Chief Change Officer
#61 Personal Loss, Career Growth, and Real Change: Rahshea Cardiff’s Happiness Journey - Part One
Sun, 03 Nov 2024
Part One. Who couldn’t use a bit more happiness? In this two-part series, we dive into the journey of Rahshea Cardiff, VP of Partnerships at Happy Companies—a venture dedicated to building happier, healthier workplaces. With over 20 years of experience in people management across big names like Best Buy, Starbucks, and Microsoft, Rahshea is passionate about creating meaningful employee experiences. But her story goes beyond the corporate world; she’s faced deep personal challenges, including the loss of her mother, a divorce, and raising her first child, all while navigating major career transitions. In today’s episode, Rahshea shares the resilience behind her journey and what led her to join Happy Companies. We’ll explore how she’s using her life experiences to shape a fresh approach to employee wellbeing and workplace happiness. Then, tune in for part two on Tuesday, where Rahshea delves into her role at Happy Companies, her mission to integrate technology with genuine human care, and her vision for transforming the modern workplace. Key Highlights of Our Interview: Conditioned Ambition: The Corporate Ladder Wasn’t the Life I Wanted “As we’re growing up, we go to school, we get good grades, we go to college, we get married, buy a house. Climb the corporate ladder—it’s what we’re taught, what we see. But in 2016, everything shifted—I realized I was chasing something that no longer felt right." Loss and Legacy: Realizing We’re Not Promised Tomorrow “Losing my mother and going through a divorce within a year taught me that we all fall into this trap of thinking there’s always tomorrow. I began asking myself, ‘If today were my last day, would I be at peace with how I spent it?’ Too many times, the answer was no. I knew it was time to recalibrate.” Choosing Purpose Over Position “I walked away from corporate stability and took a leap into entrepreneurship. And now, working with Happy, I’m able to stay close to my family and focus on meaningful work that aligns with my values.” The Gift of Presence: Living in the Moment “When we are able to shift our mindset and perspective to live in the present, it really is such a gift.” Connect with us: Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Rahshea Cardiff Chief Change Officer: Make Change Ambitiously. Experiential Human Intelligence for Growth Progressives Global Top 3% Podcast on Listen Notes World's #1 Career Podcast on Apple Top 1: US, CA, MX, IE, HU, AT, CH, FI, JP 2 Millions+ Downloads 50+ Countries --Chief Change Officer--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Expansive Human Intelligencefor Transformation Gurus, Black Sheep,Unsung Visionaries & Bold Hearts.EdTech Leadership Awards 2025 Finalist.20 Million+ All-Time Downloads.80+ Countries Reached Daily.Global Top 1% Podcast.Top 5 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.>>>180,000+ are outgrowing. Act Today.<<<See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: What is the focus of Rahshea Cardiff's journey?
Hi, everyone. Welcome to our show, Chief Change Officer. I'm Vince Chan, your ambitious human host. Our show is a modernist community for change progressives in organizational and human transformation values. who couldn't use a bit more happiness? This episode and the next dives deep into what it means to find joy and resilience in both work and life.
I'm thrilled to introduce Rishya Kardas, the VP of Partnerships at Happy Companies. Happy Companies is a venture focused on building happier, healthier workplaces. Rochelle brings over 20 years of experience in people management across major brands like Best Buy, Starbucks, and Microsoft. And she's deeply passionate about talent development and employee experience.
As we all know, bureaucracy, corporate politics, and constant changes like layoffs and digital transformation can make it tough for employees to thrive and survive. Richier herself has navigated intense transitions. leaving a corporate role at Microsoft to pursue entrepreneurship, experiencing the loss of her mother, facing divorce, and raising her first child.
In this two-part series, she shares her journey of resilience, why she joined Happy Companies, and how she's working to enhance employee experience using technology, but without losing the touch, the human touch. In today's episode, we'll focus on Rishia's personal story and career transitions.
On Tuesday, Park Chiu will explore her role at Happy Companies and her vision for transforming the workplace, balancing tech innovation with genuine care for people. Let's dive in and find some happiness. Roshia, welcome to our show. Welcome to Chief Change Officer. Good evening to you.
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Chapter 2: How did personal loss influence Rahshea's career choices?
Good evening. Thank you for having me, Vince. I'm so excited to connect with you this evening and dive into some great, thoughtful discussion. My name is Roshia. I currently serve as VP of Partnerships at Happy Companies. and went through some significant life experiences over the past several years that for myself really placed me in a deeply reflective space in terms of
what is my purpose in my time here? What are the intentions and the things that I want to accomplish and the positive impact that I want to have on other people, on the world? And then ultimately really positioned me to consider what is most important in life and on this journey. And that positioned me to make some shifts in life.
As I reprioritized my family, I reprioritized the things that bring me joy and purpose in my personal life. And going through that journey is then something that cascaded to my career journey and really positioned me to take some different perspectives towards doing meaningful work in the world and really wanting to connect that to the positive impact that I seek to have.
So that's just a little bit about that personal and professional journey that I've been on.
You spend over 20 years in corporate America with some powerhouse names. Best Buy, Starbucks, and Microsoft. all in different industries. Could you walk us through a bit of that journey? How did your role and approach evolve across these big firms, especially since you've always been focused on people management and leadership?
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Chapter 3: What key experiences shaped Rahshea's leadership philosophy?
Yes. I have so much passion towards people leadership and just as a whole, the people component of teams and organizations. I'm very passionate, you know, that people are truly the heart of what propels an organization forward. They are the heart of what propels growth and success. And so that people first ethos has always been a very integrated part of my foundation and leadership.
I started out my journey in Best Buy and I was with Best Buy for over a decade in multiple people leadership capacities. and ultimately had additional wonderful opportunities within Starbucks. And most recently, prior to my journey with Happy, I was with Microsoft for almost a decade. Within each of those opportunities that I've had, I always maintained the mindset that if I put my people first,
If I hire the right talent, if I give them a thorough impact structured onboarding experience that sets them up for success, and I then follow that up with consistent talent development, just understanding their individual goals, both personally and professionally, understanding their strengths and the things that they're passionate about. If I catch those things as a priority,
and I ensure that anybody within my team truly enjoys coming to work, truly has the opportunity for their talents and passions to have the greatest impact to our clients, to our collective vision and goals, then the results will follow.
And really, truly, that is what I attribute to the success that I experienced in my corporate career and reasons that I feel I've had such amazing opportunities was really keeping that people first mindset and trusting that the results and the growth would follow. That has ultimately
led me to many wonderful chapters in my career, and ultimately that passion is what has connected me to where I'm currently serving in my role with HAPI.
You've worked at big names like Best Buy, Starbucks, and Microsoft, each with their own well-defined structure, policies, and, dare I say, bureaucracy. I can relate because during my 15 years in large corporations, mainly in finance, I experienced a similar environment. On the one hand, as an employee, I appreciated the structure, the resources, and the weight that comes with a big brand.
But when it came to handling people issues, especially from the employee's side of things, I often felt disconnected from HR. Many times, it felt like they were more focused on enforcing policy rather than truly helping employees. that KPIs seemed more aligned with executing company policies rather than supporting employee needs.
Given your extensive experience in people function within large companies, I'd love to hear how you managed this balance. How did you reconcile your personal passion for putting people first with the reality of representing and implementing firm policies, which sometimes don't always feel like they are in the workforce's best interest?
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Chapter 4: How can leaders balance corporate policies with people-first values?
Fair and consistent. We have to be fair and consistent. Well, yes, that structure plays a role, right? And it's necessary. It is a necessity in many ways. It's also... There's a role of a leader to demonstrate leadership courage. And there are times when that should come into play. And so to provide an example there, if
I took over a market and prior to taking over that market, I was informed that these members of the team are currently on performance improvement plans and we would expect that they would likely be making changes soon, right? And so I came in and I said, I can appreciate that insight. I can appreciate where the process currently is.
However, as the new leader coming in, what I will ask for is the opportunity to observe the dynamics and the specific circumstances with these individuals and to gain further insight about their opportunities. and then have the opportunity to assess from there. And that's demonstrating leadership courage.
And I think it's super important that, yes, we have structure and we have policies and they do give us a guideline to work within and by, and create those standards to be fair and consistent. But there's also times that a leader needs to exercise discernment and exercise courage in navigating a conversation or a situation. For example, within that story I was sharing,
One of those individuals, I sat down anytime we take over a team, one of the very first things I do is I schedule one-on-ones with every single person on my team. I just seek to understand one more about them as an individual, What are they passionate about? What do they feel their strengths are in their specific areas that they bring superpowers to the team?
I like to understand a bit more about their strengths and opportunities in their performance and what plans they may have in place around that. And in general, just get a feel for what's going good. What do we say? This is awesome and we want to keep this going. And what are some of the pain points? What are some of the things that we really need to address
and consider making some changes around moving forward. So within having those honest conversations with my team, these two individuals whom I had been shared this information with coming in to take on this team, I had heart to heart with them. We looked over their performance trends. We looked over their deliverables and what had consistently been shown over a specific period of time.
One of those individuals was able to really do some great reflection, some deep inward reflection, and accept some responsibility in those areas and said, Rashi, if I can have your support, if you and I can develop an action plan moving forward and I can turn this ship around, I would really appreciate that because these are the long-term goals I have that I'd like to accomplish.
And if I have the right leader working with me and the right support, I believe I can still do that. So I said, absolutely, let's make it happen. And just to share, that individual did just that. They turned that ship around. They became one of the top three performers in the nation in their deliverables. And that person is now serving in a corporate management role at our corporate campus.
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Chapter 5: What lessons did Rahshea learn from her corporate career?
But within that, you're given the context coming in, you're given the expectation coming in, you know that you need to work within that performance management cycle, But as a leader, you need to exercise that wisdom and discernment and not be afraid to have courageous conversations, even if that means with your upper leadership.
And so in those instances, I went to my upper leadership and I said, listen, I would like to sit down and review these two situations with you and provide my perspective and my feedback, and then share with you what our plan of action is moving forward. I believe that we can turn this around. You can't shy away from having those conversations.
Again, whether that's peer to peer or that's to your upper leadership. So I think that was sometimes where some challenges come in play of I'm just going to go by the policy or I'm going to go by the steps that were issued to me. Are there times when that's the right process to follow? Absolutely.
But are there times where as a leader, you need to demonstrate that wisdom and discernment and have courageous conversations? Yes.
The people function is crucial, but it's also uniquely challenging. Unlike tech, policy or finance, You can't just apply a formula or a quick fix to people issues. There are so many layers, emotions, personalities, motivations, incentives, and politics, all of which make it complex to navigate.
One of those layers is happiness, which can be an emotion, but also an approach to leadership and management. Before we dive into your work with Happy Companies, I know you've experienced some major transitions yourself. Moving from a large corporation into a new venture is a big leap in itself. But on top of that, you faced some personal challenges along the way.
Could you share what that journey was like? And how did you find your grounding to move forward even stronger?
Yes. It's one of the things that's interesting as we reflect on our journey is There tends to be some conditioning as we're growing up. We go to school, we get good grades. We go to college, we get married, buy a house, continue to climb the corporate ladder and achieve a certain title or a certain status.
And it's just kind of things that we observe, we see, we hear, we're taught as we're growing up. And it was always very important to me to be very independent, to be able to stand on my own two feet as I navigated the world. And I really was very ambitious from a very young age. And my mother was always telling me that was her concern for me.
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Chapter 6: How does Rahshea define success in her career?
go through some really challenging, challenging life experiences. I went through a divorce with the person whom I had spent half of my life with up to that point. My mother went through multiple battles with cancer, and she ultimately passed away in 2017. And so those were two tremendous losses, literally within a year of one another.
And they really started to shift my entire mindset and perspective. towards life, towards my priorities, just in general towards how I wanted to move forward in life. I then had my first son in 2018. That just continued this kind of intense internal evolution because now I had this amazing little person whom I wanted to provide a wonderful life for.
I wanted to be the most amazing mother for, and I didn't want to miss it all. I didn't want to be so focused on my career and working so much that in 10 or 15 years, I'd look back and feel like I missed it all. You know, it was through those back-to-back experiences that I really started to ask myself, what am I doing with my life?
What are my priorities and how do I want to be very intentional and purposeful with how I adjust those moving forward? When you go through a loss like a parent, just you realize that we fall into this mindset We're all moving so fast and like at the speed of light every day and there's so much going on that we just have this mindset of there's always tomorrow.
It really takes going through an experience like that to help you realize, no, we're not. And one of the biggest mistakes we can make is living as though we are always guaranteed tomorrow. And that really started creating some massive just internal transformation for me. And so at this season in my life, I was overseeing four states of business. I was traveling extensively.
My son was right in that two- to three-year-old range. I would come back and just feel that I had missed so much. One of the questions that I like to ask myself a lot now, at the end of each day, I ask myself, am I at peace? Am I content? Do I have joy for how I spent this day? And if it were my last day, would I be at peace with it?
And if I reach a season where there's too many days that the answer is no, then I know that I need to pause, take a step back and recalibrate. And that is really what happened. I started asking myself that question and there were too many days the answer was no because I was missing time with my son. I was gone a lot.
Even when I was with him, I wasn't fully present because my role was very high responsibility and very consuming. And so I had to start asking myself, What changes are you going to make? What are you willing to do differently moving forward to work towards the life that you really want to have?
Which is being able to prioritize my family, my friends, my passions, and making a positive impact on other people's lives in the world. And so I chose to resign from corporate America and take a massive leap of faith into entrepreneurship. I did that for about 18 months and then I ended up crossing paths with Happy.
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