Christina Luconi is the Chief People Officer at Rapid7. She’s built her career on her ability to help startups accelerate growth by developing people strategies that allow companies to “scale with soul”. From establishing shared values to navigating global expansions and public offerings, her expertise has helped companies like Sapient (now Publis.Sapient) and @stake (acquired by Symantec) reach new heights. Her tenure at Rapid7 spans just over a decade as the company continues to evolve and disrupt the cybersecurity industry, and as a Board member for organizations like Hack.Diversity and BUILD, she is inspired by the talent and innovation taking place in Boston as she gives back to the tech community.
Human Resources vs. People Strategy
For decades, “Human Resources” has been the term used to identify people within an organization responsible for screening and hiring new employees, administering benefits paperwork, and advising on personnel issues. Today, the role is more strategic, encompassing development, engagement, and enabling people to reach their full potential while ensuring direct alignment with a company’s strategic goals.
For Christina Luconi, the term ‘Human Resources’ never really captured the intentionality behind growing a company and empowering people to create impact. “My printer is a resource – a human is not. If we want to grow a company rapidly, building an understanding of the business strategy and then crafting a people strategy that directly maps back to that is imperative. – Understanding what drives and motivates people to achieve this is critical.” Her perspective is shaped by both her passion for connecting with and understanding what motivates and inspires the people around her, combined with her extensive history in helping lead hypergrowth startups.
Luconi studied psychology and landed a summer internship in a software company that went public during her summer there, she gained interest in both what it took to achieve growth and success as a growth company, while also leaning into the variety of opportunities that availed themself. She quickly realized that as a young person with very limited experience, a great attitude and aptitude went a long way in a startup environment – and both a career and a passion were ignited.
The internship led her to a hypergrowth consulting firm after graduation. That experience gave her a deep understanding of the unique dynamics that contribute towards human behavior, and how it can be applied in a business setting to drive organizational growth and success. “if you bring an incredible team of people together with a great idea, and they are all working towards the same mission, amazing things can happen – business grows, customers thrive, people can build incredible careers…” She adds with a laugh, “because it’s that easy, right?!”
As the Chief People Officer at Rapid7, Christina sits at the intersection of business and psychology, overseeing the entire employee experience, including Talent Acquisition, Learning & Development, Workplace Experience, and the company’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives.
From Startup to Rocketship – Using Core Values as the Platform for Hypergrowth
Christina joined Rapid7 when the organization consisted of only 75 people. She applied her previous experience working with startups, leading the charge to create and shape culture and core values from scratch. Her primary strategy was to partner with a diverse, cross functional group of people from around the company to identify who Rapid7 was, who they aspired to be, and weaving that into every element of the employee lifecycle as early as possible. It set the foundation for the rest of the company to operate from, balancing and supporting the “what” the company was achieving with “how” they would work together to achieve it.
With a set of values clearly established, Christina partnered with the Talent Acquisition team to help them map actions and behaviors to those values, and enabled them to identify the candidates that would be best suited to drive the business forward by embracing those shared values and contributing in a positive way to the organizational culture. Fast forward 11 years, and today, Rapid7 is home to more than 2,400 employees in offices across the world. “Operating according to core values is the key to success. We have never diverted and are still following our values and beliefs as we continue to grow”. Christina’s roadmap of leading with shared values first has enabled the organization to maintain a culture where collaboration and innovation thrive, and a shared purpose and vision is the common thread connecting each department, leader, and individual contributor. On the business front, the company continues to be recognized as a vendor of choice in their market, while continuing to win accolades year after year for their exceptional culture.
In addition to creating values that are connected and defined by behaviors and expectations, Christina has also been a strong advocate for building cross functional connections and relationships. At Rapid7, this is brought to life through their Insight Coffee program, where team members are matched randomly with another person in the company, and the two are given the opportunity to have an in-person or virtual meeting over “coffee” to ask questions and learn more about their role, interests, and experiences. Seek to understand what is happening outside of your area…your comfort zone.
The Insight Coffee Program builds off of one of Christina’s favorite pieces of advice to share with new leaders or anyone entering into a new opportunity “Seek to understand in your first 90 days of the job. Meet with as many people as possible, put an emphasis on building relationships and trust, and learn from how the company reached this position in the industry before you start seeking to drive change.” It’s advice that’s been built into their global onboarding program which over the span of 90 days enables new hires to fully immerse themselves into the values, goals, and teams that exist within the company.
Thriving Through a Pandemic – and Beyond
Read any articles about talent acquisition and organizational culture from 2020 – 2021, and you’ll find headlines describing a grim and challenging situation, quoting things like “The Great Resignation”, “Digital Burnout”, and “Toxic Culture”. Despite the harrowing picture that’s been painted, Christina Luconi saw the global pandemic and the effects it created as one of the greatest opportunities for People Strategy practitioners and executives to challenge convention and drive positive change in the workplace. “2020 was really one of the most exciting years of my career, because it challenged us as leaders to really innovate and be creative. We had to think outside the box and navigate decisions with information that was changing rapidly”
Rapid7’s leadership team has always acted in a way that prioritizes both its customers and employees. Corey Thomas, CEO, shares Christina’s perspective and belief that people are the foundation of the company. With this mindset, they acted quickly to make decisions that kept their employees safe as the world of work began to change. “We were one of the first companies in Boston to send people home, and I appreciate the way we were able to work together as a leadership team and prioritize safety first and foremost. As we moved forward into 2021, we made returning to the office an option for those who were feeling isolated or craving a change from their home office setup. With that option, we sent employees rapid test kits and implemented a strict testing policy so that they could aso feel as safe as possible in doing so.” Prioritizing the wellbeing of their people, and leaning into their core values, gave Rapid7’s leaders an added sense of clarity in identifying the choices that were best suited for their people, and their business.
Today, Rapid7 has embraced a hybrid working model with most employees choosing to work from the office roughly 3 days a week. Their choice of which days to come into work is based on what makes the most sense for their lifestyle and family commitments, as well as optimizing time collaborating with their fellow teammates.
When looking ahead, Christina believes that reimagining opportunities for connection and inclusion, and ensuring alignment from company leaders will be critical muscles to flex in order to maintain the strong culture at Rapid7. “The work world will never go back to the way it was before the pandemic. We can never assume that our team will all be in one place at the same time again. So, we have to make sure we include our team members and create a feeling of togetherness. We have a leadership team that makes sure we’re in lockstep with the expectations that we’re setting for ourselves and the company.”
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Scaling with Intention and Reshaping the Cybersecurity landscape.
For Christina, culture, inclusion and equitable practices have always been at the core of everything she implements. Setting actionable goals and sharing them externally was put into motion in 2018, when she and CEO Corey Thomas put the bold goal in place that the company would be 50|50 by the end of 2020. The first 50% represented women and people of color. The second 50% would represent white males. In an incredibly white male dominated industry, this target was considered audacious and relatively unachievable. In their 2020 diversity report, Rapid7 shared that they fell just shy of this goal with a 49.7% diverse population. “Yes,we could have rounded it up to 50%, but we intentionally chose not to. We are proud of the progress we made, but that .03% from achieving our goal is a strong reminder to us that this isn’t work that we ever get to be done with. It’s not an initiative, it’s a part of our evolving culture. We always want to be intentional in how we search for and bring talent into our organization, and how we nurture and promote from within those individuals who are making valuable contributions.”
The company’s diversity, equity and inclusion goals continue to evolve and expand, most notably seen in their newest company location in Tampa. Balancing diversity with veterans, Black and LatinX and women as focus areas, their work is an intentional way that Christina and her team plan for talent acquisition and talent development to ensure that the company benefits from the unique perspectives and experiences of their people. “On a human level, it’s just the right thing to do. On a company level, it’s an essential component to driving creativity and innovation while encouraging open, authentic connections for our people to learn from one another along the way.”
For Rapid7, solving for one part of an issue has never been an option. Not only are Christina and Corey being very mindful of how they hire and develop company culture, but they are also focused on building opportunities for those from a multitude of backgrounds to develop Cybersecurity specific skills and transition into the industry. Some examples of opportunity building can be attributed to partnerships with HackDiversity, Cyversity and implementing rotational programs for incoming talent.