Building a strong career in technology through products that impact millions of lives is a responsibility and achievement that Chiara P. has built throughout her career at Kimberly-Clark.
That's why we took the opportunity to have a chat with her and understand more about the challenges she has faced, her learnings, and also how she combines her well-being with her day-to-day work. Check out our conversation below:
Chiara, tell us about yourself and your current role at Kimberly-Clark.
Chiara: I am Chiara P. and I'm Italian, but I've been living in the UK for the last 20 years - so a long time now! I've got this dual thing in my head about being a bit Italian and a bit British, but that allows me to have two teams to root for during the football World Cup!
I currently lead the Revenue Growth Management (RGM) product teams under the Commercial Transformation umbrella. We work on building analytic solutions including Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning use cases to advance and accelerate critical Analytics capabilities.
Share a little about your internal career journey at Kimberly-Clark.
Chiara: Yes, it's been 17 years now. I started in Shared Services at the time, and we looked after all of Europe. In those days, I was mainly working in the order-to-cash area for Europe/Middle East. I looked after Italy, Southern Europe and the UK.
A few years later, I decided to take an opportunity and apply for a role as a finance business partner for supply chain in our Kimberly-Clark Professional division. It taught me a lot and I was completely out of my comfort zone. It was a pivotal role in terms of understanding what I could potentially do.
A close mentor saw my potential and encouraged me to apply for a Technology Portfolio Coordinator position as a change agent implementing global processes. I worked in this capacity for two years until the opportunity to work as a Business Partner for Kimberly-Clark Professional.
I knew a lot of the stakeholders and processes in Kimberly-Clark Professional. I had a lot of connections, but it was another steep learning curve. However, I knew the people, I knew I had relationships, and I knew some of the processes, so I took the role for this reason. It was a difficult role, but I took away great learnings.
What are your thoughts about Kimberly-Clark’s
culture?
Chiara: I hope that I’ve impacted Kimberly-Clark’s culture by being here for 17 years. Culture is just the way we all behave together. I think for me, the reason why I’m still at Kimberly-Clark’s after all these years is about a few things. First, the current culture is one where we don’t have to babysit people, but we really do care for each other and for the planet. And the second thing, which is super, super important, is about always doing the right thing. When there is an issue, we work to resolve the issue, and I think it’s something I'm very proud of within our culture.
What advice would you give to qualified talent looking to work at Kimberly-Clark?
Chiara: My advice would be to get yourself familiar with your team, your extended team and your global stakeholders.
If you look after a certain process, understand who comes before and who comes after. Get yourself very familiar with your organization as well. It’s one thing I would say that really helps.
How do you manage your life-work balance?
Chiara: It’s not that there’s a magic formula, it’s that a life-work balance is very personal. What works for me doesn't work for you.
For instance, it's important for me to keep some space between the work and the personal life, especially now that I work from home. I need to plan time for myself for exercising. This is something that is very important for my mental health to keep myself balanced.
The other thing is when I finish for the day, I finish for the day. I don't look at my phone. I don’t go into the app. The weekends are my personal time so I don't work during the weekend - I don't think I ever did, and it should be that way.
Can you share some thoughts on DTS (Digital Technology Solutions) Innovation?
Chiara: So, there are a lot of opportunities in innovation. What I love about innovation is finding the balance of doing something small and proving out a proof-of-concept and then having the time, the money, the resources to do something new. I would hope that we can do some smaller projects and gain the resources and a little budget to focus on the latest ideas. I think it would go a long way and it would be lovely to see Kimberly-Clark have more of these ideas come to life.