Redirecting.work
Alexandra Zea:
When the Advisor Steps Into the Arena
Alexandra “Alex” Zea never set out to build a career out of talking about change from the outside. Early on, she was drawn to the work itself, understanding people and organizations, spotting patterns, and turning insights into action. While earning her master’s at NYU, she interned with a small consulting services provider that conducted third-party exit interviews for large organizations, then analyzed the data and made recommendations. The work felt meaningful, and the trends were often obvious. What surprised her was how often HR leaders postponed, cancelled, or deprioritized the conversations. Alex remembers thinking, what could possibly be more important than understanding why mid-level managers are leaving?
That experience nudged her into her first major move. Instead of staying on the advisory side, she went internal to learn the realities of organizational life, the “fires,” the constraints, and what HR actually does with its time. She spent about six years in internal HR, including two transformation experiences across Time Inc. and Morgan Stanley. She loved strategy roles and the ability to make an impact, but she also noticed something about herself. The pace inside large organizations could feel slow, especially when change moved on annual cycles.
So she returned to consulting, which she originally thought would be her long-term lane. She spent about six years building the LeapGen team and later helped expand and integrate the broader HR digital transformation arm across Mercer. She led innovation, worked with clients across the industry, and loved what she was doing. From the outside, it looked like she had found the perfect platform: influence, variety, fast cycles, and a front-row seat to transformation.
Then the nature of the work changed. Over the last eight or so years, Alex had been pushing the industry toward more modern operating model shifts. In the past, she could point to organizations and say, “Look, they’re doing it well.” But she began to believe the next phase required a different kind of credibility. She saw “significant operating model changes” coming, with few clean examples to reference. If she wanted the biggest impact now, she believed she had to lead by example, not just advise it.
Pivot Transition Process
Alex’s transition was thoughtful and thorough. She describes talking to “40 people” or more as she tested her thinking, and she interviewed extensively, both inside GE and at other organizations. The decision became real after a conversation with Adam Holton, GE Healthcare’s Chief People Officer. Over lunch, he asked something like, “Don’t you just really want to own this?” She did not take it as a pitch at first. She let it sit. Then she started asking herself a deeper question. If she truly believed in the future she was describing to clients, why not be accountable for building it?
The timing helped. In late 2024, she had multiple inbound conversations about similar roles. Some came through LinkedIn, some through direct application, and some through personal connections. She chose to pursue the path that best matched her purpose.
Still, it was emotionally hard. Alex had hired a large portion of the LeapGen team and had deep relationships with people she had worked beside for years. Leaving them was painful, and she still keeps in touch.
She also faced a challenge she did not expect: skepticism. When moving from consulting into corporate, she repeatedly encountered doubt about whether she could “own it.” Could she lead day-to-day execution, build trust inside the organization, and live with the accountability that comes from not being able to “leave” after the project phase?
Her response was to show. She talked about the transformations she had owned end-to-end, the long arcs where she stayed close to execution, and the credibility she’d built through expertise. She knows how she builds trust: “based on expertise” and integrity, being the person clients rely on because “she knows her stuff” and “will always do the right thing for them.” She leaned into that identity and carried it into her internal move.
Current Focus
At GE Healthcare, Alex chose where to apply her thinking carefully. She wanted readiness for change, appetite for significant transformation, and leaders willing to move. GE Healthcare’s post-spinoff moment created momentum. After an initial stabilization period, the organization had space to ask, “What do we want to do differently?” She also credits Adam Holton’s leadership, including his willingness to tackle big transformations with a kind of courage shaped by experiences outside corporate life.
Her mission is to put in place components of a future HR operating model beginning in 2027, with pilots starting earlier. She describes it as maybe 60% defined with a clear glide path and room for adaptation.
The core shifts are practical and philosophical. Digital becomes the first point of entry. HR becomes more embedded for business-facing needs. Most importantly, HR shifts from identifying itself by activities (talent acquisition, learning, payroll) to organizing around outcomes.
Alex names one of the key outcome frames as “right skills, right place, right time,” supported by a focus on leverage and productivity, and more effective leadership. She also holds a second “hat” that expands beyond HR. As AI capability accelerates, she believes people and culture leaders must guide the human side of human-machine teaming. Not just adopting technology, but redesigning roles, processes, incentives, expectations, leadership styles, and culture so the technology actually improves work instead of hollowing it out.
Underneath all of it is a values statement that feels like the throughline of her entire career: work takes a third of our lives. If it is not meaningful, fulfilling, and safe, it harms everything around it. If it is, it creates positive ripple effects.
Advice for Others
For people considering a move from consulting, entrepreneurship, or advisory work into corporate roles, Alex’s guidance is crisp.
First, expect the “own it” question. Even if you have always treated consulting as an extension of the client team, you may still face skepticism in senior interviews. Prepare for it.
Second, build and tell the story of what you owned (your expertise) end-to-end. The strongest proof points are not the number of clients you advised, but the transformations you stayed in for years, where you were accountable for outcomes, not just recommendations.
Third, lead with expertise and integrity. Alex’s trust model is not based on being a general connector. It is built on credibility, deep knowledge, and doing the right thing for clients and stakeholders. If that is your pattern too, name it and demonstrate it.
Finally, choose the environment as carefully as it chooses you. Alex interviewed broadly and deeply, including across GE Healthcare’s executive team, because she wanted mutual trust in the vision and the leadership commitment behind it. That diligence bought her something essential: a place where the pace of change can match the scale of the ambition.
For Alex Zea, the move from consulting back into corporate leadership was not a departure from her mission but a deeper commitment to it. After years advising organizations on how work should change, she chose to step into the arena and help build that future herself. At GE Healthcare, she now has the opportunity to test the ideas she helped shape, redesigning how HR operates in a world defined by AI, new operating models, and human–machine collaboration. For Alex, the goal is simple but ambitious: ensure that as technology transforms organizations, the human side of work becomes stronger, more meaningful, and ultimately a true source of competitive advantage.