Meet Maryanne Robertson.

So, who is Maryanne exactly? And why should you meet her?  

Maryanne is the central character in our upcoming book. She’s the Chief HR Officer of a fictitious restaurant chain headquartered in a large Midwest city. And the issues she deals with, often daily, are complex and simply unbelievable. 

Of course, Maryanne doesn’t deal with these issues alone. That wouldn’t be any fun. She wants to teach and inspire her staff, support her management team, and share challenges and ideas with outside colleagues so they can learn and grow together. It’s through Maryanne and her colleagues that the stories in the book will be told.

A little more about Maryanne. She’s married to an employment attorney, which often makes for interesting pillow talk. And don’t expect them to always agree. After working several years for a management consulting firm, she returned to work at the restaurant chain, where she’d worked as a server during college, and eventually found her way from operations into HR because she was driven by the challenge of making people matter. 

Maryanne has the respect of her peers on the management team, but there’s always one exception.  Larry Blackstone, the CFO, thinks Maryanne only sees the people side, the soft side as he likes to say, of business. He forgets that while she was an assistant manager at one of the largest restaurants in the chain, she developed retention strategies that significantly reduced turnover and resulted in significant savings.

Kyle Greene, the employee relations manager who reports to Maryanne, thinks she’s amazing and is grateful to be working for her so early in his career. “She’s smart and attractive with her dark hair and bright green eyes. People take notice when she walks into a room. She has a soft, yet commanding, presence and is admired as a business leader in the community outside the company as well.”  

Someone from the outside business community who greatly respects her is Jason Edison, although they do have some history. They worked together in the management consulting firm Maryanne joined right out of college and have remained good friends and colleagues. It was Jason’s idea to start the networking group of HR Executives. They support each other by sharing problems and offering solutions. 

These are just some of the peers and colleagues you’ll meet along the way. And it’s through all of them that the stories in the book are told. In the coming months, we’ll give you glimpses into the types of stories you’ll read in the book. You’ll read tales about managing in the grey zone because people and the situations they put themselves into are rarely black and white.