Heather Jin
Global Head of Social Impact and Sustainability, Medallia
📍London, UK
If you could describe yourself in one word, what would that be and why?
Resilient. I am so grateful to my parents for fostering this quality. Growing up, I moved 6 times with my family – including immigrating from Japan to the US when I was 7 years old and attending to 3 different high schools. Through these moves, I learned to find opportunities in change – to meet new people, learn new perspectives, and gain empathy. In the work environment, I believe my resiliency is my superpower as I leverage change (whether it’s a new team, leader, office location, project, etc.) as an opportunity to find solutions.
Do you give back to the community with your team and work? If so, what does this look like?
As I lead our Social Impact and Sustainability practices, my north star is finding the common ground among: what the community needs, what our employees need, and what our business wants to achieve.
For the Social Impact practice, that looks like leveraging Medallia’s superpowers -- our people, product, and capital -- to support nonprofits that our employees are passionate about. In fiscal year 2023, we donated over $1.1M to support 50+ nonprofits globally and increased employee volunteerism by 60% and fundraising by 111% since September 2021.
For the Sustainability practice, that looks like partnering cross-functionally to determine how we can meaningfully reduce our emissions. Medallia recently committed to becoming net-zero by 2040, becoming the first Experience company with such a commitment. We also committed to set near-term targets with the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), so we’re excited to establish our path to net zero grounded in the latest climate science.
What’s the best piece of advice you've ever received?
On the theme of change, one of the best advice I received to help navigate organizational change is to ensure you have a deck at all times that outlines the who, what, why of your role. This deck showcases who you are, what you or your Team has achieved already, and why it’s important to continue investing in the Team. That way, any new leader or teammate can immediately know how to work best with you or your Team.
"On the theme of change, one of the best advice I received to help navigate organizational change is to ensure you have a deck at all times that outlines the who, what, why of your role."
What are you looking forward to this year? Are there any goals (personal or professional), activities, or experiences you are excited about?
Each year, I set one word as my theme for the year. For 2024, my theme is “peace”. To me, that means finding joy in the little moments; finding balance among priorities for work, family, community, and myself; and building day to day habits to help achieve this balance.
