The mbaMission Podcast: Career Pivots and the Foundations of Effective Leadership

What do you have to do to make a meaningful career pivot, and how might an MBA help you develop into the kind of leader who can thrive across industries? In this week’s episode of The mbaMission Podcast, we welcome back Liz Ramos, former head of human capital at Bain & Company, for a thoughtful and candid discussion about navigating change, developing people, and building leadership skills that stand the test of time.

From exploring different leadership styles to understanding what truly makes someone happy in their career, Liz offers grounded, practical insights for MBA applicants and professionals alike. She also discusses what business school can (and cannot) prepare you for when entering the world of human resources (HR) or workforce management, how to evaluate whether a career change aligns with your values, and why culture building and people management sit at the heart of every successful firm.

If you are contemplating a post-MBA pivot, curious about the field of human capital, or simply striving to become a more effective leader, this conversation is full of perspective, wisdom, and actionable takeaways.

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New episodes of The mbaMission Podcast are released every Tuesday on all major streaming platforms (including Apple Podcasts and Spotify), with full video episodes available on mbaMission’s YouTube channel (you can access this episode specifically here). Sign up for a free consultation with a member of mbaMission’s admissions team at mbaMission.com/consult.

How to Make a Successful Career Pivot

Harold Simansky: We’re back here today with Liz Ramos. Liz and I first met each other at Bain & Company, let’s say a few years ago. And at this point, Liz, I’d love to talk to you a little bit more about not just your career at Bain—and I know you were there for 22 years—but sort of what happened after that, your progression in terms of what your focus was from being your classic, I’ll say, Bain & Company strategy consultant and then moving off in a few different directions. 

So why don’t you just take me through your career, starting at Harvard Business School, then going to Bain, and then really carrying us forward?

Liz Ramos: Okay, sure. I was a summer associate at Bain. Luckily, during that first year of business school, I met some people that were in consulting and people from Bain. And I thought, “Oh, what a fun thing to try.” I actually did not make the resume cut for the summer associate role. So I called the recruiting office and said, you know, “What could I do that would make me a more attractive candidate for next year? Because I’m really interested in consulting.” And they said, “Oh, okay, we’ve got room for you on our schedule.” So I did get the offer. And after summer associate, I had a wonderful time. [It was] a fascinating, interesting business opportunity. My husband’s summer had not been as compelling. 

Harold Simansky: Was he also at Bain? 

Liz Ramos: No. No, he was in real estate in Miami. So it was a geographical and industry choice. But I loved my summer at Bain, so I joined and was at Bain, as you said, for over 20 years.

Jeremy Shinewald: And how many years were you on the consulting side before making the transition to HR?

Liz Ramos: It was gradual. After I had my second child, I did staffing as 50% of my assignment and client work on the other half. And then at some point, they asked me, “Do you want to take over all of staffing for the Boston office?” And I said, “Okay, I can do that.” Decision, right? Because moving away from client-facing roles, you know, there is some risk in that you [might] become less relevant. But I actually found that I enjoyed the operating side and moved into more of a North American operations role. So I was making recommendations on hiring targets, compensation, pricing. And I found that I loved thinking about how a service firm makes money, and you know, what levers you pull to take advantage of the opportunity to make more money but also make sure that you don’t have a lot of downside risk. So that was a lot of fun. 

And from there, I had decided to leave Bain. I had just had my fourth child, and the managing director at the time, who was a wonderful man, went on to be a CEO elsewhere [and] asked to meet with me and said, “I’d like you to be our first worldwide CHRO.” Chief Human Resources Officer. And at Bain, I think we probably called it Chief People Officer, because in the day, that was that was how you talked. And it was a career dilemma. You know, I had these four kids, one a newborn. I was thinking, “Wow, wouldn’t it be great just to take a year out of the work world?” But on the other hand, the chance to have a position where I could really have an impact on a firm like Bain was just too, too tempting. So I did accept. And for the next six or seven years, I was Bain’s CHRO.

Harold Simansky: And that’s really across the world.

Liz Ramos: Yes. Very global job. And at that point, the human capital practices in the U.S. were probably stronger than in some places outside the U.S. And that meant that I had to be on an airplane a lot. The first year, I took my newborn with me. . . . So, you know, she has a teeny little passport, and she’s been to Paris, London, Madrid, Zurich. 

Harold Simansky: That’s fantastic, actually.  

Liz Ramos: It is. It was a tremendous opportunity. It was great that Bain was supportive of that. 

Jeremy Shinewald: So over those seven years, can you describe the growth at Bain? Like, where did you start in terms of how many thousands of people were there when you started, and how many were there when you finished?

Liz Ramos: There were around a thousand when I started. But when this managing director and I started, Bain was really a loose association of offices. We had been slow in putting a presence into Europe, Asia, Latin America. Some places we did that by acquisition, and some places we hired someone who was well known locally and we thought was a good cultural fit. But it really was a federation. And our job was to make sure we harness the power of one firm, one Bain. So I needed to put things in place. 

For instance, everyone has a performance review. Does that performance review look the same in Italy as it does in California? And how do we make those tricky staffing trade-offs that require multiple offices to have input? So I put in place a system of having a human capital partner who is a client-facing partner but [who] spent some of their time—and also used their judgment—to help make these global human capital decisions. So it was a lot of work to get momentum behind ideas that would work, you know, just like client work, frankly. You know, get consensus on the ideas and then just help with the implementation. 

Jeremy Shinewald: As you said that, I was thinking to myself that this just sounds like a massive, years-long case.

Liz Ramos: Yes. Exactly. Exactly.

Harold Simansky: I think that’s right. So you did that for seven years. It sounds exhausting, honestly. At that point, then, you made another choice as far as your career went. So, first of all, what was that next step, and what had facilitated that?

Why Career Pivots Are About Values, Not Just Roles

Liz Ramos: You know, a couple things precipitated it. One is this managing director that I had grown up in the business with went off to be the CEO of a lovely publicly traded company. So it was different without him there. The other thing is I was looking at my travel schedule for the upcoming year and realized, “Wow, this is kind of making me feel sad. Why am I doing this if thinking about my travel makes me feel sad?” And I’ve spoken to a number of people who kind of hit that wall on travel after six or seven years. You either love it or [think], “Gee, that was interesting. I’ve seen the business capitals of the world, and I’m ready for something else.” So at that point, I made a change and went into a private equity business.

Harold Simansky: Still in an HR role? 

Liz Ramos: Yes, although it was a small firm. So I sat in on investment committee meetings, and they listened when I spoke, and you know, I felt like I was a respected member of the management team.

Harold Simansky: That sounds very, very exciting. But at that point, I assume you were saying, “Okay, HR was going to be my future”—more so than strategy, more so than some of the other choices you may have had.

Why Human Capital Is a Strategic Function

Liz Ramos: You know, in a service business, I think human capital is strategy, deciding what kind of people you’re going to hire, how many of them, how you train them, how you make sure that they’re effective with clients. So I looked at it as going back and forth between a pure human capital focus and business operations. So my private equity tour was human capital focused. The next role I had, which was in a publicly traded firm, was a CHRO role. And then after that, I went on to be president of a recruitment firm. Using the same skill set, you know? What are we trying to get done? How many people do we need? What kind of skills do they need? How do we get them there?

Leadership Skills That Transfer Across Industries

Jeremy Shinewald: So you just touched on a ton of breadth, right? You’re in a consulting firm where the CEO left for a publicly traded firm. You worked in a publicly traded firm; you worked at a private equity firm. Are there just types of leadership that are universal? You’re like, “I could plug this person in at a public firm or a private firm,” or do you feel like there are just massively different skill sets or personality types?

Liz Ramos: I think you need more depth on some of the basics of leadership. Depth in different places if it’s public; depth in different places if it’s private equity or, you know, a small, private firm. I think you need a grounded set of values first. And that’s not only ethical values but also business values. You need to listen to people around you, but you can’t be blown in the wind by the last person you spoke to. You need the business judgment, you need communication skills, and you know, in a public firm, being able to communicate to large groups of people is more important. You communicate in a different way. And then you have to be able to create teamwork. And I think that holds true in any kind of a firm. But if it’s a small private equity firm, and we’re all going to agree on this investment that’s going to have a big impact on our personal financial situation, you know, that teamwork, I think, is even more critical.

Harold Simansky: No, that makes sense. Liz, [can you] take us a little bit more slowly through the steps you started taking, why you chose to take those steps, as well as, again, what were you considering, knowing that you were going to be in this people-development place?

Liz Ramos: Well, at Bain, you see so much. As you know, you see a breadth of industries, you see a breadth of functions. And having spent my last few years focused on human capital, I also happened to sit right next to the private equity group and overheard all of their fascinating conversations. And you know, Bain Capital and Bain & Company were closer in that day, I think, than they are now. So it was kind of a natural step for me to check into private equity. And there was a firm that was recruiting a kind of fourth person for their management team that would play an interesting role in deciding how human capital was structured at that firm.

Harold Simansky: No, that makes sense. I know enough about HR to know that one of the issues is, is HR at the table? And I assume when you were in a four-person firm, you definitely were at the table. In these other firms, did you feel the same way? And how important is it—again, I’m throwing around a cliché here—how important is it for HR to be “at the table” in terms of developing the firm?

Liz Ramos: You know, it’s critical. It’s critical. And I would not take a role where it wasn’t clear that I would be at the table. Because, as I said, I believe that human capital is intricately intertwined with strategy. You’re either having input into the strategy, or else you’re just doing, you know, the administrative blocking and tackling. And I think it’s very important.

Harold Simansky: That certainly makes sense. And at that point, you were recruited to be president of one of these companies, if I remember correctly. 

Liz Ramos: That’s right. Right. 

Harold Simansky: Remind me again, which company was that? And how did that all come about? 

Liz Ramos: That was Isaacson, Miller, and they were conducting a search for the first non-founding president. And Isaacson, Miller is the 15th largest search firm in the U.S. And they’re focused completely on the not-for-profit sector. So, you know, that was a long-standing interest of mine as well. So when I met the partners there and learned about the mission, I thought, “This is just right.”

Harold Simansky: That makes sense. So far, it’s been a professional service firm. It’s also been a private equity firm. You’ve also spent time in a public company, and then also [as] the president of a search firm, really looking at folks who are not in the for-profit world. So what do those different leaders even look like? Where’s the overlap, and what are those things that actually have to be quite different?

Liz Ramos: You know, in each case, the leaders had grown up within their industry. And that can be overall a benefit. But while you are developing expertise in whatever the firm’s mission is, you also need to be developing those other skills, right? You know, kind of that solidity on where you’re going, how to get there, understanding the business risks, understanding being realistic about risk mitigation, and developing the ability to communicate with the important constituents. And we’re all humans. We all have our strengths and our weaknesses. Some people do that better than others do.

Jeremy Shinewald: So we keep coming back here to your breadth and how much you’ve seen in your career. I think the type of question that would speak to our viewers and listeners is from your perspective, what ultimately makes someone happy in their career?

Liz Ramos: That’s an excellent question. There are different kinds of happiness, so I think it’s thinking through what you like. There are people that I know that have a depth of expertise that they apply during a reasonably well-bounded time period—you know, number of hours, number of days, etc. And that leaves them room in their life for other things that they are passionate about. And then there are other people that are happy to dive in on something like a consulting team and know, “Hmm, I’m not gonna see the light of day very much for the next month, but I’m in it with these people that I enjoy working with, and it’s on a really excellent problem. And I’m gonna be all in on that.” And different things can work at different times. And I think part of the challenge of plotting a career and taking advantage of the finite set of opportunities you have in front of you is thinking about, “Okay, for this next phase, where am I? Is this a phase where I’m really ready to go all in, and I have the support around me? So if I’m basically living at the office for a while, that’s okay, because I’m building towards something.” . . . Someone who left Bain said, “You know what? What you do should be so easy that you don’t have to think about it, you don’t stress about it.” What that person was looking for was an area of deep expertise where they could apply what they knew and that would get the job done.

Harold Simansky: That makes sense. And most recently, then, you went to a firm, Cambridge Associates, which is known for having this wonderful culture. How did you view that firm? And also when you have a firm like that—when you’re going into what seems like a very positive place to be—how do you think about managing those situations?

Liz Ramos: I think anytime you land [somewhere], you do an assessment and understand what the strengths are and what the weaknesses are. And Cambridge is a venerable firm and has many people who are very successful at investing on behalf of nonprofit clients. Here’s the nonprofit theme coming in again. But you know, there were still things that hadn’t really been attended to. You know, if you are very successful, and if you have a strong culture, some things can just fall by the wayside, because maybe we don’t need a very clear and direct performance review system if we’re all pretty much doing really well. But you grow to a certain size, and you need some of those tools to help people keep growing. You know, maybe I need a review to tell me, “Liz, you’re really good at these two things, but wow, you’ve got to work on this third. And we’re gonna help you with that.

Building and Sustaining Strong Organizational Culture

Harold Simansky: Absolutely. And again, as you think back on your career, what do you think are the most important points of leverage in terms of creating a culture where folks, as Jeremy said, are happy, where they’re productive, where overall, you have this wonderful synergy between probably very different types of people, but yielding a successful firm.

Liz Ramos: Leadership. It absolutely has to start from the top. I’ve never seen a firm where the leader wasn’t thoughtfully engaged with their direct reports and listening and mandating teamwork. I’ve never seen a firm where that wasn’t the case, you know, that really had a strong culture and was doing really well. So you need that at the top. One of the higher-impact things I did is I put a two-by-two survey out to all the case teams. One axis was how much impact are you having on the client? And the other axis was how sustainable is your life? So the win-win is “Wow, we are changing things at the client. They’re so much better. They’re doing really well” and “I’m okay. I’m okay.” Of course, the other quadrant is “We’re churning and burning, and we don’t see any impact on the client.” So it was just a real quick way to see, okay, what teams are absolutely fine, and where are our trouble spots? Because the team’s gonna sense trouble long before the client does.

Leadership, Parenthood, and Career Sustainability

Harold Simansky: That makes sense. And can I just say one thing? Those two-by-two matrices, since Bain, they’ve become a very important piece of my life. Now it seems like I’m always trying to put things in two-by-two matrices. Very, very powerful. 

So Liz, I have to ask. I’m sure a lot of our listeners are thinking about it. You’ve done many things, you’ve been very busy, you’ve tried a bunch of different things. One of the things that has been a big part of your life, and you quickly mentioned it, [is that] you have four children. So, as all of us think about—whether in our job or in consulting, when you’re really required to work a lot of hours, really dedicated to your career—what does it mean to have four children as well as trying to really create a career that has been very, very accelerated?

Liz Ramos: I wouldn’t have had the career that I’ve had without support from a wonderful live-in nanny that was with us for 17 years. My kids are spread out. So it’s not like my 17-year-old needed a nanny. But she is a big part of helping me build my career. I can’t be in Hong Kong if I’m worried about what’s going on with my kids at home. So that is a really important piece, having someone you absolutely trust that will take care of, you know, what’s frankly most important in your life. While you are off building a career. 

Harold Simansky: So, Liz, what type of leader do you think you are?

Jeremy Shinewald: Wow, Harold, you’re really jumping in with a hard-hitting one there.

Harold Simansky: You know, let’s get a little bit less formal here. When I was at Bain & Company, it was very new. You obviously were far more senior than me. And there’s no reason you should remember this. You and I once were at an MIT recruiting event, and you were very worried about how I was going to get back to the office. And I ended up going back to the office with you. I mean, it was fairly simple. You had driven there, I had not. And out of every interaction I’ve had with folks at Bain, that was such a wonderful personal interaction that I now realize was just great leadership. I really felt like you felt for me, even in the most mundane way. But beyond that, beyond, you know, giving your colleagues rides, how else do you think about your leadership? What’s important to do? What has actually been something that you really see move the needle?

Liz Ramos: That’s interesting, because to me, that’s the mom in me. How is everybody going to get where they need to go safely? But I think my leadership style is probably influenced by my family situation. You know, we’re a team; we have to get there together. So I tend to be very collaborative. I like to have very strong people under me. And when I’ve come into a new role, sometimes there are people whose styles are just not going to align with mine, and we help them move on. I also don’t tolerate drama. Absolutely no drama. So my team under me has to be expert, team-oriented, and collaborative. And then, you know, we can run it like a team, and it’s fun. I’ve always looked forward to my staff meetings, because these are people I tremendously respect. And, you know, it’s fun to hear what they’re up to and how they’re collaborating with each other, and for me to share perspectives from senior leadership that are important for the staff to know.

Who Thrives in Human Capital and People Leadership Roles

Harold Simansky: That makes sense. And again, over the years, I’ve seen some really great people make the very deliberate choice to go into the people side of things, the HR side of things. Who do you think makes a good candidate to actually take that step?

Liz Ramos: You have to have been successful in the operating realm to do that. You know, having been a successful strategy consultant was absolutely key to me being able to take the operating role at Bain, much less the CHRO role. So you really need those skills at the level that you can understand them and help evaluate how those skills are present or can be developed in the people around you. So I think you really have to enjoy the numbers side of the business, too. There’s this myth that HR people are all touchy-feely. No, you have to be running the numbers constantly. You know, what’s our payroll? What’s our markup for benefits? What’s our pricing? How much fluidity do we have? So you really have to enjoy the numbers side of the business. And then, you know, you’ve got to enjoy the people.

Advice for MBA Students Considering HR or Leadership Careers

Harold Simansky: That really makes sense. Right now, what we’re seeing with a lot of our clients, and this is something that feels really new to me, is this notion of people actually going into the business school process, thinking about “I actually want to get onto the people side of things. I actually think I’m going to like HR.” And from your perspective, what do you say to someone who’s just starting business school now, both in terms of what sort of career is it to start off on the people side of the business as well as in business school? How can they prepare themselves to do that?

Liz Ramos: You’re right. I’ve seen that, too. My daughter recently graduated from Kellogg, and she told me that she had some classmates that were very interested in going into HR. And I said, “That’s wonderful,” because you’re right, that was not the case years ago, because the perception was [that] touchy-feely people were not at the table. So we are changing that, which is wonderful. I think my guidance would be that you have to make an industry decision first. And you know, if you have a background in tech, in consulting, in manufacturing, you build on that, because your knowledge of how the business operates is going to be so critical to your success as a human capital leader. And getting the internships can be trickier, too. That’s gonna be a lot more proactive, because nobody’s on campus having coffee chats with people that might want to join their HR department.

Final Takeaways: Leadership That Endures

Harold Simansky: That certainly makes sense. Terrific, then. So with that in mind, Liz, if someone in that exact situation approaches you, what can you tell them about how much you enjoyed the career, how satisfied you were with it?

Liz Ramos: I can say it was never boring, that there are always things that come up, you know, new problems to solve, but also people’s situations as well. But I went into the office with a smile on my face, knowing I was working with a great team, working on really challenging problems, and that I would have the freedom and the flexibility to come up with new ideas. They’d be tested, they’d be vetted, but just knowing that the objective is to make the place a little better, a little stronger.

Harold Simansky: That’s really terrific. And that’s also not a bad ending point, because thinking about making our podcast stronger, it would probably be stronger by ending here.

Jeremy Shinewald: Thank you so much for joining us. It was a fascinating walk through your career and through all the advice you have for young people. I think it’s been extremely helpful. Thank you.

Harold Simansky: Liz, we’d love to have you back, and we really do appreciate your time. 

Liz Ramos: Thank you. It’s been lovely being here.