The podcast Guiding Growth: Conversations with Community Leaders from the Gilbert Chamber of Commerce, event and meeting venue Modern Moments and the Gilbert Independent/yourvalley.net explores the human journey of leaders. There are stories of humility, triumph, roadblocks, and lessons learned. This partial transcript of the  most recent podcast with Jolean Fleck has been edited for brevity and clarity.  

Jolean Fleck, vice president of people and organizational development, joined Delta Dental of Arizona in 2019. In this role, she works to shape the company’s culture and create an enriching experience for employees. With a focus on building a strong, high-performing team, Fleck is also responsible for leadership development and employer branding. 

Before joining Delta Dental of Arizona, Fleck was the chief talent officer for the town of Gilbert. As an experienced talent manager, she has spent more than 20 years delivering HR solutions across diverse industries that align with business strategy and improve the employee experience. 

Fleck has an undergraduate degree in business with a human resources concentration from Austin Peay State University and a master’s degree in business from the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. Fleck holds a Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR) certification and a Society of Human Resources Senior Certified Professional (SHRM-SCP) designation. In addition, she is a member of the board of directors for Save The Family, a Mesa-based organization and leading provider of housing, case management, and supportive services to more than 650 homeless and impoverished families annually throughout Maricopa County. 

Well, let's go to Tennessee because it sounds like that's where all things began for you. Tell us a little bit about that journey in the beginning years of your development. Yeah. So oldest daughter of four and my father passed when I was 9. So now I was the oldest daughter of a single mom. And so I think that probably had a lot to do with who I became. He had an accident at home. So that kind of like set things in a certain direction. Everybody has to step up. 

So 9 is a very young age to lose a parent, and then your sisters being younger than you. How did you take on that leadership as the oldest child at that time? Yeah. You don't get a whole lot of choice. It kind of is what it is, and my mom worked nights, so I very much ran the household and made sure everybody got ready for school and everyone would get fed. You just figure things out. And my mom was very open, like “Jolene's in charge,” so it helped, I didn't have to do a whole lot of convincing. That was just life and, and that's what we had to do. So I think that it definitely made me a more self-reliant person. I never thought, “OK, someone else is going to do something. I'm the person that's going to do something or it's not going to get done.” 

So from that perspective, I think later in life, all these things end up being blessings. All these things end up adding up to who you are and why you're able to do what you're able to do. So, in the moment you're thinking, “Man, when I get out of here, I can't wait to get out of here.” But then later you take all those gifts with you, and you're like, “OK, this really has been helpful. “ 

(After college) I went out to visit Phoenix, and I remember in the plane looking out and seeing all those buildings and just thinking there are jobs in those buildings, and this was the late '90s. So I was just like, “This looks like opportunity in every direction.” But it looks so new and open and it just really kind of I had this sympathetic vibration with the whole scene, and I was just like, “This is where I need to go. I'm going to find my people here.”  

And what do you find when you get out here? Well, things are always a little harder than you imagine. Like I'm going to go to the big city and it's going to be great. But I found a job within two months, and it was a temp with a temp agency. But six months later, my first job is with Rockford Fosgate, and again, this is like late '90s, and this is all about the cars with the base and the Lowriders and the lights. And so for a younger person being in that space it was so fun. It was so much fun.  

What is a lesson that you might have learned during that time that you've carried with you? So for me, I spent 10 years there and we went from kind of a small company to a public company. We went from being in Tempe to being global. And I was so lucky I had the best boss. Her name is Jackie Mott, and she was the VP of HR there, and she just let me observe. Like she just made sure I was in the room. And just watching the dynamic, like who's nervous about this deal? Who's excited about this? Who's mad at who? Just being able to kind of quietly observe was such a gift. So being there when the company was growing so rapidly and then being able to observe during that time, it was such a gift. And so I try to develop people the same way just with exposure, like I just want to get you in this room. You don't have to do anything, just watch.  

So that stopped. Then what? So at the end of my time at Rockford, I went back to went back to school, went to business school at ASU and I got my MBA. I found a position at Alcoa in Chandler, and it was heavy manufacturing, it was unionized from an HR perspective. It was like the scariest thing I could do. And so I was so excited to go do this. I had kind of grown up at Rockford and I was ready to sort of test my own wings. And I was the plant HR manager, and we had an amazing experience there. It was a plant that was really solid but underperforming. I was really brought in as a part of a turnaround team to bring them back to profitability. And we did, and that was also just an amazing experience.  

So, you are climbing the ladder and doing amazing things professionally during this time. What does family life look like for you? I got married when I was at Rockford, and that didn't work out. But I did get my daughters during that time, and they're amazing, wonderful people. And so I was by myself for a little while when I was kind of the tail end of Alcoa. and spent a few years just kind of being a mom and, and with my daughters, and then I met my husband Dan, and it felt like we had a whole lot in common. 

Like his mom was also a night nurse, and he had also in a 10-year relationship that didn't work out. He had two kids, too. And we just kind of found ourselves sort of in the same place in our 30s. We like the same music and all those things that you're just like, “Oh, my gosh, this is like my person.” But the second time it was like, “You know what, I'm an interviewer. I am a professional talent selector. Like I'm going to employ some of these skills this time, and I'm going to make a good decision like I do at work, and lo and behold.  

When you think of especially small companies who might be hiring and they're hiring on their own, what do you think that they should be considering that might not be the first thing that comes to mind for a small business? There are some unique things about being small that you should leverage. Not everybody wants to go work for GE or some huge conglomerate. A lot of people really love the feeling of being noticed and that their contribution is visible and that they show up and they don't work with like this, this team, they work with Joe and Becky. There's a lot of wonderful things about being small that you want to hide and not talk about because you want to look big. But when you are honest and open about those things, it's like anything else, people are going to gravitate toward that authenticity about who you are. Embrace what is unique and special about you and the right people are going to find you.  

So what's going on in the future? What's next? Delta Dental of Arizona, we've just been working on strategy, doing some foundational things.  We're looking at other things that might be complementary to what our offerings are now, various partnerships, and there's a whole lot of things that are possible that we can do as an organization, and we're really embracing the part of our mission that's around providing a path to better health and wellness. Your teeth are a part of your body, and it's kind of weird that they're seen as so separate.