A Career of Success A Profile of Pat Wadors By Emily Andreas
at Wadors sits in her office at LinkedIn, talking to people from her team. Everyone in the room seems very laid back and casual, yet very motivated and hardworking, Pat especially. She is intently listening to the conversation, her body poised towards whoever is speaking. I listen in as she talks through different plans and meetings with her team, all the while seeming very confident about her work. I then took her to the building over for a photo shoot, where we not only got our
work done but were able to keep smiles on our faces and laughter in the air. As I lead her through different poses, you can see the determination on her face, the smile in her eyes when the camera flashes. She seems to naturally know what poses to do and how to do them, and even though I tell her what to do, she seems to direct the whole thing. As head of HR and Global Talent at LinkedIn, Pat works with a lot of different people. She is very passionate about inclusion and diversity in the work-
place, where the topic of women comes into play. In an interview with Wadors, she explained how we need more women in the tech industry. “There’s not enough of them. The graduation rate of women in the sciences has decreased over time, which is a shame,” says Wadors. She claims that she has “peer sets in the valley that are trying to influence younger girls in middle school and high school to stay in love with the math and the sciences, and geek out on it and still feel good about themselves”
(Wadors). From research I have done on this topic, there is a company called Roominate that makes toys for girls that stimulate engineering skills. There is a digital program that you can get on your iPhone or iPad called rPower that lets you control lights and motors that you make and have connected to the device (Roominate). Pat definitely has a strong stance in what she thinks women should do in the world, and it is extremely positive. She believes that more women should be in the tech industry and that it would really benefit the advances in technology. Pat started her career
when she went to Ramapo College of New Jersey, and it helped her a lot in the long run of her career. At a very young age she knew she wanted to go into HR . “I was a freshman in college at 18... I was a fine art major, so I did art. I’ve been an artist since I was 7 years old, just painted and drew and did funky things. I was different. And I liked being different, especially in high school... I went to LSU for a bit and did a Career Center. It was still my freshman year, I was trying to find who I was. In that career center, the woman that was there was having me do tests, and she discovered that I was dys-
lexic... Then she said the things that I like are in the realm of HR, and I’m like, oh my gosh, my dad’s in HR. I interviewed my dad and then realized that sounded good to me, then I decided I was going to run the function” (Wadors). By “run the function”, Pat meant that she wanted to be the head of HR and wanted to oversee how it all happens. Pat has had many jobs at various companies before getting to LinkedIn. Wadors worked at places such as Align Technology, MetCo, and Twitter. “I went to do Yahoo for five years, then I went to Plantronics for 3, I was head of HR there... And
then just had this opening here. The CEO, Jeff, and I worked together at Yahoo, and they called me over, but when I was at Plantronics, I was an advisor to Twitter. So I just advised the board and head of HR” (Wadors). She had to learn a new skill set for each job she had, but they were all related to Internet and people, so she knew how to quickly learn the skills and apply them to her job. Being the Senior VP of HR and Global Talent at LinkedIn, Pat has a lot on her plate. SHe has had to go through a lot of change during her time at LinkedIn, such as the company growing. “So I started when we were a 3300 employee company, we’re now going to be 10000 by the end of the year. So what’s 3x growth in 3 years. That’s pretty big... That growth creates change and complexity that I have not dealt with before... I’ve been talking, and writing, and blogging, things I’ve never done in my career... I published my first Harvard Business Review article in July, and I’m about to do another one. That stuff, I think that’s wicked. And to do that, and have a choice, and to be able to do it while at LinkedIn keeps me entertained” (Wadors). The fast-moving environment is something that she loves, and definitely keeps
her occupied. Pat stresses the importance of diversity and inclusion in the workplace and aims to help move that in the positive direction: “For women in tech, it’s about accepting the differences. I think my peers talk about diversity a lot, I talk about inclusion. I’m trying to change the whole revolution of that... I want to be able to rock who I am, where I work, not think about it at all and perform my best at that company, meaning I can dye my hair pink, I can do pink stripes in my hair, I wear my high tops and they ripped jeans, whatever I wear and want to do. Measure me on my work. I want to smile when I’m in the hallway, I want people to say, “Hey I love your glasses, I’m liking the rocking of the shoes”, I want to be even liked and appreciated for
my uniqueness. That’s inclusion.” Pat has had personal experiences where men have looked t her differently because she isn’t the stereotypical woman a man wants to see in the workplace. She has been ridiculed before, but she is trying to make it so being yourself is the new norm in business. “...If you take acts of inclusion, it’s where you teach leaders and people around you what does it look like when you’re a minority or female. A woman in a group of men will raise her hand and speak in a meeting, rarely. When she does, more than 70% of the time she’ll be spoken over. The man speaking may or may not take her idea and run with it, the audience will never remember what she’s trying to say, she probably won’t raise her hand again in that meeting. Men also as-
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“I’ve been talking, and writing, and blogging, things I’ve never done in my career...That stuff, I think that’s wicked.” -Pat Wadors sume that women are the secondary income so they don’t pay them as much. So I think pay comes into play sometimes, consciously or unconsciously” (Wadors). Men always seem to look down upon women in the workplace, and they think that the women are there just to be there, not to work. Pat is extremely in-
clusive in her work, and if a man isn’t letting a woman speak, or is speaking over her, she will call attention to that and have people recognize what they are doing wrong in the situation. Wadors thinks of herself as a mentor to others, and she has a lot of experience with it. “I probably have nine young adults that I’m helping right now. It’s hard, social economic differences, like if you’re poor, your parents won’t know how to get into college or even how to find a job. If you have a divorced family, they’re distracted. They won’t know when to push you.” Pat is there for people who need guidance in their life, whether it be finding a job, going to college, etc. “Look at it this way; here’s the poten-
tial outcomes of this bad mistake. Do you like any of those outcomes? No. Do you want something else? Yes. Then change your ways. It’s a choice. Understand the future that you’ve been painting and tell me if you like the painting and if you don’t, I’ll help you change the canvas and the paint and fix it, it’s easy to do,” (Wadors). Pat’s husband, Dave, knows a lot about how Pat wants diversity and inclusion in the workplace: “She’s liked by everybody. It doesn’t really matter who they are, she connects with everybody and treats everyone equally... That is something that she does well. And that’s sort of letting people be whoever they want to be. And realizing that when they do that, you get the most out of them. So you don’t restrict people and confine them, make them conform to a certain way that you
think is right. You let them be what they want to be, and in doing that, they’ll be happier, they’ll work better, everything will be better. I think you get more productivity from people when you let people be who they’re gonna be. You see that in the workplace, you don’t see it in schools, they’re more rigid. But once you get out, you’ll realize that there’s a whole bunch of different people out there and they all kind of do their own thing and it’s good. She’s good at
that,” (Wadors, Dave). “She does mentor quite a few people and I think she gets excited by the opportunity to maybe push somebody forward a little bit, especially a younger person that you can give experience to and help them along and help get smarter quicker” (Wadors, Dave). Pat is a very influential woman, and not just in her work. I know from personal experience that she really wants to make people’s lives better and do
whatever she can to make it happen. She has talked with me about college and jobs, and definitely has an insight on how to make it all happen.
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Works Cited Dave Wadors Katie Wadors Patricia Wadors “Roominate: A Building Toy for Girls.� Roominate. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Oct. 2015. Wadhwa, Vivek, and Farai Chideya. Innovating Women: The Changing Face of Technology. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.
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