Sonia Coleman, senior executive VP and chief human resources officer for The Walt Disney Co., effusively describes Judy Agay as a person who genuinely cares and who has a high emotional intelligence, but said the two keys to understanding Agay are that she is “really strategic and incredibly adaptable.”
Those phrases are essential not just to Agay’s success as senior VP for human resources at ESPN and Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology, but to her entire career.
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The daughter of two nurses, Agay was born in New York and then lived in New Jersey before coming back to the city to attend Fordham University. At that point, while studying communications, Agay said she knew definitively what she wanted to do with her life.
A Dream Fulfilled
“I wanted to work in a big ad agency,” she said. “That was my dream.” And she fulfilled that dream, landing a job at a midtown ad agency working on packaged goods products, only to run into a major career obstacle.
“After two years, I realized I hated it,” she recalled. “You were at the whim of the client and you’re selling products and sitting in a focus group. Learning about personal products was just not my thing.”
What Agay really loved was “the people connection,” and she realized she was meant to be in human resources. When she couldn’t navigate a transition at her agency, she adapted. “I was early in my career and was willing to start from scratch,” she said, so she took a job at Tommy Hilfiger, going back down the ladder and working as a scheduling recruiting assistant in HR.
“I was just hungry to learn and I had people willing to teach me,” she said. And she did learn, rising over five years to become human resources director. (She said that before she took the job, one HR executive told her, “You’re going to hate people at the end of it,” and her response was, “I’m going to prove him wrong.”)
I want people to feel supported and feel like they have the tools they need to do their jobs the best that they can.”
Judy Agay
Agay then moved on to The Gap. It was there, she said, that she first realized how high she could rise in her world — at that time, Jenny Ming was president of Old Navy. “That was very inspiring,” Agay recalled. “She was a marker for me in terms of seeing a woman, and an Asian woman, in a substantial role.”
Agay joined The Walt Disney Co. in 2005 at Disney Publishing Worldwide, eventually finding her way to Los Angeles in 2013 as director of human resources for Disney Consumer Products. She kept climbing up the ranks, becoming senior VP, human resources for The Walt Disney Co. in 2021 and then taking on her new role last year. Agay currently oversees HR business support, serving as a strategic adviser to the C-suite, focusing on change management and long-term planning. She also oversees employee recruitment, development, engagement and compensation, ensuring Disney attracts and retains the best talent to achieve its current and future business goals.
Just as Ming once inspired her, Agay now says she feels it’s important “for me to be able to lift others up, to see that it’s possible.”
Keeping People Supported
Even as she ascends, Agay said she has not lost sight of what matters. And while she is, as Coleman described, a shrewd strategist “with a great command of the business,” Agay said that her leadership skill set flows from a different direction. As she notes, she’s in the only department that has the word “human” in the title.
“I want people to feel supported and feel like they have the tools they need to do their jobs the best that they can,” Agay said. “And I think one of my strengths is that I know that even in this business, you can be kind and compassionate.”
Sometimes this means giving people the validation they need. But sometimes it simply means letting them know exactly how they are performing, how their side of the business is doing and where they stand. “It’s not my quote, but I do think that clarity is kindness,” she said.
