Ted Forbes and David Alsop have teamed up to write “Making HR Matter: What CEOs Want and How To Deliver It,” a book available in 2026 for Chief Human Resource Officers and other HR professionals. Forbes worked in HR at Cotopaxi and Backcountry before founding Divitius Partners. Meanwhile, Alsop serves as the Chief Human Resource Officer for Ultradent Products, and previously worked in HR for Kraft Heinz for more than a dozen years. SmartBrief Business spoke with Forbes and Alsop about the journey from HR to the C-suite.
This interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
What was your biggest takeaway from your time in HR at Cotopaxi?
Forbes: Cotopaxi stood out as an amazing experience for two reasons. The first is that the deep alignment of company values with our employees’ personal core values created a unique culture where we were all laser focused on fulfilling our company mission: Adventure inspires us to see the world and make it better. That’s why we create responsibly made outdoor gear that brings performance, color, and joy to all, and helps us build a movement to support communities around the world.” The second reason is that we built an executive team where each person excelled thinking like general managers and in listening. Each member of the team had their functional responsibilities, but we all weighed in on leading the company and we all listened carefully to the insight and wisdom each of us brought to the table. We made great decisions together because we all thoroughly knew the business and were personally aligned to our mission.
What was your biggest takeaway from your time in HR at Ultradent?
Alsop: My biggest takeaway from my time in HR at Ultradent is that HR can be the catalyst that helps a company move from a beloved founding story to a bold future of growth. Ultradent was shaped by Dan Fischer, an iconic founder whose values were woven into the culture with genuine care. When I arrived, the company was preparing a transition to a new CEO, and the moment was ripe for HR to matter in a new way. The culture wasn’t weighed down by hierarchy or internal functional competition, which meant it was ready for stronger people strategies. And the incoming CEO truly wanted to be surrounded by a diverse set of business partners, especially an HR leader who could honor the founder’s past while aligning the organization for what was next. With my Fortune 200 background, that combination of timing, leadership, and culture showed me what HR can accomplish when the environment is right: it becomes not just a function, but a driver of relevance, alignment, and real business transformation. My time here at Ultradent has also clarified the core ingredients needed for truly relevant HR: a CEO who believes in its purpose, an HR leader who knows how to bring it to life, and a culture willing to embrace what it can become.
How can CHROs succeed in getting hired as CEOs?
Alsop and Forbes: Our book is called “Making HR Matter: What CEOs Want and How To Deliver It” for a very specific reason – we believe in delivering what we call “RelevantHR” which is all about HR making a positive economic impact on a company. That’s what every CEO wants from their C-team. In our minds the best way for a CHRO to become a CEO is to establish a track record of positively impacting the company’s bottom line. To do this, a CHRO needs to understand a general manager’s point of view; that means a CHRO has to be adept and conversant in broader business disciplines like Finance, Marketing, Operations, Customer Experience and the like. If a CHRO can show how she or he has consistently delivered bottom line impact, and has developed a reputation for knowing their business and industry deeply, then they are very likely to be seen as a very strong CEO candidate.
How did you come up with the idea for your book?
Alsop and Forbes: We have been professional colleagues in the Salt Lake City area for more than a decade. We’ve been part of the same professional networks and have spoken together at many conferences and meetings. The more we did that, the more we found that while we have very different personal backgrounds, we were deeply aligned on the need for HR to add economic and cultural value to our respective companies. We both approach our CHRO roles from a “business first, HR second” point of view. We found that to be an important and somewhat novel perspective, and we felt it was important to share that view more broadly across the business and HR communities. We decided the best way to do that was to write a book. We have been extremely fortunate to collaborate with Becky Robinson of Weaving Influence Press to get our message out.
What advice would you give HR professionals who are starting out?
Alsop and Forbes: We have a whole section on this in our book. The main message is to think broadly about your role – it’s important to earn your HR chops, and it is equally important to learn the various disciplines of business; if you get offered a rotation in a function outside HR, take it. To contribute meaningfully as an HR person you need to be seen as relevant, and relevance comes from knowing your craft and how the various tools and levers of HR can be deployed to create financial value. If you are a “student of business” as much as you are an emerging HR professional, you’ll differentiate yourself from the pack.
