Over the years, I’ve come to believe that leadership is a lot like exploration. The destination matters, but it’s curiosity, preparation, and the willingness to venture beyond familiar territory that determine whether you ever arrive.
I’ve always been drawn to what lies beyond the horizon. Whether exploring a complex business challenge, planning an offshore sailing passage, paddling a remote coastline, or understanding how emerging technologies are reshaping business, I’m energized by discovery. Across each of these experiences, I’ve found that meaningful progress rarely begins with having all the answers. It begins by asking better questions.
Looking back, I can see that curiosity has been the common thread running through my career.
Today, I lead the global marketing, communications, and customer experience organization for Dexian, one of the world’s largest providers of talent and technology solutions. Every day, I have the opportunity to help strengthen how our organization connects with clients, consultants, employees, and communities while exploring new ways strategy, experience, technology, and innovation can create lasting business value.
Over the past twenty-five years, I’ve worked at the intersection of business strategy, brand, customer experience, communications, technology, and organizational transformation. I’ve had the privilege of helping organizations navigate mergers, reposition brands, improve customer experiences, embrace new technologies, and align people around a shared vision. My career has included leadership roles with Dexian, Cross Country Healthcare, Randstad, and Aflac, but the common thread has never been marketing alone. It’s been helping organizations navigate change with greater clarity and confidence.
Along the way, I’ve been influenced by ideas like Black Sky Thinking—the belief that meaningful innovation often begins by looking beyond conventional boundaries. That perspective, combined with years spent listening to customers, employees, candidates, and business leaders, has shaped the way I approach leadership.
One principle has guided nearly every important decision I’ve made:
Seek understanding before solutions.
Data provides direction, but listening provides context. Before strategies are developed, technologies are implemented, or organizations begin to change, I believe leaders first need to understand the people they serve. Some of the best opportunities I’ve encountered have come from slowing down long enough to ask better questions and genuinely understand another perspective.
That philosophy doesn’t end when I leave the office.
Some of my best thinking happens while paddling a sea kayak, sailing offshore, traveling to unfamiliar places, hiking a trail, or looking through a camera lens. Those experiences continually remind me that preparation builds confidence, adaptability matters, and every new perspective has the potential to change how we see the path ahead. More often than not, the lessons I learn outdoors find their way back into the way I lead.
I’ve been fortunate to receive recognition throughout my career, including being named one of the American Marketing Association’s “4 Under 40” Emerging Leaders, a PRWeek Rising Star, and a Ragan/PR Daily Ace Communicator. My teams have also earned numerous national awards for our campaigns and projects. While I’m grateful for those honors, what I’m most proud of is seeing organizations grow, watching leaders develop, and helping teams accomplish things they once believed were beyond their reach.
As I look ahead, I’m excited by the opportunities—and challenges—that technology, artificial intelligence, and changing workforce models present. I believe the organizations that thrive will be led by people who remain curious, continue learning, and are willing to explore new possibilities with humility and purpose.
If the people I’ve worked with remember anything about me, I hope it’s this: that I encouraged them to look at challenges a little differently, to ask better questions, and to believe that more was possible than they first imagined.
After all, some of the most meaningful journeys don’t begin with certainty.
They begin with a simple question:
Why not?
Kip Havel 