Deborah Mc Cuiston MS SHRM SCP

Served on the Merger Integration Team for culture and change management. Worked closely with the executives and leaders of Virgin America and Alaska Airlines to design and build the combined culture, purpose and values. Several highlights include: + Collaborated with multiple departments across both brands to design and implement large-scale change management initiatives. This included the launch of an enterprise-wide change management program, “Momentum”, that introduced Virgin America employees to Alaska’s senior leadership team, answered questions and began to build trust and excitement for the merger. + Designed engagement events and opportunities to keep both front-line employees and leadership engaged and informed throughout the integration process. + Oversaw regulatory integration training to reach a Single Operating Certificate status. + Designed Virgin America's mass off-boarding process to recognize and celebrate the employees who were leaving Virgin America and the employees who were continuing on with Alaska.

Joining the company in 2006 as part of the airline’s startup team, I have been instrumental in the design of key elments of the company’s award winning brand and culture. Responsible for building Virgin America’s culture from the ground up, I led a team focused on engaging employees through delivering on the company’s employee value proposition. Several highlights include: + Led an enterprise-wide initiative that resulted in the design and evolution of Virgin America's purpose, company culture, vision and values. + Led a core team of HR leaders to design and launch Virgin America's employee experience strategy that supports the company culture. This initiative included the design of an employee value proposition, the redesign of key HR programs including talent identification, selection, onboarding, internal communications and a long-term leadership development strategy. + Led the design and execution of Virgin America's "Refresh" program. Refresh is an annual enterprise-wide cultural conference that unites and energizes employees around the foundations of Virgin America's company strategy, brand and culture. + Selected by the CEO to create and lead a centralized corporate university to build and deliver learning experiences coupled with highly engaging content for all employees that supports the business strategy and innovative brand.

Joining the company pre-IPO, I created the Learning and Development department from the ground up. L&D consisted of five divisions: Leadership Development, Organizational Effectiveness, Professional Development, Learning Analytics and Crewmember Resource Management. Several highlights include: + Created the award winning Principles of Leadership Education Series (POL). Partnered with the CEO and President of JetBlue Airways to define the long-term leadership development strategy and leadership principles that supported the company culture. Components included: executive coaching, intact team development, 360 leadership assessments, classroom and virtual learning, project teams for continuous learning, communities of practice, quarterly speaker series and leadership conferences. + Partnered with the HR team to design the talent management strategy that included executive coaching, performance management, onboarding, recognition, process consulting and engagement survey action planning.