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• Career Transitions and Working Identities [00:09:00]
Vanessa explores how professionals can reinvent themselves multiple times throughout their careers. Drawing from her podcast Career Transitions, she highlights the importance of experimenting with new roles to discover hidden skills and opportunities.
• Creating a Culture of Continuous Learning [00:07:00]
Vanessa shares how fostering informal learning and mentorship within teams helps develop talent and build an inclusive workplace where employees feel supported.
• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Must Go Beyond Hiring [00:24:50]
Hiring diverse talent is not enough—organizations must actively foster inclusion by ensuring employees feel valued, heard, and psychologically safe.
• Moving from Transactional to Experiential Workplaces [00:28:20]
Vanessa discusses how shifting from transactional relationships to experiential engagement leads to stronger workplace cultures and long-term employee commitment.
Vanessa Iloste, Vice President of HR at Sephora Asia, shares how leaders can move beyond transactional work relationships, foster inclusive cultures, and create workplaces where employees feel truly valued.
From her nearly three decades in HR, Vanessa offers practical advice and real-world examples to help HR leaders and business executives build workplaces that inspire, engage, and retain top talent.
Traditional work relationships are often transactional, where employees exchange time for money with little sense of purpose. Vanessa explains how leaders who invest in meaningful, long-term connections create more engaged, productive, and innovative teams.
Example from Vanessa’s Experience:
Vanessa highlights how organizations that prioritize employee experience over rigid structures retain top talent longer. She describes how mentorship, growth opportunities, and inclusive leadership help companies build trust and long-term commitment.
Practical Advice:
• Foster experiential relationships—invest in employees’ growth, well-being, and aspirations.
• Create environments where employees feel valued—beyond their job descriptions.
• Prioritize meaningful work—help employees see the big picture and their role in the company’s success.
Vanessa believes that careers are not linear—people evolve through multiple working identities and reinvent themselves over time. She emphasizes that professionals should embrace change, take risks, and explore different career paths.
Example from Vanessa’s Insights:
Through her podcast Career Transitions, Vanessa has interviewed professionals who successfully switched industries or took on entirely new roles. She found that experimenting with new responsibilities allows people to discover hidden strengths and passions.
Practical Advice:
• Try new projects or cross-functional roles to explore different career paths.
• Adopt a growth mindset—see career changes as learning experiences.
• Take small risks—start with side projects or collaborations to test new skills.
Vanessa emphasizes that continuous learning is at the heart of inclusive cultures. Organizations that celebrate knowledge-sharing and mentorship empower employees to develop new skills, gain confidence, and contribute meaningfully.
Example from Vanessa’s Insights:
At Sephora, Vanessa observed how senior beauty advisors naturally mentor new hires, teaching them about products, customer engagement, and store culture. These informal learning moments foster inclusion and teamwork.
Practical Advice:
• Recognize & celebrate informal learning—coaching happens in everyday moments.
• Encourage peer mentorship—employees learn best from each other.
• Create safe spaces for learning—where employees feel comfortable asking questions.
Vanessa challenges the assumption that hiring diverse talent alone is enough. She stresses that true inclusion requires effort, commitment, and creating environments where all employees feel safe, heard, and valued.
Example from Vanessa’s Insights:
Vanessa reflects on her early experience setting up Sephora in China in 2004 and how the company was already deeply invested in DEI, long before it became a mainstream corporate priority. One striking example she shared was how Sephora sent Chinese store managers to San Francisco for cultural immersion—not just for business training, but to ensure they felt included and valued.
“My colleagues in the U.S. thought that these three Chinese colleagues will come to San Francisco and they will need in their place together to have some food that is comfortable for them. So they had thought about buying a rice cooker for the apartment we rented for them.”
This small but thoughtful gesture showed a deeper level of commitment to inclusion—ensuring employees felt seen, respected, and at home, even in a foreign work environment.
Practical Advice:
• Make inclusion part of your daily culture—it’s not a one-time initiative.
• Think beyond policies—small gestures, like understanding employees’ cultural needs, make a huge impact.
• Celebrate diverse perspectives—actively seek input from underrepresented groups and ensure psychological safety in the workplace.
Vanessa believes that trust-based leadership and flexibility will define the workplace of the future. Leaders must move beyond rigid structures and invest in employees’ long-term success.
Example from Vanessa’s Vision:
She explains how companies that create purpose-driven, people-first cultures will attract and retain top talent, while those that focus only on cost-cutting and efficiency will struggle to engage their workforce.
Practical Advice:
• Design long-term career pathways—employees should see a future with your company.
• Balance flexibility with structure—trust employees to perform while giving them autonomy.
• Prioritize purpose-driven leadership—help employees connect their work to a bigger mission.
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• Connect with Dorothy Yiu
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Vanessa Iloste
Vanessa is a globally fluent HR Leader with over 20 years of experience leading multicultural teams across Asia, particularly within the retail sector. Currently serving as the Vice President of Human Resources for Asia at Sephora, Vanessa has been instrumental in driving HR strategies that enhance business performance, improve employee engagement, and foster high-performing teams. Her expertise spans talent management, organizational design, and change management. Vanessa’s career journey includes impactful roles at leading global organizations, including LVMH and Société Générale, where she championed initiatives in leadership development, omnichannel transformation, and diversity and inclusion. She brings a deep understanding of the Greater China market and excels at navigating complex cultural environments to deliver results.
Holding an MBA from ESSEC Business School, Vanessa combines her academic foundation with hands-on experience to create inclusive workplaces where employees can thrive and businesses can grow. She is passionate about building resilient teams and fostering a culture of collaboration and innovation across Asia.
Dorothy Yiu is the CEO & Co-Founder of EngageRocket, one of the top Asia’s EX & people analytics platforms. Dorothy brings over a decade of experience in human resources, technology, and business strategy. Before co-founding EngageRocket, Dorothy was the Regional Head of Operations for Gallup, a global analytics and advisory company where she oversaw the execution of over 100 large-scale consulting projects globally.
Dorothy holds two degrees from Singapore Management University under the Lee Kong Chian Scholarship. She was also NTT’s Women of Future nominee in 2022 and was named SG Digital Leader by IMDA in 2024.