Mary Nease

Mary Nease is a board member at Ordway Center for the Performing Arts and was previously the SVP, Chief Human Resources Officer at Thrivent Financial. Mary has been with Thrivent Financial since January 2016 and has been instrumental in leading the HR strategy with a team of 125 accountable for talent acquisition, total rewards, organization effectiveness, culture & engagement, workforce analytics, diversity & inclusion, and HR operations.

Under their tenure, they have transformed the HR organization to high-trust partners by realigning staff to business priorities and introducing Agile as a way to get work done, resulting in higher value delivery, increased transparency of timing and cost, and HR team engagement score reaching 96% favorable. Mary has also reduced the cost structure of HR services while improving the employee experience and simplifying benefit programs. In addition, they initiated pay equity analysis, addressed gaps and increased pay competitiveness, improving our ability to attract and retain top talent. With business unit president, we onboarded four diverse acquisitions over 12-month period, adding $7B in assets under management.

Mary Nease has a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in marketing and international business. Mary also has a certification in Strategic HR Planning from the University of Michigan. In addition, they have completed executive education courses in executive education from the University of Minnesota - Carlson School of Management.