Moments of impact from Tessa White's career
Vivint Solar · Senior Vice President of Human CapitalWhen I joined Vivint Solar, the company was scaling at a breakneck pace—hiring over 100 people a month as it expanded its footprint nationally—yet HR infrastructure was virtually nonexistent. We had just one recruiter and one HR coordinator, no reliable headcount data, and weren't even completing basic legal requirements like I-9 documentation. I was brought in with an ambitious mandate: get the company audit-ready and operationally sound in time to go public in six months. To meet this challenge, I built out the entire human capital function from the ground up. I hired a team of 15 recruiters along with key HR leadership—a recruiting and operations leader, a compensation design leader, and a senior human resources partner—to design and run the new function. Together, we implemented an integrated technology stack, including a new HR system, a recruiting and onboarding platform, and a learning management system, and we built the processes and compliance checks needed to ensure the company was legally compliant and audit-ready at scale. The results reshaped how the company operated. While the IPO took about two years rather than six months, Vivint Solar went public having scaled to over 4,000 employees with full I-9 and audit compliance, a solid compensation and titling infrastructure, and a recruiting pipeline built for sustained, organized growth. The onboarding system I led the design of cut new-hire ramp time from over 7 days down to just 24 hours—a critical advantage given our workforce was largely hard-to-hire, 100% commission sales reps. During a period when many competitors in the industry failed to survive rapid consolidation and intense "recruiting wars" for sales talent, this infrastructure gave Vivint Solar the resilience and organizational agility to adapt and keep growing.
The Job Doctor · October 2020After years in corporate HR leadership, I saw too many talented people blindsided by layoffs and office politics with no one to guide them. In 2020, I left the corporate world to found The Job Doctor, a company built to translate insider HR knowledge into practical, accessible guidance for individuals navigating a career. I built the company from scratch across multiple channels simultaneously: creating podcast-style videos for TikTok that broke down real career navigation tactics, launching a companion podcast to extend reach, and landing a book deal with Harper Collins, one of the top business book publishers in the nation—all while growing a consulting client base through referrals and speaking engagements. My thought thought leadership on the future of work was quoted in articles and media across the globe, and hands-on client work at the same time in the company's earliest, most resource-constrained days. The results within two years were substantial: my TikTok following grew past 500,000, with my ad-hoc live sessions averaging 8,000–10,000 participants and ranking in the top 2% of similar creators. My book became a category bestseller and I built a six-figure consulting practice serving both individual clients and corporate teams. Fortune 500 HR departments now hire me to train their teams or coach individuals, and I have a robust keynote schedule. I was named one the Top Speakers to Watch in 2022 in USA Today. I've been featured as a career expert on NPR, NewsNation, Good Morning America and several other prominent media outlets, and I'm regularly quoted in articles for top tier publications like The Wall Street Journal . Beyond the metrics, the impact shows up in the messages I receive from people around the world who tell me my advice directly helped them land their dream job, navigate a difficult career challenge, or finally break through to a long-sought promotion—proof that the mission behind The Job Doctor is reaching the people it was built for.
United Health Group/Ingenix · VIce President of Human Capital · December 2006As Vice President of Human Capital at United Health Group/Ingenix, I owned the entire people-side integration process for every acquisition the company made, personally leading due diligence on HR liabilities, designing new organizational structures, and aligning compensation and benefits across newly acquired companies within 90 days of each close. The central challenge was that each acquired company arrived with wildly different benefits plans and pay philosophies, making consistent risk assessment and harmonization difficult to scale across multiple simultaneous deals. To effectively complete these acquistions, I took a consistent stance of onsite visits and interviews to assess HR risk and unify compensation structures no matter how different the acquired company's starting point was. Over four years, I led HR integration for numerous acquisitions across the nation, and we grew from an $807 million subsidiary into a $1.7 billion healthcare information giant, driven by a deliberate mix of organic technology deployment and strategic acquisitions. It became a critical, high-margin piece of its parent company, UnitedHealth Group, which grew from $46.4 billion in 2005 to $81.2 billion in total revenue by 2008. By 2008, Ingenix held the nation’s largest proprietary database of medical billing, claims, and healthcare pricing information, largely due to it's aggressive acquisition strategy. Ingenix evolved into the structural backbone for out-of-network insurance reimbursements across the entire United States health system
Utah State University · Chairman, Board of Trustee · June 2024When I stepped into the Chairman role at Utah State University's Board of Trustees, the institution was in crisis: a legislative audit had exposed culture and compliance failures, trust between the board and administration had eroded, and the university had no permanent president. The Governor and state legislature tasked our board with a dual mandate — rebuild leadership and reimagine the institution's future — under intense public and political scrutiny. I took my role seriously to include all of our trustees in identifying the right job description, the right candidates, and provide feedback so the right selection could be made. I restructured board trustee committees to align to the new strategy of the President and opened up our meetings and discussions to have more transparency and close the trust gap between the board and administration. I met with legislators weekly to rebuild confidence during the very public compliance and culture audit. Once the new president was in place, I worked directly with them to identify talent gaps across the institution and provided direct input on shaping the strategic turnaround plan. The results have been substantial and measurable. We are in the process of closing out the legislative audit with all findings addressed, and the new president is now actively driving a fresh strategic plan for the university. Board-legislature relations have been rebuilt to the point that lawmakers have publicly praised the university's turnaround. Of more than 20 change initiatives identified, 15 are now well underway or almost finished and the institution is regaining the trust and stability it had lost.
Vivint Solar · Senior Vice President of Human CapitalAs VP of Human Capital at Vivint Solar, I was tasked by leadership with redesigning our sales onboarding program after we identified a critical pattern: reps who didn't start selling within their first week were far more likely to quit within 90 days. With annual turnover running as high as 150%, this was a costly problem that demanded a fundamental rethink of how we brought new reps into the field. I led the redesign of onboarding into a compressed 3-day sprint that got reps knocking on doors within 48 hours of joining, a dramatic shift from the previous disjointed paper-and-online program that required reps to complete full paperwork and training before ever stepping into the field. The new model paired bite-sized digital training modules with live, real-world selling experience, so reps were learning and earning simultaneously rather than sitting through administrative delays before getting real exposure to the job. The results were significant and measurable within six months of rollout: 90-day retention for new reps rose sharply, average time-to-first-sale dropped dramatically, and our punishing annual turnover rate fell substantially as a direct result. By rethinking the very structure of onboarding around speed-to-field and immediate skill application, I was able to directly address the root cause of early attrition and materially improve the economics of scaling a sales organization.