Terri Zandhuis on Leadership & Building People | AccruePartners

In honor of International Women's History Month, host Amy Pack sits down with Terri Zandhuis, Chief People Officer at Krispy Kreme, to talk about the career that shaped her, the leaders who formed her, and what meaningful success looks like as she approaches a new chapter.

At AccruePartners, we partner with organizations across Charlotte, the Carolinas, and beyond during times of growth, change, leadership transition, and transformation. For International Women's History Month, this conversation features a leader who has spent more than three decades shaping organizations and developing the people inside them.

Key takeaways:

• Great leaders and difficult ones are both formative. Terri credits strong mentors for who she is today — but a single lousy boss taught her just as much about the kind of leader she never wanted to be.
• A seat at the table is earned every day. Positional authority gets you into the room; staying relevant, curious, and prepared is what keeps you there.
• Build people, not just results. Terri leads by her "three A's": accessible, autonomy, and air cover.
• You don't need all the answers. The willingness to be vulnerable and ask questions is what inspires trust and confidence in a team.
• Success is redefined over time. Beyond title and achievement, it becomes about succession, relationships, and giving back.

Amy: I'm so excited to have you join me for a conversation around International Women's History Month — to talk about your career, your trajectory, and everything you've given back to others. Let's start with the interview question we always ask: tell me about yourself.

Terri: Oh goodness — going off script right out of the gate! This is an interesting point in time for me. I'm very much at an inflection point. After 35 amazing years in this career, I'm a month away from retirement — and I put that in lowercase "r." One of the things I keep saying is that I feel like I need to stop working to figure out whether I want to keep working, or what "next" looks like.

I've been really fortunate. I've had an amazing career working with phenomenal brands and phenomenal people, always in the human capital space — way before it was called human capital, back when it was just HR. I've worked across banking, financial services, consulting, technology, and media. This most recent stint has been the most fun of them all: I've spent the last eight and a half years as Chief People Officer for Krispy Kreme. No matter where you are in the world, when you tell people you work there, they light up. I'm so proud of everything I've gotten to do and the people I've gotten to work with.

Amy: Your energy matches their brand immensely. Congratulations on the news — we'll all be looking for the next chapter.

Amy: When you look at your career, what moment or decision shaped you into the leader you are?

Terri: I don't think it was a single moment — it was more a tale of two cities. The things that had the biggest impact on me as a leader were the people I worked for. In most cases I had amazing bosses, mentors, and leaders. But I also had an experience with a really, really lousy boss — and both were formative.

When you work for a leader who creates space for you to be the best you can be, they create safety, clarity, support, and great feedback. They set a tone. Those are the things I've aspired to as a leader. When you work for the opposite, it has an equally challenging impact — you lose that air cover and suddenly start second-guessing who you are and what you're capable of. So I've really tried to emulate the former: to be the kind of leader who helps grow, develop, and bring out the best in people.

And when you build a team where people are doing their best work, I learn as much from them as they learn from me. That's what makes it incredibly rewarding.

Amy: Was there a point when you had to stop waiting for permission to fully own a seat at the table and just do it?

Terri: When you're invited to the table, you instantly have what I'd describe as positional influence or positional authority — but you quickly realize that only lasts a short time. After that, it's about earning it every day.

What that takes is getting your voice in the room, having enough clarity and context on what matters, and being aware of what you don't know — then seeking to understand. The more you do that, the more you can claim your seat in an authentic way. But it's also important to show up as if you own it from the start. You were invited there for a reason. Particularly as women, we sometimes sit back and put ourselves in the "I'm still learning" category. Instead: you've been invited to the table, you've got the job — show up with that confidence, and then be humble enough to ask questions when you don't know something.

Amy: How do you think about your responsibility as a leader when it comes to building people — not just results?

Terri: I'm passionate about this. Early in your career, success is defined by what you accomplish and contribute. But as you grow, it becomes obvious that it's no longer about what you contribute — you have to get the work done through your teams. So it's critical to make sure they have what they need to be successful.

I think about it with my three A's:

1. Accessible. That doesn't just mean answering the phone or showing up in the room. It means giving people access to the information they need. I talk a lot about context — making sure everyone understands the context we're working in.
2. Autonomy. Once people have that context, I want to give them a lot of autonomy. Table stakes is that they've got the toolkit and we're investing in their development so they grow over time.
3. Air cover. That doesn't mean you don't give tough love and tough feedback. It means you have the backs of the people who work for you — because you've ensured they have the information, the skills, and the latitude they need to grow.

The most fun isn't climbing the ladder or getting the recognition. As you start to lead teams, it's so much more rewarding to watch your leaders succeed. Someone we hired a little over five years ago is my successor. There's no greater way to leave an organization than to hand over the reins with confidence to someone who has grown and thrived and is ready to take them.

Amy: What advice would you give a woman navigating an opportunity to take on a bigger role?

Terri: When you're given the opportunity to step up, own it — lead with confidence. We talk about "fake it till you make it," and women tend to carry an outsized imposter syndrome. Sit with that and acknowledge there are things you have to learn — but then step up with a level of assurance and confidence, and find the people who will be your support system.

Say yes, lean in, and keep seeking to understand. Be a good student. Find the people who know more than you, and who are committed to your success. Sometimes they're inside your organization; sometimes they're outside it. Having those people matters most when you reach an inflection point and start sitting at different tables.

Amy: What belief about leadership did you have earlier in your career that you had to unlearn?

Terri: The sense that you always have to have all the answers. You're in the room, or taking on a role, for a reason — and you're learning through lived experience. But it's also about the willingness to be vulnerable and acknowledge when you don't know everything, and then find the people who do. When you do that, it can be disarming. You're much more human — and ironically, that inspires confidence. That lack of "I know it all" can build real trust with the people you work with and the people who work for you.

The other thing that's served me well is finding your own personal board of directors — the people you can be very real and vulnerable with, who won't tell you what you want to hear, but will tell you what you need to hear. People who challenge you, support you, and are there through thick and thin. For me that's often been a lot of high-powered, badass women — but you also need trusted men in that circle. You want a variety of allies who keep it real.

Amy: As you look ahead — now that you have that lowercase "r" — what does meaningful success look like beyond title and achievement?

Terri: A few things I hoped would be true as I stepped down. I have a great partner in our CEO, and we've been intentional and planful about this transition for some time — which isn't always the case, so it's felt like a gift. It was really about making sure the teams I led, and the team I'm part of, were set up for success. Any organization needs bench strength, and everyone is replaceable — but ensuring people were equipped to step up and thrive as I stepped away, and being able to hand over the reins, is a privilege.

Now it's about stepping back and looking from afar. I've worked with so many amazing people across so many companies, and many of them are still in my life. When I look at the caliber and quality of those relationships that have stood the test of time — through everyone's ups and downs and career moves — it's now much more about friendships than operating as colleagues.

Going forward, it's about taking the breadth of this experience and doing something with it. I've been involved in nonprofit boards and have a real passion for board work, so I'm hoping for more of that, along with mentoring. I have the luxury now of choosing what that looks like — but I'll still keep the calendar full, because I'm energized by affiliation and contribution.

Amy: I cannot see you sitting idle.

Terri: I do not think I will. I'd lose my mind!

Amy: Mentoring keeps coming up in these conversations, especially for young professionals — they're facing more adversity than I've seen in my 35 years. As a Chief People Officer, you know we need people coming into the workforce to take on these roles from a succession standpoint.

Terri: I couldn't agree more. I've had structured mentoring relationships that were positive and impactful, but the most meaningful ones happened organically. Looking out over the next several years, one of the things I wonder and worry about is the impact of a fully virtual working environment — not for those of us who grew up with mentors and corporate culture in the office, but for those who entered the workforce immediately in a virtual setting. What are the missed opportunities as a result?

So when people early in their careers have a chance to find a mentor, or to join something informal — a resource group, a project team, a "culture crew," whatever it is — I'd tell them to capitalize on it. There's so much richness in that, plus exposure to people you'd never otherwise get to meet.

Amy: In that same vein — when we all went remote, it took a while for networking to come back. People wanted it, but working from home, they didn't want to make the extra effort to get dressed and commit to a thoughtful, in-person conversation. Now that we're in 2026, it feels a lot more mainstream again.

Terri: I agree — but it still takes intentionality. It's easy to set aside, either for those reasons or because your job is so busy. Then people hit an inflection point — they lose a job unexpectedly, or they're relocating — and they don't have that muscle or that network, so they're trying to build it from a place of urgency. That's different. It doesn't feel as authentic; there's a sense of quid pro quo rather than the real value of the networking experience.

Amy: What's one piece of advice you wish someone had given you 10 years ago?

Terri: Say yes to everything — within reason, of course. So often we're on our back foot with that imposter syndrome: Am I ready? Could I do it? It's out of my comfort zone. Go for it. It took me time in my career to do that, and now that I'm older and wiser — and care less about what people think — it seems obvious. But pushing out of your comfort zone and saying yes to the opportunities in front of you: I wish someone had told me that earlier.

Amy: You've worked for a lot of great brands. What was one bold move that changed your career trajectory?

Terri: We'd been living in Charlotte for about 12 years. I was working for one of the most amazing financial institutions, had been there 10 years, taken on progressively larger roles, and loved it. Then I had the opportunity to become head of HR for a division of a company outside Philadelphia that had just made an acquisition.

I had to pause, because I was comfortable — but after 10 years, I knew I might never make a move if I didn't take that one. My husband is incredibly supportive, and we decided as a family to move: two careers, three kids, some fish and dogs — and yes, we moved the fish — to Villanova, Pennsylvania, one of the most underrated places in the US. We spent three years there. We left family, friends, and everything we knew well.

I'd been part of this incredible, well-run machine, and it gave me an amazing toolkit. But what you don't realize is that you're not doing as much original thinking, building, or architecting. This role was starting from scratch — everything was unfamiliar. For the first six months it was a "what have we done?" kind of moment. But we rebuilt a team, did a lot of cultural transformation, and it was work that served me well in what came next. I never would have gotten the next opportunity without it. Big professional risk, big personal risk — with the right support. We ultimately came back to Charlotte, which wasn't the plan. It unlocked a lot of doors.

Amy: And if you hadn't left, you might not have realized what your social circle here really meant.

Terri: Well said. We have great family and good friends we call "framily" — that kind of family-and-friend. We feel really fortunate. With the exception of those years near Philadelphia, we've been in Charlotte for the better part of 25 years. This is absolutely home, and we're thrilled to stay.

Amy: I look forward to seeing your next journey. Anybody who gets the chance to work with you, alongside you, or for you is fortunate — thank you for sharing your journey.

Terri: You're a perfect example of a colleague who turns into a friend. Thank you.