Fitting the pieces together

On her path to becoming a CEO, Chris Staples MS ’96 has always been motivated to learn something new. Staples has held leadership roles in a variety of companies across the water treatment, oil and gas and manufacturing industries, picking up new skills and experiences along the way. She has compiled her capabilities into a skill set that has enabled her to take on executive-level roles and help underperforming organizations get back on track and achieve profitable growth. 

“I moved around in various positions to teach myself things I didn’t know,” Staples said. “I realized both my education and variety of cross-functional roles landed me in a position where I could be a successful CEO.” 

Staples is currently the CEO of Cohere Beauty, a formula incubator and contract manufacturer for the beauty, personal care and fragrance industries—an area Staples was not initially familiar with. However, she relied on her innate curiosity, passion for making data-driven decisions and experiences leading other companies to step into the role ready to take on new challenges with confidence. 

We sat down with Staples to hear more about her thoughts on being a leader and the capabilities and skills that have been essential to her success.

Mines Magazine: What aspects of leadership appeal to you and make you want to pursue such roles?

Chris Staples: I really love developing people and seeing them navigate along their own leadership journey. How do I make my team better? Typically, at my level, it’s not about making their functional skills better—it’s making them better leaders. My ability and passion to cultivate leaders at all levels—especially women leaders—is what inspires me. You’re asking really hard questions to help them make decisions and challenging them to learn from their mistakes. It’s enormously rewarding to watch a leader become a better leader, because it pays forward to the next leader and the next. That is genuinely my passion. I love it.

MM: What do you think are some of the skills and qualities that make a good leader?

Staples: I think one of them is listening—actively listening and asking questions to understand a situation. Too many leaders think they have all the answers. I also think it’s important to be a very clear, effective and consistent communicator. It’s critical to be consistent in your leadership behaviors and decision making so you’re predictable. Additional keys to being a good leader are having humility and emotional intelligence. I try to be a highly collaborative leader—I’m going to motivate and inspire the people on my team to try their hardest, to go above and beyond by practicing these behaviors myself every day. Frankly, I want my team to be better than me—that gives us the best odds to win. I love to win.

MM: How do you think your Mines background has contributed to your career success?

Staples: Using the scientific method, making data-driven decisions, learning how to analyze numbers to find solutions and critical thinking skills are huge components of what you learn at Mines. I use these skills every day.

I also learned to be very confident among very smart people, because Mines is filled with highly intelligent people. You have to be confident in yourself, both in your technical skills and your leadership skills, especially as a woman CEO. 

At Mines, you gain a strong work ethic that sticks with you your whole career. You’re taught to keep working until you find the answer to the question or solve the problem.

MM: You and your husband, Nick, established an endowed scholarship at Mines to support women students pursuing studies in economics and business. Why is it important to you to give back to Mines in this way?

Staples: When my mother died, she set up two scholarships but was never able to feel the joy of giving. I wanted to do the same and feel that joy. Nick and I chose to give at a place that meant something to both of us and support and encourage women to pursue technical careers. I take the added step to personally mentor and sponsor early-career women because the statistics haven’t changed—early-career women are promoted later than men, and this has a long-term impact on their career trajectory.

We chose business and economics because it’s a great complement to the more classic engineering disciplines. When I graduated from Mines, I didn’t understand anything about business or how companies operated. I went on to get an MBA, and that put it all into perspective for me. The combination of the technical education from Mines and the MBA were like hand-in-glove. When I found out that Mines had an economics and business degree, I thought it filled a gap and would be a great degree and asset for many companies.