A Kindred Conversation with Daisy Auger-Domínguez, Part I | VICE’s Chief People Officer on reimagining the workplace

This article is a transcript of Daisy and Nina’s exclusive conversation for Kindred members. Kindred is the membership built to support leaders building socially responsible businesses. Kindred membership provides organizations and leaders with access to the education, leadership development, and community of peers they need to confidently navigate increasingly complex environmental, social, and governance (ESG) decisions.?

Nina: Daisy, it's so good to see you again, thanks for making the time! You've held a number of senior ‘people-focused’ positions at places like Moody’s, WarnerMedia, Disney, Google, Viacom, and now at VICE. But I'd love to start by excavating behind those titles—what curiosities and questions have guided you throughout this amazing career?

Daisy: The question of curiosities is such a great one Nina, thank you — we rarely get these moments of reflection in our day-to-day. When I talk about my career, I often begin with where I was born and my childhood because I feel that hugely shaped my sense of self and how I make sense of the world.

I was born in New York City to two teenage parents of Dominican and Puerto Rican descent. But I was raised mostly in the Dominican Republic by my paternal grandparents — and I say that because it's the opposite migratory pattern, if you will, of most US Hispanics and Latinx. But it also was so significant in shaping my sense of identity and who I was. I grew up in a non-traditional family setup, in a very close knit family, and attending an international school where every language was spoken.?

Most nationalities you could think of existed on this small little island of the Dominican Republic, and so I grew up with so much openness and knowledge of the world beyond our little place in it. Many of my closest childhood friends are still dear to me; they’re Danish and Dutch and Israeli and Chinese and Puerto Rican, and of course Dominican. Growing up amidst such diversity was an opportunity for me to just always be curious about what differences existed in others and, by the same token, what similarities existed in all of us.??

But then when I moved back to the US, I was a junior in high school and all of a sudden I was put in this box, and it was a Hispanic box. It was a box that said to the world, and to me, that the people I represented were largely uneducated, largely immigrants, and largely Spanish speaking. And so when I spoke English fluently, that was a big surprise to people. It was also a surprise to people when I was getting accepted into schools that I applied for. This wasn’t because of affirmative action, I was a really good student and had earned my spot there. But their questioning made me question my place too.?

These were all identity formation moments for me, and they served to create these deeper curiosities around why are things this way? But more importantly, why does it have to be that way? I was always questioning why can't it be different because I’d seen ‘different’ in the Dominican Republic!

These same questions followed me as I entered the workforce. I began my career as a credit risk analyst and, you know, I never dreamed of being a credit risk analyst — that was not my dream job as a young person. But I had this Master's in Public Administration and they were hiring young people like me. Very early on in the job, I saw really talented women and people of color sidelined and marginalized, and often as a result leave the company to go somewhere else and do really well there. And so, again, my curiosity sparked: it must not necessarily be about any shortcomings of these people, there has to be something in the system, in the water, in who we are as an organization that was forcing certain people out.

And so all of those pieces are what led me to take on different career opportunities to tackle this challenge. Along the way, frankly, learning how to navigate these corporate setting was hard. I didn't grow up with dinner table conversations like the ones I have with my daughter now about career choices and things that happened to me in the workplace. Growing up, I had very hard working family members but they were not experienced in the corporate setting, and so for me, I had to learn how to navigate that — as a woman, as a woman of color, as an immigrant, as all of these labels and categorizations, that for me, were not really labels, they were just all components of my identity.?

But they were also what made me special, and what allowed me to have an opinion that was different from others. I would sometimes be in places where, again, those different opinions were questioned and I’d wonder why do I need to pay a ticket to gain entrance to something where all these other people are just getting in for free??

I was at Moody’s for 12 years, first a credit risk analyst, but then took on roles as the head of their global foundation and later as the head of diversity and inclusion. For these roles and the many that came after at other organizations, I can't tell you that I chose all of them, per se; they were opportunities that presented themselves at the right time and that I had the right skill set to join. But the curiosity I took with me to each was always why are the differences amongst people that I'm working with not leveraged as a positive, but rather, as a way to bring them down? And how can we change it?

Nina: This question you’re asking of “why is that and how can we change it?” — I imagine that’s still something you hold every day when you look at your own organization. Today, what are some of the things you’re seeing and asking “why is that way and how can we change it” to be better.

Daisy: Oh, my gosh, I ask that question of my team all the time. My favorite question of my team is, “what are we trying to solve for?” That's the question that I always ask whenever there's any gathering. Let's just get clear. What are we trying to solve for and for what reasons? And are we doing this the right way where we have the right voices in this room? We’re asking these questions of everything from what might be seen as more mundane or operational practices like our recruiting process, to big questions of reimagining like, “are we doing enough to support our people in these scary times?”?

The second question that my team knows I'm always going to ask is, “how do we do that with an inclusive lens?” Again, what are the voices we're missing? Who are the people who are not getting through the system, and for what reasons? What does that makeup look like? I'm constantly looking at our data of who's leaving and and who's coming into our company, and what does that demographic breakdown look like? And what does that skill set breakdown look like??

Another question that we don't often give ourselves the privilege of asking is, “who do we want to be?” We are so often mired in the “this is what I need to do, here's what my strategy plan is” that we often forget to ask “but, who do we want to be?” The pandemic in some ways has opened up room for this question. A great resignation is happening, and we know why: our entire lives have been turned topsy turvy and as we reorient how we live, people are making different choices about work. Okay, well, we know that we can't control for that. But what can we control for? And how do we do that in a way that is aligned with our values and that is aligned with who we are as an organization? And importantly, not just who we are today, but who we want to be in the future.

Nina: I think that question of “who do we want to be” you just asked is huge. And it feels like it might even be signaling that the CPO role more broadly is changing. On the one hand, it's always been the talent machine, concerned with operational things like compliance and payroll. But it sounds like the role has stretched to encompass these bigger existential questions of what a company aspires to be—maybe something closer to a culture engine than a talent machine. I'd love to hear your perspective on that evolution.

Daisy: I think you nailed it perfectly. It's a cultural engine. I was so pleased when Nancy Dubuc, VICE’s CEO, approached me about this Chief People Role a little over a year ago, because the scope was very much focused on an HR leader that would lead from the front and with culture as a lens. And that, to me, was music. That's what I've been wanting to do and that's what I've been doing my entire career — whether my managers liked it or not, that's so endemic to who I am.?

And listen, an HR role will always be operational, it's what we have to do to keep the lights on. But I always remind my team, and I know I’m biased here, that we have one of the biggest responsibilities in this organization. We’re responsible for our people, our biggest assets. What we do as an organization and how we do it is all because of our people. And so our jobs are to not just deliver from a compliance perspective. It should be about anticipating problems, diagnosing solutions, and delivering solutions for our teams. At a high level, that’s what my team does.?

This ongoing process I think has been part of the evolution of the CPO or CHRO role, or whatever, whatever title you want to call us.?Our approach has to be both human- and business-centered. And the two for far too long we've been told can't be reconciled. And I refuse to believe that! I refuse to believe that I can't have a very strong business orientation and still put our people first. Because at the end of the day, no organization can do anything without our people, and it’s our job to protect, support, engage, empower, push, incentivize, and inspire our people, all at once.

Daisy Auger-Domínguez has made it her mission to make workplaces more equitable and inclusive. As the Chief People Officer at VICE Media Group, Daisy leads a global team responsible for people operations, diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and corporate social responsibility practices. Her TEDx talk Inclusion Revolution and upcoming book with Seal Press by the same title calls on everyone to take on the work of dismantling inequity in the workplace.

Auger-Domínguez has designed, led, and scaled organizational transformations at Moody's Investors Service, The Walt Disney Company, Google, and Viacom, and founded Auger-Domínguez Ventures, a workplace culture consultancy. A dynamic speaker, writer and advisor, Daisy serves on the boards of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Brooklyn Children’s Museum, Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, and St. Ann’s Warehouse.