Nina Potenza, 54, is chief human resources officer at IKEA US and has been with the company for 32 years.
She joined the company right after graduating from university in the UK (her hometown) to work in payroll. Admittedly, she wasn’t really interested in the work itself, but she “liked” the company’s approach to Swedish design.
“I would say that on the first phone call, I was very attracted to the brand more than the job,” Potenza told CNBC Make It.
Not only was she passionate about working with brands, but she also wanted to work for a global company that would give her the opportunity to move abroad.
Potenza spent his first seven years at IKEA traveling around the UK, helping to build new locations and develop the team.
During this time, she learned to clearly communicate to her boss that she wanted to work abroad. “Express your interests out loud and don’t keep that information to yourself,” she says. “You have a responsibility as an individual to share with your organization, “This is my passion.”
She discussed her goals with her boss and asked, “How can I get more information about it?” And who should you turn to for advice on how to do so?
It turns out that Potenza’s first overseas move was sparked by a few cold emails. In these messages to IKEA human resources managers in each country, she asked if there were any vacancies she could fill.
“What really surprised me was how curious everyone was and said, ‘Hey Nina, thank you for reaching out to me. I’d love to talk to you and find out more. What do you do? What are your goals and why do you want to come and work here?'”
Nina Potenza is Chief Human Resources Officer at IKEA US
Courtesy of the subject
Looking back, Potenza feels that she was “very naive in her 20s” for sending a cold email to her human resources boss, whom she had never met.
“In a way, they might have thought I was a little crazy,” she says. “But I think they were encouraged by the kind of courage that I had.”
Potenza ended up interviewing for three different roles in Scandinavia before going to Denmark and choosing the role that was then part of IKEA’s global organization.
She remembers the process being “a little scary at first.” Because I didn’t know what kind of reaction I would get from my manager, let alone anyone else in the company. Potenza said her supervisors encouraged her to continue pursuing her goals and deepen her own understanding of what she wanted to get out of the experience.
“What’s really interesting about this question is that I have to be able to process for myself why I want to move abroad,” Potenza says. For her, “I wanted to experience IKEA in a different culture and really develop that learning, but also be in a familiar place with a brand that I knew.”
Ultimately, she says moving around within IKEA and around the world was key to her long tenure at IKEA. After working in Denmark, Ms. Potenza first moved to the United States to work in IKEA’s Boston office, then to Sweden, and most recently returned to Boston as IKEA’s Human Resources and Culture Manager in the United States.
“Early in my career, I don’t know if I really had the courage or understood what it meant to go out and pursue new opportunities,” Potenza says. At IKEA, she said, IKEA has helped her grow professionally through “mentoring and coaching that says to people, ‘Hey, I think you have the potential to do this.'”
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