On October 27, 2016, I conducted an email interview with Mrs. Cindy Skinner. Mrs.
Skinner is an extended member of my family and due to a full schedule email
correspondence was chosen for the interview. The reason Mrs. Skinner was chosen was
because I had heard that she has worked in the HR field for many years and that her
experiences are information that would be very useful in not only pursuing a career in HR
but would also provide me insights that can help me be successful in that career. Mrs.
Skinner is 58 years old.
Mrs. Skinner is currently performing two roles for Invesco. One is the Head of HR – North
American Client Engagement and Head of HR Global Operational Excellence. In this role
she leads teams of people in the United States and Canada who provide HR business
partner support to internal clients (IT, Operations, Sales, Marketing, Finance, Investments,
Legal/Compliance). “The support my team provides includes HR business, consulting,
talent acquisition, career and leadership development, compensation, and HR technology.”
Her other role is ensuring HR continues to improve efficiency and quality of service
globally through formal and informal continuous improvement initiatives.
Mrs. Skinner got into the HR field completely by accident. She was living in Connecticut
and working as an executive assistant to the CEO of Carrier, a division of United
Technologies. The CEO was terminated in 1990 and his successor was bringing his
assistant with him. This left her without a job. Fortunately, she had formed a good
relationship with the Head of HR for United Technologies and he recommended her for a
Benefits Coordinator role and they offered her the position. From there, she moved into an
HR Generalist role and left the company in 1994.
After completing her Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing and at the request of her family she
moved back to Houston, TX. Her first work back in Texas was as a HR Director, she
explained it more as an HR Generalist, at a metal health corporation who operated
psychiatric hospitals in the U.S. From there she moved to Enron for 4 years and in 2001
was terminated with 5,000 other of her co-workers when the big scandal happened. It took
another 6 months for to find her next role at Unocal where she worked for over 3 years. In
2005, Chevron acquired Unocal and she received a severance package and immediately
moved on to her latest role at Invesco.
