: It's a great question because you're right, there is so much out there right now.
I mean, there is a never-ending. You know, I have employees on the people team. They're like, Hey, can we try this tool? Hey, can we do that? And again, we work really closely with our CIO organization because at the end of the day, we have to make sure that we are not over. Inundating our teams with so many different tools that they can't use any of them.
You know, so what I've said to them, like, let's leverage the tools that we've rolled out first and get really good on them. You know, so our own version of GPT and Gemini and other tools like that. I said, let's start with the basics, and when we think we've gotten amazing with what we have. Then we can start to incorporate some of these other tools.
And it's giving my team that, especially my systems team, time to kind of assess these different tools and figure out which ones make the most sense and fill the gaps that we have. And I think that's actually also the most important thing. Really understanding what your strategy is and what you want to achieve helps you discern which of these tools and which of these folks that are reaching out to you.
Actually have a solution that fits what you need, 'cause otherwise you can just hang up all this stuff in your closet and admire it. But it's not actually helping you achieve what you wanna achieve or filling a gap that you've already identified that you have. So it is a little bit of, you know, and I love the fact that my team is so excited and that they're constantly looking at these things, and I love that they wanna play with them, but I'm really just trying to say.
Let's start with the basics. Let's get really good at use cases and prompts and all the things that we need to do with the tools that we have, and then we'll start folding in things that are filling gaps.
[00:18:11] Dave Travers: It's very practical and I think very good advice because the capabilities of the technology are evolving so fast that solving.
The theoretical problem with the theoretical solution three years from now is of less value than saying, let's use what's available right now and get really good at figuring out how to apply it, and then say, what else do we need? I think that's super practical and wise advice. Okay, so I think so many people who started in talent acquisition started in recruiting, working their way up, becoming leaders, look at you and say that.
It looks like an amazing career path mentor. Either you know, younger Jennifer, or somebody who's in your organization now looking at your career path and saying, how do I emulate your success to get where you've gotten? What would your advice be to a young leader who says I think being a chief people officer at a globally admired company is what my calling is, what I want to do, how do I get there?
[00:19:12] Jennifer Christie: Yeah. So I would say, you know, and I actually had this conversation with a woman at DocuSign who's in our sales organization, who I literally met with yesterday, who said she'd started out in recruiting, she'd gone into sales, and she said, I think I wanna get back into HR. I'd love to be on a career path to become a chief people officer someday.
And I said, you know, depending on where you are in your career, and she's a little bit, you know, kind of like mid-career, I would say. I said, if that's really where you wanna go. Then you have to get the, it might not be the experience you have, you might need to leverage that through education. So I've been able to kind of learn on the job and have different roles where I learned kind of a lot of the pieces that I need to do the job today.
But if someone wants to accelerate that. That might be education, or that might be, you know, a program that they learned some of those pieces on. I said, but you've gotta recognize, understand the function and how broad it is. First, it's not just going from a talent acquisition person to running a people organization.
I did the rounds in different parts of the HR function to learn that. And I do think an HR business partner role, which I had several of them, particularly at American Express, helps you understand all the different pieces and parts to a chief people officer role. I know some chief people officers who've never done an HR business partner role, and they're great at it.
But I do think if there's one role that I think you should do a spend through to be a chief people officer, it's probably a HR business partner role, 'cause it's probably the most akin to. Putting together all the parts and pieces of an HR function to drive a business objective and to drive a business strategy.
And I think that's just core to this role. So, we talked through that. So I think people can get into this work from different functions, and even more, especially technical skills, people who are more technical. And are more product-focused. I think that's gonna be a real skill that can help the chief people, officers of the future, which may not have been as important when I was coming up through the way, but as I look to the future, being more technical and being more product-oriented will probably make your path to Chief People Officer a little faster.
[00:21:20] Dave Travers: I think the first thing and the last thing you said there is so powerful. One, is there's so much information available out there to get smarter about things you don't know. And so not just talking about but showing that you're a person who's absorbing new information. And if you're unsure about which direction to go in terms of learning more, do you wanna learn more about, you know, some area you don't know as much about, if when in doubt, learning about how to become more technical and becoming a be a bigger asset.
When any technology transformation 'cause the future of the people team, there's gonna be a lot of technology changes, a lot of new implementations, and if you're the go-to person who makes good decisions and successfully implements, that's a very valuable skillset.
[00:22:05] Dave Travers: Okay. We always end these episodes with a rapid-fire drill, and so, I want you to pretend that instead of I'm Dave, I'm Alan. I got to meet Alan once a long time ago, before you became the Alan, as the CEO of DocuSign. And so Alan wanders, you know, you're at a company meeting or a corporate headquarters one day, and Alan, you know, comes up and fixes a cup of coffee next to you and says, Hey, Jennifer, you know, one of the things about.
My job is I find myself, I'm interviewing people all the time, whether it's internal candidates, external candidates, board members, et cetera. You're the expert at interviewing. Gimme your one best piece of advice to become a better interviewer.
[00:22:48] Jennifer Christie: I would say one of the most important things to do is not just focus on what's on the resume or the LinkedIn profile, what they did, and asking questions, how they did it for me.
The more interesting parts are what's not on there. The in between. It's what motivated them to go from this company to that company or that role to this role? How did they think about their career? What were they hoping to achieve? Did they achieve it, and what were their expectations? Did the company meet those expectations?
And then moving into kind of the role that they're thinking about. At the time of the interview, what are they looking for? What's motivating them to make a move? Are they going towards something? Are they going away for something? Because I find that if you could really understand what motivates and drives people, and help understand how they make decisions about their life.
You really get insights into who someone is and how they might approach their work. I would rather hire somebody who's highly motivated and curious and has a growth mindset and is willing to take some risks, who may not check all the boxes than someone who checks all the boxes and is looking for the easy route and just has kind of limped along and always kind of taken the path of least resistance.
I take the first person any day, but you have to dig into a little bit of what's not on the resume to figure that out.
[00:24:08] Dave Travers: I think the transition, not the bullet points on the resume, but the transition between the chunks on the resume, are such a good area to focus in on because once you've, as an interviewee, once you've put on the resume, I increased the KPI by 86% by leading this project.
It's very hard to say. It was a real struggle and we sort of didn't get there at first and get the real, real, but it's a much more invite. When you talk about those big transitions, you not only learn how somebody approaches a problem, but it's much more natural for the interviewee to say. I was really struggling.
I felt like I'd capped out, and here's why. And I've struggled with my boss in this role, and then I found this great new opportunity, and I decided, here's how I thought about it. And you get into the, it's easier to invite them into sharing sort of the full picture rather than the sales pitch. I love that.
Okay, one more elevator pitch question. Same scenario. Alan, you know, walks into the elevator, and you got 60 seconds, and he says, Hey Jennifer, we'd be doing all these amazing things with our talent strategy and using technology and better processes and all these things for the talent acquisition team.
How should we measure that? All these great things we're doing are having an impact a year from now? Like, how do we think about that? What's the right way to measure that team?
[00:25:27] Jennifer Christie: Yeah. You know, it's interesting 'cause I think in the world that we're living in now with AI TA in particular is getting turned on its head because TA and talent acquisition, recruiting, whatever you wanna call it, has been done a certain way for a really long time, and it's really ready for disruption.
So, I think AI is gonna be leading the way for that. But the way that roles are designed, the way that orgs are designed, the way that we actually go about recruiting. All of that is changing because of AI. And so I would say one of the things that I'm talking to my TA organization about is ramping up our ability to make internal moves and fill roles internally, because there's not gonna be this wide group of talent out there that has deep experience in AI and this type of AI.
I mean, you're gonna have pockets of it, but across all roles, across all functions. You're gonna have to be hiring more for aptitude, and ability to learn, and those types of things. But the more that we can lean into the employees that we already have and upskill them and redeploy them across the organization, we'll move faster, and we'll be able to retain them and give them career paths a lot faster than sussing through all these resumes that the jobs and the roles people have don't make any sense.
Don't really tell us if they're gonna be good at this AI stuff, but the people that are. In our house, now that we know that we can evaluate, that's where we need to spend our time. So our ability to fill roles internally. Finally, getting to answer your question, measuring our ability to fill roles internally, I think, is gonna be a differentiator for us.
[00:27:06] Dave Travers: I love that. I think that speaks to both sides of the talent marketplace one, it shows, it proves we've got a bunch of talented people already in the building and it proves that we're being super thoughtful about when we go outside and when we go inside to find the best talent. 'cause there are so many advantages of having people who are already known quantities and know the company. Super smart.
Jennifer Christie, Chief People Officer of DocuSign, it is very clear why you are a Talent All-Star. Thanks so much for taking the time with us today.
[00:27:37] Jennifer Christie: Thanks for having me. Really appreciate it, David.
[00:27:43] Dave Travers: That's Jennifer Christie, Chief People Officer at DocuSign. You can find your LinkedIn profile in the notes below. And just a reminder, you can also watch the video versions of these conversations on YouTube on the official ZipRecruiter channel. If you've got feedback for us or ideas for future episodes, send us an email at talentallstars@ziprecruiter.com.
I'm Dave Travers. Thanks for listening to Talent All Stars, and we'll see you right back here next week.