Cate Prescott is the Chief People Officer and Chief Culture and Belonging Officer at Verra Mobility, a position that reflects both her expertise in human resources and her commitment to embedding inclusion into the company’s operational and cultural fabric. She leads Verra Mobility’s efforts in people strategy, talent development, workplace culture, and diversity and inclusion—a dual role that signals the company’s belief that inclusivity is not a standalone initiative but a business imperative.
Prescott’s career in HR began with no long-term plan. “I wanted to go travelling for a year but had no money after leaving university, so I decided I needed to get a ‘temporary’ job,” she recalls. An employment agency suggested she pursue a role as a personnel assistant. “I went for the interview, the CHRO had a checklist, and I had very few checks from the list, but she said she saw something in me and decided to hire me. She believed in me and was one of the best bosses I ever had.”
Early Experience Builds Leadership Skills
That early experience helped define her leadership style. “She gave me lots of responsibility, let me learn through failure, and inspired me to continue my education in HR by pursuing a master’s degree in strategic human resources,” says Prescott. The progression from a short-term job to a leadership career in human resources was driven by opportunity, mentorship, and a willingness to embrace ambiguity and growth.
Prescott was first formally asked to lead diversity and inclusion programs at Verra Mobility in 2024, at a time when many companies were starting to deepen their investments following broader societal calls for equity. While it was the company’s first formal role in this space, it was a natural extension of how she already viewed people leadership.
“My own personal philosophy was always that inclusion and belonging should be part of the fabric of the culture, systems, and processes of an organization,” she explains. Her approach does not view it as a set of parallel programs but as a foundational part of how the business operates.
Part of the Cultural Fabric
At Verra Mobility, that philosophy shows up in how efforts are structured: they are integrated with the company’s broader business priorities and focused on outcomes rather than activity. “We have reframed and re-anchored our efforts to focus on the outcomes of what these programs can achieve to ensure that they align to what our company values,” Prescott says.
That includes being intentional about how and where the company looks for talent. “Wouldn’t any good business want to find the best and brightest talent by casting the widest net possible and looking in places that are often not thought of?” she says. This mindset informs the company’s recruiting and sourcing strategy. “We look to hire the best talent we can find for each of our roles. The key is to ensure that we cast the net wide when looking for that talent.”
Prescott points to the company’s core values—Own It, Do What’s Right, Lead with Grace, and Win Together—as the foundation of both its culture and its employee engagement strategy. Verra Mobility has worked to tie it directly to its organizational values, purpose, and operational goals.
“Innovation requires thought diversity and innovation is key to ongoing success,” says Prescott. “Working collaboratively using Kaizen methodology and Tiger Teams, we value different perspectives on a problem and promote people to collaborate across their disciplines in service of a solution.” The emphasis is on structured collaboration across departments, which not only brings different voices into decision-making but also reinforces inclusion as a business practice.
ERGs Build Community
The company’s employee resource groups (ERGs) play a key role in building community and offering support to employees from a variety of backgrounds. “We have several different ERGs representing our employees’ interests,” says Prescott. “We work with our ERGs to ensure that people feel included and part of a team. They provide opportunities for employees to engage with each other and their communities.”
These groups aren’t viewed as side projects—they’re embedded into the company’s culture and used as a feedback loop. “We also utilize our employee engagement surveys to check on the lived experience of everyone,” Prescott says. “We examine the data in many ways to drive our insights from different groups of people.” That data-driven approach helps the company ensure that inclusion efforts are not based on assumptions but grounded in the real experiences of its workforce.
When asked how Verra Mobility’s approach compares to that of other companies, Prescott is clear: “I’m not sure we do anything unique.” But she emphasizes that the focus is not on novelty—it’s on effectiveness and alignment. “We continue to anchor ourselves with our core values and company purpose, which is to enrich lives by making mobility safer and easier.”
A Focus on Outcomes
Prescott is also pragmatic about the current climate, where some companies are rolling back programs or reframing them under different labels. “I think when you really consider what outcomes inclusion and belonging programs are trying to achieve, they make sense for any business,” she says. “An ill-understood acronym does a poor job at representing that, so reframing and re-anchoring the outcomes is very important.”
That distinction—between symbolism and substance—comes through repeatedly in how Prescott talks about her work. The focus is not on the labels but on the results: attracting the best talent, ensuring they feel a sense of belonging, and enabling them to contribute meaningfully to business goals.
Prescott’s belief in inclusion is deeply tied to performance. “With a sense of belonging, [employees] will work more collaboratively on our hardest problems where innovation is critical and thus helping us solve our customers’ problems and helping the company achieve our growth objectives,” she says. It’s not just a moral argument—it’s a strategic one.
Her dual title—Chief People Officer and Chief Culture and Belonging Officer—captures that integrated approach. For Prescott, culture, belonging, talent, and business performance are not separate ideas. They’re connected, and progress in one depends on meaningful work in the others.
Prescott’s approach is shaped by lived experience, strategic focus, and a belief in measurable outcomes. For her, building a culture of belonging isn’t an initiative—it’s a lever for performance, innovation, and long-term success. That clarity of purpose continues to define her work at Verra Mobility.