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Leading with Humanity

A conversation with Amazon Board Member Edith Cooper

In this episode...

Edith Cooper, Amazon Board Member and former Goldman Sachs CHRO, discusses leadership, organizational culture, and human connection in the modern workplace. Cooper shares insights from her experiences at Goldman Sachs and as co-founder of Medley, a coaching organization. She emphasizes the importance of maintaining customer centricity, fostering authentic human connections, and leveraging data and technology while preserving human expertise. (February 2025)

Transcript of the conversation

Featuring Edith Cooper, Co-founder, Medley & Board Member, Amazon and Miriam McLemore, Enterprise Strategist, AWS

Miriam McLemore (33:49):
Welcome to the Executive Insights podcast. My name is Miriam McLemore. I'm an enterprise strategist at AWS, and I'm thrilled today to welcome Edith Cooper, current Amazon board member and former CHRO for Goldman Sachs. Edith is also a co-founder of a company called Medley, which is a coaching organization, with her daughter, Jordan. It was founded in 2020. Edith, thank you so much for joining us.

Edith Cooper (34:27):
Oh, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Miriam McLemore (00:54):
Could you tell us a little bit more about Medley?

Edith Cooper (00:57):
Certainly. Medley is a company that I founded with my daughter, Jordan Taylor, gosh, it's almost five years ago now. And the guiding principle was that people need other human beings to thrive. And there are all sorts of mechanisms that we've relied upon in our lives, whether that's school groups, church groups, organizations that we really care about. But as you progress through life and you start to get to work, really, it's kind of up to you to start to figure out how to make those connections.

(01:30):
It was deeply important to me as a leader to live into the responsibility that I had to create environments where people could thrive. It was deeply important to my daughter, Jordan Taylor, who saw that she benefited from interactions where she could really meet with other people and show up as an individual but become part of a group. So that really was the genesis of Medley. She will remind me often that it was her idea originally, and it was my idea to join her in building Medley, and it's been an extraordinary experience.

Miriam McLemore (02:03):
I love that, not that it's just a mother-daughter adventure, but the coaching. I had an executive coach when I was with Coca-Cola, and that it was fundamental to my development.

Edith Cooper (02:18):
Well, I too had an executive coach, and I often wondered at the time, "Gosh, this has been an incredible experience. What would it have been like if I had had access to a coach professionally earlier?" The other thing that I spent a lot of time thinking about while I was at Goldman Sachs as a leader and then as the leader of HR was how we could really create experiences that would enable people to really learn how to operate effectively in teams or groups.

(02:48):
And so this construct that we have in Medley where we work with companies who support the learning development of their employees, we curate groups of six to eight people, we have extraordinary coaches who are really practiced at working with groups, and people come based upon common grounds of things that they want to learn. And they realize that things that maybe historically were known as soft skills are actually fundamental to how one creates an ability for people to thrive, things like listening. Listening is very important. Things like reacting and communicating in a way that is effective, particularly in circumstances where you're of a different point of view.

(03:33):
And so to be able to practice those things and to learn the skills associated with them in a safe space has really been an extraordinary experience for our members and for our coaches alike.

Miriam McLemore (03:45):
I love that. And at Amazon, as you know, as a board member, culture is key to how we operate and how we've been able to grow and remain consistent in our approach to a wide variety of businesses. As a former CHRO and now an Amazon board member, can you give us a little peek behind the covers there on how the culture manifests itself to you?

Edith Cooper (04:22):
Well, the Amazon culture is extraordinary. And as I was thinking about organizations that I wanted to be associated with and involved in, particularly from a governance perspective, to be honest, I started with the culture. I started with the cultural tenants that were expressed, and they're expressed quite publicly, but I really paid attention to how those cultural tenants came across in my conversations with other board members and with leaders of the company.

(04:52):
A customer-centric customer obsession, that is top of mind for almost every decision that's discussed at the board level of Amazon. Understanding the employee experience, particularly given the scope of professionals and people that are hired into Amazon. How are people able to leverage resources? How are we thinking about giving people career pathways? And quite frankly, how do we create and maintain a bar of excellence and individual accountability in the culture that, quite frankly, is going to succeed based upon the collective?

(05:32):
And so those were all the things that I saw early on as I was getting to know Amazon, and those are the things that I see routinely, whether it's in the board meeting or joining Amazon leaders at re:Invent, or going to visit fulfillment centers around the world and meeting with Amazonians who are bringing their commitment to the commitment of customers and delivering into the customer promise.

Miriam McLemore (05:59):
I love hearing that in the board meetings, customer centricity comes out so strongly, because it's certainly one of the reasons that I joined Amazon, and having been here over seven years now. I came from Coca-Cola, who thinks of itself as consumer-centric. And so it was in some ways a logical transition to customer centricity, but it is something that is so core to our day-to-day job. Why is that important to you?

Edith Cooper (06:46):
Well, to be an effective board member at a company like Amazon, it's critical to invest the time, and it takes time. I am quite fortunate to have the opportunity to interact with some of the great minds at Amazon, but also to interact extensively with our customers, Amazon's customers, because here in this convention arena of forums, you really do have an opportunity to see the state of technology and cloud, not just in the moment, but where it's going.

(07:29):
And my goodness, is there never been a time where being in the center of it and having that learning curve has been so critically important. As a board member of Amazon, but also as an individual who's operating in all these different business constructs, it's critically important.

Miriam McLemore (07:48):
Yeah. Now, as a former CHRO at Goldman, what were some of the things that you did when you were trying to drive organizational change? And also, I think people often are interested in what you did that worked and what you did that didn't work so well.

Edith Cooper (08:09):
Sure. Well, cultures at organizations like Goldman Sachs and Amazon, I would say, is similar or deeply embedded in sort of the ethos of the way things are done. And if you go around and you ask Amazonians or people from Goldman Sachs or any organization that has a strong culture, say, "Hey, what are the cultural tenants?" People will say, "Oh, the customer is the priority," or "A sense of inclusion and diversity," and the list will go on. And that's an important start.

(08:41):
What's even more important is how people behave on a day-to-day basis, whether it's in a high growth, high prosperity period or in a period that actually is sideways or not going quite as well. How do you show up? How do you show up for customers, first and foremost, and how do you show up for your colleagues, whether they're those that are more senior or those that are more junior?

(09:06):
And so I think what's critically important, in my experience, is to really pay attention, regardless of where you are in the organization, but particularly when you're in a leader in an organization, because you can get pretty distant. You surround yourself with people at a similar level, and the information flows through the organization to you. And as a leader of the company, you then in turn flow the information to the board. And so it's really important to stay in touch, not with that filtered view, but with the view of people doing the jobs along the way. And I think that's what was really critically important to me in the role of CHRO.

(09:52):
I have to say, I often would say it was the best job in the world because part of my job was spending time with people who were right out of university, spending time with people who had spent their career in the organization, and then spending time with our clients, who really were instrumental in shaping the prioritization of the business going forward. So those were all things that were critically important as a leader, but particularly as a CHRO of an organization.

Miriam McLemore (10:22):
Yeah, I completely agree, because getting... And you notice it very quickly when leaders are out of touch. The statements they're making don't reflect the sentiment of the organization. And I think stepping out of that role, and whether you call it reverse mentoring or just getting down into project mode and understanding, rolling up your sleeves, I think is powerful for the organization, too, to see.

Edith Cooper (10:58):
And it's critical, given the rapid pace of change that the world is experiencing with wonderful things and challenging things, to really make sure that you have that centered core value system of how you do things, the due diligence, the thoroughness of pursuing and opportunities, taking risks, being willing to take risks and fail because it fits within the vision of where you believe the opportunity will be going forward. And what that does is it takes a certain tethering that's required so that as the winds shift, you can stay focused.

(11:43):
Now, that's not to suggest that every generation gets to change everything on day one, and I'm learning that a lot in working with Medley. We're a group of eight people. I'm working with my daughter. I would say I learn as much from her and the team every day as hopefully I'm sharing with them. Why? Because they come at things from a different perspective. They have a totally different lens. And so the combination is really powerful, but it does take intent.

Miriam McLemore (12:12):
Yeah. And at Amazon, we believe in having a set of mechanisms so it's not leader-dependent, how we embed the culture. There's ways of working that are consistent across the organization. Is that something that, at the board level, you see and is discussed and has impact?

Edith Cooper (12:38):
Well, the board meetings at Amazon and generally are not casual situations. There's a lot of material to cover, both from a governance perspective, but also from a understanding of the business. There's a lot to cover.

(12:56):
There's ways of doing it at Amazon. Amazon does not favor PowerPoint presentations. There are these extraordinary documents that are written. Not great for someone who needs reading glasses, but nevertheless, they are content rich. And they really do foster a dialogue and conversation that I would say is extraordinary because it's all about digging deep, and it's all about looking around the corners and asking the question that might be a little bit off-piece, but nevertheless, we'll take the conversation into an important place. And that's the Amazon culture.

Miriam McLemore (13:36):
It is.

Edith Cooper (13:37):
That is the Amazon culture.

Miriam McLemore (13:39):
That writing culture and reading, speed reading, often.

Edith Cooper (13:41):
And reading. And inquiring.

Miriam McLemore (13:47):
Yes.

Edith Cooper (13:47):
And being comfortable being questioned, right? If there's a conversation where there's no question, I often look at the leaders who are there, and they have this like, "What? We didn't talk about anything hard?" But there's always questions, because there's always interesting opportunities and avenues and choices for avenues, so it's quite extraordinary.

Miriam McLemore (14:09):
I think the organization loves to hear that the board's going through these papers, because they're working hard.

Edith Cooper (14:16):
They're working hard, and it shows.

Miriam McLemore (14:18):
On these papers as well.

Edith Cooper (14:19):
And it shows.

Miriam McLemore (15:49):
So Edith, I was the CIO at Coca-Cola, and so had a very close relationship with HR.

Edith Cooper (15:59):
Excellent. I'm glad to hear it.

Miriam McLemore (16:01):
So can you talk a little bit about the importance of that relationship between technology and a CHRO?

Edith Cooper (16:10):
Sure. Well, the CHRO role is a fascinating one because you are responsible for all things people, whether it's hiring or developing or paying or moving them around, all things people. But if you were to ask most leaders what they're responsible for, they would say something similar, and they would add to that whatever P&L line or function that they might have. And I highlight that thread because it's really critical to know how an effective HR strategy is one that's really very much in partnership with all the critical business lines and functions within an organization.

(16:53):
Now, I would also say let us not for a second diminish the subject matter expertise that exists with an HR function, because all of these different things are complicated. The way that you think about recognizing talent and reviewing and developing and compensating requires a level of experience and science. That's really important.

(17:15):
But the thing that I always found was critically important and very exciting was creating partnerships with other key business leaders in the organization. In my instance, it was Goldman Sachs. You mentioned you were the CIO. I spent a tremendous amount of time with my colleagues in the sales and trading risk areas and the business leaders there, because I would sit at management committee, which was the convening of the top people at the company, and I would hear about how we would stand up these risk systems to really make sure that we were appropriately monitoring the risks of the company.

(17:54):
And I would listen, and I was like, "Well, I need some of that. I need some of that technology. I need to figure out a way."

Miriam McLemore (17:59):
"How do I get some?"

Edith Cooper (18:00):
"How do I get some of that?" And listen, I think it's a space where that has historically been under-invested. And so we spent a lot of mental energy on the guts and the infrastructure related to getting all those people hired and paid in a very, I would say, then, low tech manner. I think things have progressed tremendously, but my thought partners in really leveraging technology and science and data science differently were engineering colleagues, were leaders of some of the risk-taking businesses at Goldman Sachs. And it really enabled us to take our talent game to the next level.

(18:43):
As an example, we spent a lot of time talking about the significance of managers, and everyone at the top and throughout the organization would say, "Yep, managers, they're really important." But then you started digging deeper, it's like-

Miriam McLemore (18:57):
What does it mean? Right.

Edith Cooper (18:57):
... what does it mean? Is it really important?

Miriam McLemore (19:00):
Yeah. Okay.

Edith Cooper (19:00):
What are the attributes-

Miriam McLemore (19:01):
What is the measure?

Edith Cooper (19:02):
... of being a good manager? Isn't it just kind of like nice, nice stuff that... Actually, a colleague challenged me, "Eh, it's just this nice, nice stuff. Make people feel good." I'm like, "I don't think that's what it is."

(19:13):
And so we worked with some of the data scientists that worked in some of the other businesses to answer some of these questions. We learned that by looking at a pool of employees in a particular business, that if you had someone who had been defined as a good manager based upon certain criteria, that you were 70% more likely to be a strong performer yourself. I mean, think about that. So all of a sudden, it's like, wow, that's pretty impressive.

Miriam McLemore (19:42):
Strong leaders hire strong leaders.

Edith Cooper (19:43):
And then you dig further.

Miriam McLemore (19:44):
Yep.

Edith Cooper (19:44):
You dig further and you say, "Yeah, but what are the attributes of a manager?" Like, "Oh, we've got all these reams of information on review scores and nobody believes in," et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It's like, "Oh, well, maybe we better get a little bit more deliberate with respect to what these attributes are." And that was one example.

(20:06):
Another example was what's happening to the pipeline. We all spend a lot of time thinking about the pipeline, ensuring that we get extraordinary everything. Organizations want extraordinary everything, all different kinds of skills, perspectives, backgrounds, et cetera. And then you look and you go, "But where are they? What happened? We hired all these people, and we don't have the right engineers. We don't have the right diversity, broadly defined. What's happening?" Well, we actually started to do the work to determine, what does the career trajectory look like? This is not complicated tech. This is not. But imagine the potential of where we are now.

(20:49):
With some of the generative AI tools, we have the opportunity to really just look at the data in a more and more powerful way. We also have the opportunity to do harm. And there we go back to where we started, which is how important it is to really have a close partnership between those who are the subject matter experts, in this instance, those that are in HR, and those that really understand the power of the technology today but also the potential of the technology going forward.

Miriam McLemore (21:30):
Yeah. It's interesting, in this world of generative AI and how fast it's changing, I think HR is one of the spaces where, very quickly, from reviewing resumes and creating job descriptions and things like that, AI is a productivity tool.

(21:53):
But as you say, people have to stay in front of that to ensure that the expertise of HR is brought to the front. I say often to customers that we can, as IT leaders, take lessons from both finance and HR, because finance and HR have required all of us leaders to be good financial stewards and good people managers, or hope that we worked hard to make sure we were.

Edith Cooper (22:30):
We can always aspire to greatness.

Miriam McLemore (22:33):
But now in the world of technology, we also need leaders to be good technology managers and have that same understanding. But they still need to rely on the expertise of finance, the expertise of HR, and the expertise of that technologist, and not take a set of tools to transplant that expertise.

Edith Cooper (23:00):
I think that's right. I mean, we are in extraordinary times, but I suspect that if you look back on your career as a CIO, there have been other times that seemed quite extraordinary, and some things evolved as one would've expected, some things perhaps did not. But there is no doubt that the tools that are being developed and will continue to be developed will impact the way some jobs are done-

Miriam McLemore (23:26):
The way we work.

Edith Cooper (23:27):
... and the way people work, which, going back to the significant role of leaders, broadly defined, is how are you actually preparing your humans to be humans, which is really critically important, but also to embrace and generate ideas on the applications that these tools might have, because that, I would suspect... And I've got a never-ending learning curve. I have a wonderful universe of folks at Amazon who are so patient and take the time to really say, "Well, a lot of the interesting ideas are going to come from people starting to use the tools, and you can take a top-down approach, or you can make it part of the way people work." And that is incredibly exciting. It's a big opportunity.

Miriam McLemore (24:21):
Yeah. Completely agree. And you know at Amazon, keeping the bar high on talent is one of our core principles. And so having data, because we are very data-oriented, I think, is powerful. As you described, the value of not just doing the HR routines but actually becoming a data-driven people organization.

Edith Cooper (24:49):
And just getting smarter, I mean, in any large organization, but even a small one. But large organizations are particularly fascinating because of the number of data points that you have, and some of them are people transactions. People want to know how many vacation days they have. People want to know what the policies are. People get reviews, people get paid, people get... All of these things generate information that could be kind of interesting with respect to where things are headed, as long as you think about it from a responsible perspective, because one of the things that I think about a lot and I actually am concerned about is using the past performance metrics for a predictor of the future, because quite frankly-

Miriam McLemore (25:32):
Not a good way to go. Yep.

Edith Cooper (25:33):
... if we looked back 10 years ago and looked at the demographics of those that were successful, we would probably not be sitting here, or maybe 10 years ago, but 25 years ago, because I've been at it for a while, but-

Miriam McLemore (25:44):
Yep, me too.

Edith Cooper (25:44):
Yeah.

Miriam McLemore (25:45):
We wouldn't be sitting here.

Edith Cooper (25:46):
Yeah.

Miriam McLemore (25:47):
Yeah. So Edith, just your insights of the variety of things that you've been involved in in this evolution of technology, what are you seeing on the horizon that you're excited about, that create some opportunity for people, leaders, for organizations to change culture? Because that culture change thing-

Edith Cooper (26:20):
Is significant.

Miriam McLemore (26:21):
It's hard.

Edith Cooper (26:22):
Well, I am a lifelong learner, for real. I made the pivot from working and driving important businesses at Goldman Sachs to the great unknown of a startup and joining Slack as the first private company board and then evolving to be on the Amazon Board. And a lot of that is really driven by my desire to be comfortable being uncomfortable and learning. And over time, what I've seen is that there's patterns of my experiences that are quite relevant to whether it's Medley, which is a company of 10 people, or Amazon, as a board member, which is a company of 1.7 million. Clearly different-

Miriam McLemore (27:18):
Scale.

Edith Cooper (27:19):
... scale. But that has been an extraordinary journey for me. When I think about the journey, though, I think that the capacity now for one to get that information is just so much easier. It's just so much easier. So therefore, I think the biggest challenge that I have is carving out the time to really keep myself uncomfortable. Now, being involved with a company like Amazon does a good job at that, because the businesses are complicated and they're very large.

Miriam McLemore (28:00):
I can imagine. Yes.

Edith Cooper (28:00):
But just literally, thinking about my day-to-day and the businesses that I'm involved in, how am I really challenging myself to do things differently? I don't have to spend time out there hunting and pecking for information, and I surely wouldn't have anyone doing it for me anymore. So that time that was spent on those things can now be spent on thinking and putting the pieces of the puzzle together when the puzzle picture is changing all the time. It's really quite exciting.

(28:35):
And the other thing that I am just totally jazzed about is the increasing importance of human, because humans are so complicated, and I think we have historically kind of said, "Well, it's good to be a listener. It's good to be a good communicator. It's good to..." all these things. But now, if you think about some of the discovery things that technology and AI and generative AI are going to take over, what is going to be more important? More important is me sitting here, having a conversation with you.

Edith Cooper (29:09):
Listening to your questions, wondering why you're asking them, thinking about them later, coming back to you, developing a relationship with you, finding a way to stay connected. Why? Because there's going to be something that's really interesting that's going to come from that, and that is going to be more important than tasks.

Miriam McLemore (29:31):
Yeah. You made so many critical points. I think getting caught thinking... I had a great Coca-Cola leader that said to his team, "I don't want to see you always doing. I want you to get caught thinking."

Edith Cooper (29:47):
Yes.

Miriam McLemore (29:48):
Right? And we talk to our customers all the time about needing to be technology teenagers. Lean into this, right? Grab a young person if you need to. But this is a time to be curious, to get out of... because work is not going to be done the way it's always been done. And so leaning into these opportunities, and we've worked very hard to provide training materials, things at all levels of the organization to assist with that, what we call digital fluency, because it is just key to be a leader in today's world. Edith, I love your points.

Edith Cooper (30:30):
And at the core of it all, this reminds me of when I was a salesperson back in the day, a basic principle, which is really understand your customers. Really think about the decision-making tree that they have to go through. Who are their key stakeholders? What is their timeframe for impact? What is return on investment for this client going to be versus another client? How do you help with the tools of implementation and thinking not just about today, but the future?

(31:05):
Understanding your customer and an investment like this where you're gathering great minds on the client's side, everyone is going to walk away, I am sure, I will, with the, "I hadn't really thought about that. That's really interesting. I got to learn more. I've got to dig deeper." And that's why convenings like this, I call it like the re:Invent Medley, is so important.

Miriam McLemore (31:29):
Edith, you are amazing. Thank you so much for taking the time.

Edith Cooper (31:32):
Oh, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.

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One of the things that I think about a lot and I actually am concerned about is using the past performance metrics for a predictor of the future, because quite frankly, if we looked back at the demographics of those that were successful, we would probably not be sitting here.

Edith Cooper

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