Curiosity about people is one of Andrea Nelson’s defining traits, and it shows up everywhere in the way she leads.
As CEO of InovarHR, she’s built her career on that people-first instinct. It’s also part of what’s made her a pioneer in a field where HR is too often an afterthought. Far too often, HR is still seen as a cleanup crew called in to fix things after decisions are already made, rather than a strategic partner who helps shape strategy to prevent issues in the first place.
It’s also why she’s made a habit of continuing to learn throughout her career, earning certificates and completing programs as the HR world keeps shifting. Most recently, that meant completing eCornell’s Psychology of Leadership certificate, a program grounded in more than 50 years of behavioral science research, condensed into a practical leadership toolkit.
Andrea has drawn on her decades of experience and the eCornell course to share what led her to explore the intersection of psychology and leadership, the evolution of HR, and how leaders can meet the moment in this unpredictable era of work.
Can you describe the moment you knew you wanted to work with people for a living? What made you realize HR was the right career for you?
I actually fell into HR by accident, although the interest in people was probably there long before I knew what HR was about.
As a kid, I thought I wanted to be a psychologist. I wanted to understand what people were feeling and why they behaved the way they did. Instead, I didn’t follow that path, at least not the way I imagined then. I started my career as an administrative assistant that evolved into an HR manager role at an aerospace company, then moved into engineering, where I managed product configuration and change control. The work was so precision-based, and I thought that was what I wanted.
Then I became one of nine cofounders of a new aerospace company, and like most startups, we all wore a lot of hats. One of mine just happened to be HR. That startup gave me the opportunity to assist with the Mars Exploration Rover work at JPL, and it also gave me some of the hardest lessons of my career. My dad passed away a week after we launched the company, and I was building a business while grieving. My team had to give me patience I didn’t know I needed. Later, one of our cofounders passed away suddenly, and I had to help our employees navigate that loss while I was living it too.
Those experiences taught me how deeply I feel what other people are feeling. At the time, I didn’t have a name for it. I just knew I cared, and I felt responsible for the people around me. Looking back, there’s a full circle to it: the kid who wanted to be a psychologist ended up in aerospace chasing precision, and then accidentally found the one career that gave her both, the systems and the people. That’s when I knew HR was where I belonged.
Once you found yourself in the HR world, what was your approach to the work?
I think I approached HR the same way I approached a lot of things in my career: with curiosity and a desire to keep learning. HR is one of those fields where you never really arrive at a point where you know everything. The workplace changes, the laws change, technology changes, and, of course, people are complicated.
Throughout my career, I’ve continued my education through certifications, courses, workshops, conferences, and programs that helped me look at the work from different perspectives. Some strengthened my technical HR knowledge, while others focused on leadership, business, technology, or human behavior. I’ve always believed that if I’m advising leaders and organizations, I have a responsibility to keep developing myself too.
Over time, that curiosity shifted from simply wanting to know what works in HR to wanting to understand why it works. Why do people respond differently to the same situation? What makes some leaders able to motivate people while others struggle? Why do teams fall into patterns that are so difficult to change?
That curiosity eventually brought me back to something I had been interested in since I was a kid: psychology.
What was the inspiration behind enrolling in the eCornell Psychology of Leadership certificate program?
I don’t remember one exact day. At the time, I was working with leadership teams where the real issues weren’t HR problems; they were people problems. Issues with communication, trust, motivation, accountability, and how leaders held up under pressure. I’d spent years helping leaders through those situations, but I wanted to explore the science behind what I was seeing. Why do smart, experienced people fall into the same negative patterns? Why does one conversation motivate someone while another shuts them down? I wanted a deeper lens on human behavior, not just another HR certification. That’s when I came across the Psychology of Leadership Program offered by eCornell.
The program she landed on was eCornell’s Psychology of Leadership certificate, built around more than 50 years of behavioral science research and distilled into roughly 15 to 20 core, practical leadership concepts. What stood out to her was the research behind it: the curriculum draws on work like Cornell professor Allan Filipowicz’s studies on how emotions drive or derail leadership effectiveness, the exact dynamic she’d been watching play out on leadership teams for years without a name for it.
Out of everything you learned, what’s the one concept that changed how you approach leadership?
Thought distortions, and how quickly our interpretation of a situation becomes our reality.
In HR, we’re constantly interpreting behavior. Someone goes quiet in a meeting, pushes back on a decision, avoids a hard conversation, and we start filling in the blanks. We assume we understand their intent. The program made me much more conscious of separating what I actually know from the story I’m telling myself about it. Now I ask different questions: What do I know to be true? What am I assuming? What might I be missing? Have I actually talked to this person about what’s going on from their perspective?
I’ve always believed in empathy and communication, but the psychology behind them gave me a way to slow my own thinking before I react. It’s made me a better HR leader, and a better advisor to other leaders.
Is there a moment you got it wrong as a leader that makes more sense to you now, because of this program?
As an HR leader, I’ve sometimes stepped in too quickly to solve a people problem. That instinct is part of the job, and it’s part of who I am. But there have been times when a leader was frustrated with someone, or a hard conversation wasn’t happening, and I got too involved in trying to solve it myself.
What I understand better now is that helping can unintentionally reinforce avoidance. If a leader hands a problem to HR and HR takes it from there, we might resolve the immediate issue without changing the behavior that caused it. The leader still hasn’t had the conversation. The employee still hasn’t gotten direct feedback. Everyone walks away without the skills to handle it differently next time.
Now I’m more likely to ask, “Have you talked to them?” What happened when you did? What conversation are you avoiding? How can I help you prepare for it, instead of having it for you? Sometimes being a good HR leader means resisting the urge to fix something, and helping another leader build the capability to fix it themselves.
Some people say psychology and HR are basically two versions of the same job. Do you agree or disagree?
They’re not the same job, but you can’t do great HR without understanding psychology. HR builds the structures that enable an organization to function: talent, performance, compensation, compliance, and culture. But underneath it all is human behavior. You can design a great performance process, but if managers avoid hard conversations, it won’t work. You can roll out a new strategy, but if people don’t trust the messenger, adoption suffers. Policies don’t create culture. People do.
It doesn’t surprise me how many HR professionals come from a psychology background. Roughly a quarter of psychology graduates go on to work in management or business roles, the same broad categories HR falls under, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Given that I wanted to be a psychologist as a kid, there’s a little full circle in that for me too.
If someone reading this is struggling to lead a team right now, what’s the one thing you’d want them to know?
Get curious before you react. When you’re putting out fires, it’s easy to fix the behavior in front of you and move to the next one. I’ve learned to slow down and ask what’s underneath it instead. What do I actually know versus what am I assuming? Has someone avoided a conversation that needed to happen? Is there a pattern?
And most importantly, have we actually talked to the person? Curiosity doesn’t mean lowering expectations. It means understanding what you’re holding someone accountable for, and whether you’re addressing the real issue.
Oprah told HR leaders at SHRM26 this year that they’re “the custodians of culture” and that HR “isn’t just about spreadsheets and policies, it’s about human potential.” Does that match how you see the role?
What Oprah shared at the 2026 SHRM Annual Conference and Expo really resonated with me. I’ve spent my career believing the employee experience and the success of the business aren’t competing priorities; they’re connected. When people feel seen and understand how their work matters, they do their best work.
I don’t think being a custodian of culture means HR owns culture. Culture is created every day by how leaders and employees treat each other, what is rewarded, and what is tolerated. But HR has a unique vantage point. We see patterns across an organization and can help leaders build an environment where people actually thrive. The operational side still matters; payroll has to be right, compliance has to be right, but that’s the foundation. The real opportunity is what we build on top of it.
If you had to bet on one thing HR will be responsible for in ten years that it isn’t responsible for today, what would it be?
Designing how humans and AI work together. Right now, most of the conversation is about the technology itself: what can we automate, what can we save time on. The bigger question is what happens to people and organizations as a result of AI adoption. The fact is, jobs will change, some tasks will disappear, and we’ll have to rethink career paths, skills, and performance in light of that.
But there’s a psychological piece too. How do you maintain trust when AI is involved in decisions that affect employees? What keeps people engaged through constant change? How do you keep technology from replacing the human connection people still need from their leaders?
HR doesn’t need to become IT, but HR leaders will need to understand AI well enough to help their organizations decide where it should replace work, where it should enhance it, and where the human element stays non-negotiable.
Finish this sentence: “The best leaders I know all have one thing in common…”
They never stop being curious about people. They don’t assume they have all the answers just because they’re the leader. Instead, they listen, they ask questions, they have the hard conversations even when they’d rather not hear the answer. They hold people accountable, but they try to understand what’s behind the behavior, and they’re self-aware enough to know they might be part of the problem.
Leadership isn’t figuring people out once and then knowing how to lead them forever. People change. Teams change. The leader has to keep learning too.
What are some pieces of advice you would give to emerging HR professionals?
1. Be open to where your career takes you.
Stay curious and be open to where your career takes you. I certainly didn’t start my career with a plan to become an HR executive or start an HR firm. Some of the experiences that shaped me the most came from opportunities I never expected.
Early in your career, say yes to opportunities that let you learn something new, even if you’re not completely confident yet. Ask questions, find mentors, and pay attention to people willing to teach you. You don’t have to know exactly where you want to end up.
And remember that there’s a person on the other side of the policy, process, or difficult conversation. You can build your technical HR knowledge over time, but empathy, good judgment, and the ability to really listen will serve you throughout your entire career.
2. Don’t rush to have it all figured out.
Don’t feel like you have to have your career figured out right away. HR is a broad field, and part of becoming good at it is getting exposure to different areas, organizations, leaders, and kinds of problems.
Find people you respect and learn from them. Ask why things are done a certain way instead of simply learning the process. When you make a mistake, learn from it. When something makes you uncomfortable, don’t automatically avoid it. Some of your biggest growth will come from the situations that stretch you.
Most importantly, develop your own way of practicing HR. You’ll learn the laws, processes, and best practices, but experience will teach you judgment. Over time, you’ll learn when to speak up, when to listen, when to challenge something, and when someone simply needs you to be there.
If you’re building something and want a true HR partner in your corner, you can schedule a consultation with Andrea, and she’ll help you think through what your business needs today, tomorrow, and in the future.