Seeing the Business Through People

MEET TODAY’S GUEST

Tamara Kern

Tamara Kern is the Chief Human Resources Officer at Footprint, where she leads people strategy across a business shaped by manufacturing, innovation, and sustainability. Originally from Austria, she built her career across automotive manufacturing and global HR leadership roles in Europe before relocating to the United States, bringing an international perspective that continues to shape how she leads today.

Her experience spans greenfield manufacturing, organizational development, leadership capability, and cross-regional collaboration. Across each chapter, one theme has remained consistent: understanding the business deeply is what gives HR the ability to create real impact.

Today, she shares how that mindset was built across countries, why leadership behavior defines culture more than language does, and where HR still has room to evolve.

THE INTERVIEW

Where Business and People Meet

Tamara Kern approaches HR through the lens of how organizations actually function.

For her, the work begins with understanding how teams operate, where collaboration becomes difficult, and why performance challenges often emerge long before they appear in formal business metrics.

That perspective was shaped early inside manufacturing environments, where operational demands quickly reveal whether people, processes, and leadership are aligned.

Rather than viewing HR as a separate discipline, she sees it as part of how businesses solve problems, improve performance, and prepare for growth.

At the center of that thinking is a simple idea:

That belief has stayed consistent across every stage of her career.

Born and raised in Austria, Tamara began her professional path in automotive, combining formal business education with early HR experience inside a large global manufacturing organization. Opportunities within that same company later brought her to Germany, and eventually to Arizona, where she stepped into one of the most defining transitions of her career.

Relocating to the United States meant more than changing geography. It meant learning a new labor market, understanding different expectations around leadership, and translating global business priorities into a local operating reality.

Building Culture Where Different Worlds Meet

One of Tamara’s most formative experiences came while helping establish HR leadership for a greenfield manufacturing operation in Arizona through Magna, supporting the Waymo autonomous vehicle program.

The assignment required far more than staffing a facility.

It meant bridging expectations across corporate cultures, operational systems, and workforce realities that did not naturally align.

European leadership expectations met U.S. manufacturing practices. Automotive standards met a local talent market with limited automotive background. Every decision required both technical understanding and cultural adjustment.

That made leadership behavior especially important.

For Tamara, culture is rarely created through formal statements alone. It becomes visible in daily habits: how leaders solve problems, how quickly decisions move, and how accountability is reinforced when pressure builds.

In a greenfield environment, she saw leadership development as the clearest multiplier.

The strongest systems still depend on leaders who model urgency, clarity, and consistency well enough for teams to follow.

That principle continues to shape how she thinks about organizational growth today.

Why Learning Never Stopped

Alongside executive leadership, Tamara continued investing in formal education, including doctoral studies in management.

For her, research and practical leadership should strengthen one another rather than compete.

She believes too many organizations still separate academic insight from real business decision-making, when in reality the strongest decisions often come from combining both.

That same thinking influenced her years as a university lecturer in Austria and Germany, where she taught HR management and leadership while continuing to work in the industry.

Teaching future leaders sharpened how she designs learning inside organizations today.

Rather than treating leadership sessions as formal training, she focuses on making them practical enough that managers leave able to apply what they learned immediately.

The goal is not simply participation.

It is helping leaders build enough confidence and capability that HR does not need to sit in on every daily people decision.

She often describes that as one of the most important ways HR creates long-term value: strengthening leadership so the business becomes more capable on its own.

Technology as an Untapped Advantage

While many conversations in HR focus on whether systems are replacing human work, Tamara sees a different challenge.

In her experience, most organizations are still not using technology nearly enough to support stronger people decisions.

For years, payroll was often the only system fully established inside HR, while broader workforce insights remained fragmented or difficult to access.

That limits how strategically HR can contribute when businesses are making decisions around growth, organizational design, capability, or acquisition.

She believes stronger systems should help HR move beyond administrative visibility and toward deeper business contribution.

Used well, technology creates clarity around workforce planning, capability gaps, and long-term talent needs.

But she is equally clear that systems cannot replace leadership judgment.

The most sensitive decisions still depend on trust, context, and human understanding that no platform can fully automate.

What HR Leaders Must Learn Earlier

As HR responsibilities grow, Tamara believes one lesson becomes especially important: not every issue involving people belongs inside HR.

Early in a career, it is easy to absorb too much.

People issues appear everywhere, especially in fast-moving organizations, and the instinct is often to step into every challenge.

Over time, she learned that strategic value comes from knowing where HR should guide, where leaders should own the issue themselves, and where boundaries protect the function from becoming overloaded.

Being involved in the business does not mean owning every people decision. For Tamara, that distinction is critical to how HR creates real impact.

Not every people-related issue belongs to HR.

That clarity allows HR to stay focused on the work that creates broader impact: leadership capability, organizational effectiveness, and long-term business readiness.

It also protects HR teams themselves.

Because the function often carries difficult moments others do not see — restructures, conflict, disciplinary decisions, sensitive conversations — Tamara believes leaders must pay closer attention to the emotional recovery of HR teams as well.

Strong HR leadership, in her view, includes making sure the people supporting the organization are also supported themselves.

A Leadership Style Shaped by Many Perspectives

When asked about mentors, Tamara does not point to one defining figure.

Instead, she describes leadership as something shaped through many people over time: senior leaders who created opportunity, peers who offered perspective, and team members whose feedback made her adjust how she led.

Some lessons came from strong role models.

Others came from observing what she would choose to do differently.

That openness to constant adjustment remains central to how she works today.

Across countries, industries, and leadership levels, one idea has stayed remarkably consistent:

The more complex the business becomes, the more important it is for leaders and HR to deeply understand their people — how they work, what they need, and what enables them to perform at their best.

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