Leadership Lessons from Amtrak’s CHRO

Ken Freeman, Professor Emeritus, led a conversation with Joseph Boardman, Former President and CEO of Amtrak and Barry Melnkovic, EVP and Chief Human Capital Officer, Labor Relations, Diversity, and Lean Enterprise Solutions and HR 2016 Executive of the Year.

When Joe Boardman became CEO, he wanted to enforce a focus on employee engagement. “How do you get your employees to treat the customers well if they’re not being treated well? For me, there needed to be a way in the door,” says Boardman.

As it turns out, much to his own surprise, Barry Melnkovic was the right person for the job. “Some people are still very surprised that I ended up at Amtrak,” he says. Melnkovic was juggling job offers when he called upon one of his mentors to help him make the tough choice. “Dave Brown, the now retired CEO of Owens Corning, who remains a coach and mentor, said, ‘was there any CEO that led with safety?’ because he knew that was a value that was important to me. I said, ‘there was one. Joe Boardman at Amtrak.’ And with that, it was Amtrak. It was a very value-based decision. I came for Boardman and country and never looked back.”

When he first arrived at Amtrak, he needed to do a diagnosis of over 20,000 employees. “I followed a model of strategy, structure, talent, and execution, with a lot of outreach,” shares Melnkovic. “It was a lot of roll up your sleeves and go after it to close those gaps.”

Melnkovic, who has spent over five years with Amtrak, says how he he got his start with Amtrak–in a way, thanks to his father. “He was a union guy ’til the day he died, and so that kind of brought me into this whole notion of people and work. I would see firsthand when companies closed what that did to communities, and that was something that drove me into the HR field. How do you have productivity and keep in mind a social responsibility as well, yet there are times when you need to make hard decisions.”

“I’m just happy to be playing a small part on a winning team, and Amtrak is in fact a winning team,” says Melnkovic with a smile.

Watch the full interview below.