Carrie Cox is Senior Manager, HR Relations for U.S. Retail at Staples Inc., a recipient of the DRI Foundation’s Women in BCM Scholarship, and as a result, has received her ABCP certification with DRI International.
What is your professional background? How did you get there?
My entire professional career has been in retail; starting in stores, moving into field leadership then to the home office and most recently in HR. Currently my HR role is as Senior Manager HR Operations for our US Retail organization. Caring for my community has always been important to me, so being able to tie community, people and business continuity together helps me to be more effective, empathetic and knowledgeable in my career and personal life.
What does DRI certification mean to you?
Being a certified Business Continuity Professional has provided me with additional skills and resources to assist me in both my current job as well as in my community.
What made you interested in business continuity?
In my current role I’ve been involved in multiple crisis teams (hurricanes, wild fires, etc.) that temporarily impact our retail organization. Then, with the pandemic, I’ve been on the COVID Task Force and was able to spend more time with our business continuity team / manager and as I learned more about their role, I knew it was something I wanted to learn and be more involved with.
Do you have any life experience that makes this field especially compelling?
Yes, my family and I lived on Staten Island, NY when Superstorm Sandy hit. Our home was right across the street from the beach. While we thought we were prepared for the event, we never expected what happened. We were home and didn’t think we would survive that night, fortunately we did! Seeing the impact this storm had on my family, my community and the infrastructure I knew I wanted to learn more about being proactive and how to respond to these types of events.