Poppulo Meets…Kerri Warner PayPal's Head of Employee Communications, Culture & Engagement

Welcome to our new Poppulo Meets… series. Conversations with senior IC and HR leaders about their work, their world, and what’s shaped them along the way. We couldn’t be happier to kick things off with someone we’ve long respected and admired—Kerri Warner.

Kerri is Head of Employee Communications, Culture & Engagement at PayPal. She’s helped others navigate change—from her first career as a clinical social worker to management consulting, where she applied her change expertise to help drive transformational business initiatives.

Within the change management space, she found her passion in employee communications. She’s previously led employee communications and engagement teams at top global brands including Spotify, Mastercard, Edelman, and she also ran B2B marketing at American Express.

She has been externally recognized for her people leadership, under which her teams have won multiple creative communications campaigns. She lives in Irvington, NY, a suburb just north of New York City.

My first job was as a telemarketer while in high school! It taught me the value of….handling rejection with grace and not taking it personally!

My path to employee comms started when I realized that the kinds of conversations that earned trust and sparked change for teenagers could be useful in helping employees within organizations adapt, adopt, and thrive during change too.

The best advice I ever got was “just do you” from Gunther Bright, a senior executive and my first boss at American Express. He encouraged me to confidently bring my own creative ideas and unique talents to the table rather than try to emulate how everyone else around me was showing up.

And the advice I wish I’d listened to early on was go slow before you go fast—and don’t be apologetic about it. There is so much to be learned from taking a pause before taking action.

The turning point in my career was when I decided to choose a niche—employee communications and employee engagement. The best one!

What I love most about my job is the team I work with every day and the ability we have together to create real impact through communications and experiences that connect our colleagues to our business, our culture, our customers, and each other.

But you see how people miss what internal comms is all about when…they start conversations by asking for a communication instead of sharing what they’re trying to achieve through communication. It’s also up to us as communicators to ask this question! When we do, our work is focused and impactful.

You can see how internal comms is misunderstood when some leaders think a one-off campaign or a few leadership memos will fix disengagement, mistrust or low morale.

That mindset treats employees like a box to be checked rather than people to be connected with, and the cost is real: disengaged teams, higher turnover, and a culture that quietly erodes performance and wellbeing. Internal comms done right changes how people feel, think, and act.

And it deserves to be treated with that weight, like it is here at PayPal.

There's a real and dramatic shift in our profession right now because of AI. It’s an exciting time to be in comms, experimenting with new tools that give us so much more at our fingertips than we’ve ever had before in a fraction of the time and a quarter of the effort.

We’re learning through experimentation and learning from each other how to make so many of our daily tasks easier, freeing us to be more strategic and creative.

I think the key is to view AI as a new team member—first you orient it, then it learns more about you and your needs. Then it delivers, and with your guidance and oversight, keeps getting better.

What I do to stay strategic—not just reactive—in my role is pause before responding. Then ask the question, “What are we really trying to solve for here?” Sometimes what’s perceived as a communication need is really something else altogether, like leadership teams aren’t aligned or a process is unnecessarily complex. In either case, communications comes after those real issues have been addressed.

To keep my team aligned with strategy, I find it helpful to keep it simple, ensure everyone sees their role within it, use it as an ongoing reference point in monthly team meetings, and celebrate progress along the way!

If I was asked what I’m known for professionally, I’d like to think it’s the way in which I lead my team—with humanity, candor, and care.

One trait I really struggle to tolerate in others is closed-mindedness.

What truly sets high achievers apart is their ability to see and act on possibilities where others see problems and stagnation.

If I wasn’t working in company internal communications I’d probably be returning to my roots to help people with the bigger challenges in life, either through clinical social work and/or coaching—applying a holistic approach that includes my other passions: nature, neuroscience, yoga, and the healing power of canines!

— In conversation with Tim Vaughan, Poppulo's Editorial Director.

tvaughan@poppulo.com