Dr. Heather Waitman
Senior Human Resources Executive
Work, Leadership, and Influence
The work that informs how I understand systems, leadership, and the conditioning of behavior
Senior Human Resources Executive with more than 20 years of experience shaping how organizations structure, interpret, and lead their workforce.
My work has focused on building and leading HR functions that do more than support operations. They influence how performance is defined, how decisions are made, and how leadership is experienced across the organization.
I have led enterprise HR strategy across complex, multi-entity environments, partnering with executive leadership to align workforce systems with business objectives while navigating risk, compliance, and organizational change.
This work has resulted in measurable impact, including reducing unemployment costs, lowering workers’ compensation premiums, and maintaining insurance costs below industry benchmarks.
As a member of the executive leadership team, my role has extended beyond function into influence, helping shape organizational direction while observing how systems and expectations shape behavior.
These experiences inform the perspective explored in my work on gender, power, and conditioning.
Leadership Experience
Enterprise Leadership
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Led HR strategy across multiple operating companies, aligning workforce structures with organizational growth and long-term scalability
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Built HR functions from the ground up, developing policies, systems, and frameworks that governed how employees were evaluated, supported, and advanced.
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Oversaw multi-state compliance across employment laws and regulatory environments, ensuring consistency while navigating complexity
Systems, Structure, and Behavior
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Designed and implemented performance management systems that shaped how success was defined and rewarded.
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Harmonized benefits and compensation structures across entities, influencing not only retention, but how value was communicated within the organization.
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Observed how policies, often neutral on the surface, interacted with social conditioning to produce uneven outcomes
Leadership, Culture, and Decision-Making
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Partnered with executive leadership to guide organizational decisions impacting culture, structure, and workforce strategy.
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Navigated sensitive employee relations matters, where power, perception, and communication intersect in real time.
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Supported leaders in understanding not just what decisions to make, but how those decisions would be experienced.
What This Work Revealed
Across organizations, roles, and leadership levels, a consistent pattern emerged:
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People do not operate in isolation.
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They operate within systems of expectation.
Those systems shape:
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How authority is expressed
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How confidence is interpreted
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How behavior is rewarded or constrained
And over time, those patterns become internalized.
Connection to the Work
Wearing Pink, Resisting Power is grounded in this reality.
It examines how early conditioning evolves into structured expectations, and how those expectations continue to influence behavior long after individuals enter professional environments.
This work is not separate from my experience.
It is informed by it.
And it is written to make visible what often goes unnamed.
EDUCATION
Capella University, Minneapolis, MN
Doctor of Philosophy in Organization & Management - Specialization in Human Resources Management
Manhattanville College, New York
Master of Science – Human Resources Management