early career
Tanya began her professional career as a recreational therapist, helping people with autism and behavioral disabilities enjoy life to the fullest extent possible. She developed ways to build relatedness, and became responsible for hiring other therapists and training them in her process and approach.
Tanya recognized that her recreational therapy work was effective because it was about building good relationships – both between clients and therapists, and between clients and their families. After multiple friends suggested she put her skills to work in the business world, she took on her first HR position with a startup e-learning company in San Francisco.
human resources
Tanya became a key performer for that startup, and gained experience in every area of HR. As one of only two HR professionals kept on when the company pared down to go public, she was a guiding voice for HR in the process of becoming a publicly traded company.
She also led the HR side of the acquisition of an instructional design company in India, and was responsible for on-site change management initiatives in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kolkata.
Ready for her next challenge, Tanya took on her first corporate role, with Sara Lee®. She credits a great mentor there with teaching her techniques for grooming leaders and preparing them for more challenging roles; showing her how to facilitate complex strategy, culture, and team building; and helping her find her love of coaching.
business process
When Tanya was tapped on the shoulder at Sara Lee® to leave HR and take a business role as a change agent for continuous improvement in logistics and manufacturing, she accepted. During her subsequent training in Lean, by Six Sigma experts at the black-belt level, she was given the opportunity to apply these skills to improve engagement, reduce cost, and improve distribution and manufacturing processes. After this assignment, she was promoted to Director of HR.
bringing it all together
After Sara Lee®, Tanya served in several senior, HR leadership roles:
- Director of Global HR, then Vice President of Global HR and Operational Excellence for Atlas Material Testing, a global leader in manufacturing of highly-engineered weathering test instruments
- Global Director of HR and Operational Excellence for AMETEK, a leading global electronics manufacturer that acquired Tanya’s previous company, with $2.5B annual sales
- Director of Human Resources for Hospira, the world’s leading provider of injectable drugs and infusion technologies, with $4B annual sales
- Vice President of HR in the U.S. for Dyson, a global leader in design, manufacturing, and sales of vacuum cleaners, fans, hand dryers, motors and heaters, with over $1B annual revenue
- Chief Human Resources Officer for PharMEDium (acquired by AmerisourceBergen), a leading provider of compounded sterile preparations serving over 3,000 acute care hospitals nationwide, with $136B annual sales
Tanya made each of these positions a combination of both business process improvement and HR development.
Tanya has always gravitated toward developing leaders, and came to recognize that developing people is an integral part of business improvement. Leaders that people want to follow, plus a culture of teamwork, form a foundation for the rest of the business to run smoothly, effectively, and profitably.
When Tanya decided it was time both to expand her reach and to focus exclusively on coaching, leadership development, and team facilitation, she founded bluvista, serving clients worldwide.