Exclusive Interview with Elaine Mak, CPO, Valimail

 

Elaine Mak is an executive leader of business transformation, culture and brand, talent and equity with experiences at corporate and non-profit organizations moving from start to scale up. She has created performance and business growth for organizations in hospitality, education, healthcare and technology.  As Valimail’s chief people officer, Elaine serves as a partner and advisor to the CEO and executive team to drive performance, engagement and efficiency. This includes organization and leadership effectiveness, strategy planning, business operations/performance, executive succession planning and pipeline development, communications and brand, HR/talent and DEI.

 
In an exclusive interview with HR.com, Elaine touches upon her journey in HR, why HR leaders must go beyond job performance, hiring, and firing, and why people operations are as equally critical as the sales and finance operations, among others.

Excerpts from the interview: 

Q: What has your HR journey been like and what influenced you the most to have a positive impact on your career?

Elaine: My HR journey has been anything but traditional. I do not consider myself an HR professional and never aspired to be a chief people officer. When people think of HR, they usually think of job performance, hiring, firing, etc., but my focus has never been on these "traditional" functions. Instead, my strength and passion are in helping companies scale up with a People-First model during change and growth. 

I partner with the CEO and leadership team to shape our business strategies and then develop and align our culture and people practices to enable performance and business growth.
 
As a woman who identifies as a person of color, my career experience has revealed how our male-dominated society exclusively provides the power of choice to white men. The rest of us spend most of our lives fighting for a seat at the table. Ironically, this disparity has positively impacted my career. 

Early on, I quickly learned the unspoken rules I now work to break. The system was not designed for someone like me to advance. However, once I understood the rules, I felt empowered to rewrite them and help restore the power of choice as a right to all. 

My role in HR is to empower everyone in their professional lives with choice and opportunity.

Q: What were your challenges during the early days of your career? What are those today?

Elaine: Through the early days of my career, I struggled to find my place at the table. I am a first-generation Chinese-American female from a low-income background. It is not an easy starting place. However, my parents were immigrants who understood the need to make sacrifices to provide better opportunities for future generations. I applied this same mindset to my approach in the early days of my career. 

While I did have to sacrifice many years playing by the roles of a misogynistic, archaic system, I have risen above it with the knowledge, experience and drive to provide a better organizational landscape for those who follow. 

Even though I have earned the privilege of autonomy to steer my organizational leadership's direction, I still do encounter regressive leaders. We often say issues like misogyny and racism are systemic — and they are. But systems always map back to people in positions of power, and I would say all people leaders face a continuous challenge of how best to address misuse of power.

Q: How do you see workplace culture evolving over the years?

Elaine: I believe that our workplaces are microcosms of our society as a whole. Shifts in one will affect shifts in the other. 

Currently, we are experiencing significant changes in both. Many companies are starting to recognize the systemic issues we need to address. Likewise, many people have realized the collective strength of the individuals working to end these harmful systems. People lead movements. People drive societal transformation, and they will drive workplace transformation too. 

The workplace provides new opportunities for individuals to gain decision-making and empowerment in their roles. We need to reimagine their employees' needs, invest in coaching/development and allow more autonomy regarding work-life balance.

Q: Can you share the top three learnings from the challenges you faced?

Elaine: 

1. Hire leaders whose values and mindset align with the business. 
2. People-first cultures require making some hard decisions.
3. Recognize that culture-building is a long game. In-the-moment, feel-good culture building differs from sustaining long-term success. Hosting a chocolate martini-making class could feel good at the moment, but it will not help employees thrive long-term.

Q: Where do you draw inspiration from? What do you have to say to those who are still struggling to find a place in the boardroom?

Elaine: My husband. Our partnership is the source of what we co-create in life. Also, my daughter, who brings a new way of seeing the world. They are both sources of daily inspiration. 

To those still struggling to make an impact in their organization, it is not your job to come in and change minds. It is the leader’s responsibility — the CEO or board chair — to change the organization. Instead, engage your CEO as a partner. Show them the business value behind investing in people and the benefits (tangible and intangible) of shifting the organization's mindset. Every people leader must learn how to link performance to business outcomes in order to "speak the language" of boardrooms.

Q: Where do you draw the line when it comes to work-life balance?

Elaine: To me, I have learned that work-life integration is about who gets prioritized with day-to-day decisions and the impact those decisions have on one’s quality of life. My rank order of decision-making when it comes to time/decisions is: first, Elaine’s self-care/health. If I do not take care of myself, then everyone around me does not get the best of me. Next is my husband. He and I are partners, and the partnership is the source and sustenance of what we create collectively/individually. Third, my daughter, then my family/community and, finally, work. It is not easy, but surprisingly it all works out nicely. I get to show up at my best at home and work.

Q: What fundamental change(s) (in terms of culture) have you brought into your company?

Elaine: The primary change I have brought to Valimail is the implementation of a new leadership model. We have moved from a top-down chain-of-command structure to a collaborative and flexible one. Our goal is to clarify the interdependence of every role across the organization for all employees. In other words, our new design allows everyone to have shared accountability in our strategy. 

Before adopting this new model, we had siloed departments with separate microcultures and protocols. Our current path required some initial difficult conversations and decisions. Without full buy-in from key leadership, we would not have been able to make progress. While old systems do not change overnight, I'm proud of our progress in evaluating our goals and integrating all of our teams (sales, marketing, product engineering, etc.) to collaborate better. 

Simultaneously, we integrated DEI as a core pillar of our business. Recently, my colleagues raised the possibility of hiring a DEI manager, but I would prefer not to take that step. Why? Because when we do DEI right, we embed it into everyone's jobs, across departments and decision makers. DEI is not a singular role — it is a mindset that companies must embrace from the top down. Instead of hiring a DEI manager, we took steps to diversify our hiring and formed a DEI council to provide our strategy oversight and support.

Q: What are some major changes you see affecting HR within the next few years?

Elaine: HR must become more integrated into the foundation of business success. HR departments should connect everything they do to their company's performance and outcomes. We need to recognize that people operations are as equally critical as the sales and finance operations. 

It is all about building the business case for increased investment. In times of economic downturn or uncertainty, the board refocuses on hitting its bottom line. They will always prioritize revenue-generating positions. However, I believe the increased focus on people, diversity and collaboration directly results in improved performance and, therefore, increased revenue. We need to develop more ways to prove it. I think we will see some changes to how HR leaders demonstrate the direct link between people and revenue.
 

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