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Todd Connelly’s career journey has taken him from playing bass on tour with rock musicians to acquiring a depth of knowledge in HR in industries ranging from finance to entertainment. Over the past 11 years, he has solidified his experience as an HR leader in the healthcare sector. He is passionate about leveraging all of the knowledge and experience he has acquired in his new position heading HR at Valley Presbyterian Hospital in Los Angeles.
Through the Wharton Executive Education Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) Program, Connelly is looking to gain the skills and frameworks to address human resources challenges, build a strong team, and leverage analytics to make data-driven business decisions.
We sat down with Connelly to explore his career and how the program is helping him as he steps into an HR leadership role.
Tell us about your career journey.
I graduated from Sacred Heart University with a degree in computer science. After college, I spent some time touring as a musician with a number of bands and then worked as a teacher with the Los Angeles Unified School District teaching computers and math.
I began my career in HR as a compensation analyst working for the senior director of total rewards for an entertainment company. From there, I moved on to the Visiting Nurse Service and then to Scudder Investments where my responsibilities grew in terms of the scope and breadth of the work that I was involved in — still in rewards, but now global. From there, I made a decision to move back to Los Angeles, and began working with a number of entertainment companies, eventually making the decision to move into the total rewards space. After spending a lot of my time in the compensation and benefits arena, I was offered an opportunity to work as an HR consultant.
How did you make the move to healthcare?
Consulting was really my opportunity to move back into healthcare. One of my assignments was with Providence Health & Services, who hired me to be the senior consultant for human resources for Southern California. After that, I moved to Children's Hospital Los Angeles, where I spent the past eight years. This is where I was exposed to HR as a whole, with responsibility for total rewards, talent acquisition, human resources information systems, and HR administration. It was this opportunity at a smaller organization where I was able to work with different leaders on all aspects of HR from total rewards to talent acquisition, performance management, organizational development, and employee relations, etc.
Tell us more about your current position.
I really enjoyed my time at Children’s Hospital, however, the opportunity to lead the HR team as a whole was what drew me to Valley Presbyterian Hospital. There is a desire here to start looking at analytics and data to drive business decisions. I am also working to build and transform the HR team. A lot of folks look at human resources as a cost center. But I look at it as an investment in the future of the organization, because it’s the people who are going to drive us into the future and help us deliver on our goals year over year.
Why did you choose the Wharton Executive Education CHRO Program?
I was considering a number of different paths. At one point I was thinking of getting a master’s degree, but I contemplated whether a master’s was going to focus on what I needed in order to be successful as a CHRO. I looked at the program from Wharton Executive Education, and it really hit on all of the different workstreams within HR. The timeline also appealed to me. And, the fact that it was online was interesting. In the past, I have really enjoyed interacting in a classroom setting, but here was an opportunity to interact online.
What has the interaction been like with your peers?
I'm learning so much from the professors, and I am also learning from my colleagues who come with a wide range of experiences. I not only have classmates from the United States but also the UK, Europe, Brazil, Ukraine, and the Middle East. I am finding we often face a lot of the same challenges, and we all bring different perspectives.
I also find a lot of the folks in the cohort are at different places in their careers. So, for some, their journey leading HR teams is just beginning, but there are others who are well established. It’s really an opportunity to share my experience and explore what other professionals are doing and discover great ideas and how to utilize them. I can see myself reaching out and asking, “Hey, how did you make that transition? How did you make that pivot? How did you get support for it? Here's what I'm dealing with and what are you doing to solve this problem? What were your challenges?”
What stands out from the modules you’ve taken?
This program has hit on so many things that I’ve either dealt with in the past or will be dealing with in the future that I now have better ways to handle challenges. It has just been amazing.
We had an interesting discussion with Professor Matthew Bidwell about determining the right profile for talent who will be successful long term, and he mentioned the idea of “grit.” He pointed to a study that looked at people's resumes that highlighted achievements like triathlons, marathons, and things like that, which were determining factors to being successful long term in certain types of roles such as nursing. I found this especially interesting because that’s what I have on my own resume. So, I continually find I just have these light bulbs going off during the program.
We are also looking closely at analytics. For example, can we see a correlation between our exit interviews, turnover, and our leadership surveys? If so, is there an opportunity for leadership development in certain areas that will help drive down turnover and increase engagement? In my capstone project, which I started when I was working at Children’s Hospital, the focus was on making engagement one of the key metrics for the enterprise and see if we can make it a goal for the organization.
Now, with my transition to Valley Presbyterian Hospital, it's interesting because the organization already had engagement as one of the enterprise goals. So, I am looking at how we can drive this goal throughout the organization and incentivize meeting that objective. How do we make sure that we have an engaged team that can help us meet the needs of the organization? After all, we know from data that a more highly engaged workforce is going to lead to better patient outcomes.
What kind of advice would you give to other HR professionals thinking about executive education or considering the Wharton Executive Education CHRO Program?
I highly recommend the CHRO Program. The curriculum is spot on for the work that we do as HR professionals. I believe that for anyone who has some experience in HR and wants to eventually become the head of HR — or is in my position where you've had all these different experiences and you want to tie it all together — this program is really doing that. If you want to become the head of HR, the program gives you practical insights and the tools to be able to function more effectively.
You can learn more about the Wharton Executive Education Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) Program by visiting our program homepage.