Lisa Padden is a Senior Consultant for Highland Performance Solutions. She is a former Fortune 500 Organization Development / Human Resources executive who spent her corporate career helping organizations, teams, and individuals be more effective. With 25+ years of experience, she specializes in talent management processes and tools, such as succession planning, competency model design, and high potential development programs. She has deep expertise and passion around employee engagement and organizational culture. She loves helping employees maximize their ability to contribute to the business and have fulfilling careers at the same time!
Lisa began her career in the energy sector as an HR Business Partner for Amoco (now BP). Her passion quickly aligned with Organization Development (OD) opportunities such as 360 feedback, coaching, and assessments. In her next role, she administered the global employee engagement survey and consulted on strategies to enhance employee engagement. She then worked directly for the SVP, Human Resources, to provide OD support for HR. She continued to grow her expertise at subsequent organizations (Gateway, United Stationers, IRI, and R1 RCM) having opportunities to focus on OD sub-specialties such as talent development and change management. At United Stationers (now Essendant) she launched and enhanced the succession planning process for the top 600 roles, producing Board-level materials, facilitating executive calibration sessions, and supporting high potential development. Lisa also grew her own leadership skills at United Stationers – starting as an individual contributor, followed by promotions to manager, director, and finally, Vice President of Talent & Organization Effectiveness, responsible for culture, talent management, learning, and DEI.
Since she began her external consulting career, she has worked with clients in multiple industries with global reach, including technology, manufacturing, associations, municipalities, and non-profits.
Lisa has partnered with organizations on a variety of programs, such as a multi-year values roll-out and integration; employee engagement survey analysis, executive summaries, and executive action planning working sessions; a cultural alignment audit; high potential program design; career pathing; and manager educational programs on topical issues like psychological safety. She is passionate about building manager and HR capability and loves to coach/mentor emerging OD leaders.
Lisa holds a Master of Human Resources from the University of South Carolina and a Bachelor of Science in Commerce from the University of Virginia, with a second major in psychology. She has also earned a Certificate in Evidence-Based Coaching from Fielding Graduate University.
She enjoys cooking, entertaining, and trying new restaurants – and balances her love of food with Pilates, strength training, and walking. She’s an avid reader of books (positive psychology, leadership, coaching, novels) – preferably with a nice glass of wine and a cat on her lap. Lisa also loves live music and long road trips.