Morgan Crain: The Leader Who Made Authenticity Her Superpower

Morgan Crain will never forget a particular job interview early on in her career.

It took place in a conference room with a long table, where everyone from the hiring company sat facing her. Then a woman walked into the room — hair, makeup, and outfit all flawless — and gazed at her sitting alone on one side of the table with all these people on the other side.

“She wasn’t going to make me sit there by myself. She came over and pulled up a chair next to me. And I remember, at that moment, that any stress I had completely vanished.”

Not only did she get the job, but that woman, Corby Casler, would go on to become Crain’s first mentor and be instrumental in her decision to pursue a career in events. From that moment on, Crain decided she would always try to make people feel the way Casler made her feel that day.

Skift Meetings sat down with Crain, leader of global rewards & recognition at Rubrik, to discuss leadership, mentorship, her role at the Incentive Research Foundation, and more.

What did you learn about leadership from Corby Casler?

She was always very authentic. She was her true self and a transparent leader, which is something that I have embodied throughout my career.

Early on, I worked in insurance and banking, and there was a way that you had to show up, a way you had to be. Corby was one of those leaders who was different. She didn't fit that mold. She challenged the status quo. 

Do you see yourself as an authentic leader?

That's one of the things that I've gotten coaching on early in my career. I tend to be more emotional and wear my heart on my sleeve. I'm not good at wearing a mask. And I think through her leadership and the coaching, I have learned that it’s actually fine to be yourself. I have embodied that with my teams and all of the collaborative partners that I work with — being candid and transparent is really important. 

Three years ago, you moved from T-Mobile, where you worked for 15 years, to Rubrik, a start-up? What was that like?

Here, I am a mighty team of one and I sit in the HR department. I have some really amazing peers, and we've just been working to implement and launch new programs.

One of the first things I did was create a toolkit that teaches them about rewards and recognition, coming up with scrappy ways that they could do this. We didn't have policies, platforms, budgets — none of that. I had to reach out and get to know our executive assistants and team members, and learn from them about how they were getting things done, and build from there.

The first big program that I was responsible for was around tenure, and then we started by focusing on our new hires. That ended up with me building what we call our brick store — a global employee branded gear store, where our employees get a credit in the store and select what's meaningful for them.  

So now, the recognition starts at the point when people join and then celebrates their tenure and their career milestones. We've built some gifting milestones at years one, three, and five, and this year we actually launched a sabbatical program at year eight, which has been really well-received.

You’ve been a long-term leader with the Incentive Research Foundation, serving on the board since 2019. What has been the most rewarding part of that journey?

The IRF role has been really enlightening. It's given me an opportunity to have a voice at a table where, before, I didn't always feel that way.

Sometimes when you're sitting in a board room and you raise your hand, it's not always a comfortable situation. But I got really comfortable raising my hand and asking, “Wait, why do we do it that way?”

When I joined, the board had a lot of third-party partners and folks from airlines, but no one who sat in a corporate environment partnering with all these folks. Kari Vrba [now vice president strategic conferences & events at Ameriprise] was the chair at that point, and she loved my collaborative spirit, that I was very candid, that when I had feedback I delivered it in a caring and compassionate way — and that when I spoke, people listened.

It was a challenging environment around that table — an old-school, “This is how we've always done things” mentality.

We were doing studies about innovation but weren’t being innovative in how we presented them. It was very academic. So I kept raising my hand and questioning this type of content. People were getting more into LinkedIn and social media, and I felt like we were only speaking to a very narrow group of folks. 

I said, “I think we could be telling these stories through graphics, through visuals, through snackable quotes and bites that they could use. It needs to be engaging and fun and how people consume information is changing.” And that’s what we ended up doing.

I'm the chair of the IRF Executive Committee right now, and next year will be my last year of service. Now they have created an alumni group for when folks roll off the board, so I am excited after this next year to roll into that alumni group and see how I can continue serving.