Spotlight on Susan Schmieder

Susan Schmieder is a strategic people and culture leader with 20+ years of global experience partnering with C-suite and Boards to drive enterprise growth, organizational transformation, and talent scalability. She has led talent, learning, and OD functions across private equity, publicly traded, and non-profit organizations ranging from $500m - $2.5B in revenue. 

In addition, Susan is a native Houstonian who enjoys outdoor concerts and festivals with her husband and two dogs. 

Learn more about the Houston CHRO community here.
 

Give us a brief overview of the path that led to your current role.

My career path has been shaped by a mix of talent, OD, and hands-on business partnership across complex global organizations. I started in recruiting and HR Business partnership roles, which gave me a strong grounding in frontline operations and leadership realities, and then progressed into leading enterprise talent, learning, and organizational development functions. 

Along the way, I have supported M&A integrations, culture transformation, and leadership transitions in both private equity and publicly traded environments. Those experiences ultimately led me to my current role, where I focus on aligning Goodwill Houston's people, culture and strategy to drive sustainable growth.
 

What is one of your guiding leadership principles?

One of my guiding leadership principles is "Build the system, not only the solution". I have consistently operated at the intersection of talent strategy and enterprise growth. That pattern signals a leader who understands that sustainable performance doesn't come from heroic effort or one-off fixes, it comes from designing the right structure and leadership capacity to support the business long-term.
 

What is the greatest challenge CHROs face today, and how are you addressing it?

Right now, our greatest challenge is we are hiring for today's roles using yesterday's capability plans, while trying to execute tomorrow's strategy.  As our business is evolving to optimize how we support our mission better, we are expanding our workforce development and operational rigor.  Many hiring decisions are still role-based and not capability-based. We post job descriptions that reflect tasks and not strategic outputs. This creates misalignment between growth strategy and workforce capability.  

How are we addressing this? We are shifting from position-based hiring to capability-based workforce design. We are defining success profiles, unifying the talent acquisitions team under the talent management umbrella to build enterprise effectiveness, and building our data discipline to track our metrics that align to growth and not job orders.
 

What is the key to success for someone just starting out as a CHRO?

I believe success in this role would be to shift from functional excellence to enterprise stewardship. Which as a first time C-suite can be a hard step to take, but a necessary one. In this role we are now responsible for the health of the whole system and not just the function we came from. Building trust capital right off the bat is essential for success. We want to be seen as the executive who reduces noise, not the one who amplifies it. So avoiding drama and bringing calmness and clarity is a critical key.
 

How do you measure success as a leader?

I don't measure leadership by busyness. Busyness doesn't measure effectiveness. I measure leadership by legacy and impact. I ask myself four questions:

1. Am I providing clear and articulate direction that eliminates confusion?
2. Can my team make fast and relevant decisions based on my direction and strategy? 
3. When pressure hits the enterprise does the system we constructed hold steady or does it wobble?
4. Is our business and leadership culture producing high performing teams?
    

What is the value of being a member of Gartner C-level Communities?

To me, being part of this community is a strategic advantage that accelerates both my personal leadership and what I can bring to my enterprise contributions. This network helps us all to be better leaders by exposing us to different industry frameworks, applied research, and forward-looking conversations that help us align our organizations to the future. We can learn from each other and build together. As enterprise leaders, that is a huge gift so as to not feel alone but part of something impactful.
 

Governing Body members share their insights and leadership perspectives to shape the agendas and topics that address the top priorities impacting business leaders today.