Company: GE Software, San Ramon, CA, USA
Company Description: GE Software, headquartered in the Silicon Valley, relies on our extensive experience in sensors and controllers, modeling analytics and software development to deliver on our vision for the Industrial Internet. GE's delivery model is proactive, predictive, and intelligent—and we focus on providing enhanced customer productivity and value.
Nomination Category: Individual Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Female Executive of the Year – Business Services –11 to 2,500 Employees

Nomination Title: Jennifer Waldo, Senior HR Manager

Describe for the judges the activities and accomplishments of the nominated executive since the beginning of July last year (up to 525 words): TEXT REDATED FOR PUBLICATION

As the world’s largest infrastructure company, GE knew it wouldn’t be easy to create and operate a new ‘start-up’ within its four walls – despite the inventive spirit instilled by founder, Thomas Edison. But staying competitive for more than a century means getting better, being better and doing better. To link the big iron of GE’s industrial products with big data and deliver big gains in productivity for customers, it needed to embrace software. Quickly.

Supporting this meant establishing a new location in Silicon Valley, where GE could attract and hire 1,000 leaders, data scientists, user experience and software engineering experts in 24 months. In parallel, these new hires would be feverishly writing code to develop 24 new software offerings in less than 18 months. The impact? Small improvements in the performance of GE’s machines could result in $20 billion of savings for GE customers.

With broad experience in GE’s industrial businesses, GE appointed Jennifer Waldo, Global Head of HR, GE Software, to help drive success. A young mother of three, Jennifer came from GE Aviation, a nearly 19 billion-dollar business, bringing her own entrepreneurial energy to the new organization, creating a robust HR blueprint for growth, using data analytics and advanced technology to grow the Center, skillfully blending the cultures of Silicon Valley and GE to achieve extraordinary results.

Since 2012, Jennifer grew the workforce from 100 to over 1100, one of the most aggressive hiring campaigns for a salaried workforce in the history of GE. In the face of a competitive Silicon Valley job market, Jennifer’s team attracted and retained more than 250 new software architecture and data science employees in 1H 2013 alone, and over 150 new leadership, cyber security, and commercial employees in 1H 2014.

A highlight of Jennifer’s innovative approach is the groundbreaking Integrated Talent Management (ITM) system she and her team envisioned, using big data and analytics to create a validated capability model for talent acquisition, employee development, promotion and assessment.

At the heart of GE’s culture is learning, so Jennifer created Software Leadership Programs, transforming GE’s software technical training. Launching three new programs in 15 months, Jen’s learning/development platform/programs build on the foundation of GE’s leadership programs, resulting in dramatically less time spent in courses, increased experiential learning, and allowed tracking of learning content/assets within different career paths.

The future is bright for science and technology careers. But in today’s workforce, out of every 25 engineers, only 3 are women. An ambassador for driving change, Jen leads efforts to engage girls though “GE Girls” and “Girls Who Code” programs, to help shaping young minds early on.

The work driven by Jennifer is critical to GE’s goal of creating software to connect machines, data and people.

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Provide a brief biography of the nominated executive (up to 125 words):

A 13-year employee of GE, Jennifer brings ingenuity, creativity and dedication to her job, and is able to navigate the rough waters of industrial businesses. Her talent and desire to “think big” enable Jennifer to scale GE Software’s talent pool to develop the overall organization. Her life is about balance, achieving fulfillment in family, health, personal and career, and she prides herself on knowing when one area needs more or less attention. Married and mother to three young children, she is inspired by people who accomplish big things despite adversity, and juggles a career she loves with a family she loves even more.

Jennifer received a Master’s degree in Industrial and Labor Relations and a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Michigan State University.