Article continues below advertisementCarol Xie did not begin her career in HR or in tech. She began her career in finance and consulting, with experience at notable firms. As a CPA, she was trained to identify internal inefficiencies and pinpoint why even their best efforts failed to secure clients. The same pattern kept emerging. She sat by "watching projects fail even when the 'numbers were right,' because the teams were misaligned," she said. What seemed like execution issues were actually people problems. That idea stuck with her. Growing up in the U.K.