Tag Archives: HP

In 1977, Susan Bowick was a dissatisfied Colorado teacher just coming to realize that she despaired at the thought of pursuing that profession for the rest of her life. At the offhand suggestion of her husband, she casually applied for a job as a secretary at Hewlett-Packard. Her interviewer, however, spotted higher qualifications and offered her a job as a business analyst. She moved into HR two years later and invested her entire career in growing the people side of the business.

The project that tops her HR career was the controversial merger of Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Compaq – two distinctly separate cultures that, combined, would expand her employee base from 86,000 to almost 150,000 literally overnight. In this interview, conducted before her retirement announcement, she spoke about the major lessons of her career and how she grew along the … Continue Reading