Heather Schott calls herself a disruptor. 

“That’s who I am, through and through,” she said. “If you give me a process and I see efficiencies, I’m going to work towards it. I enjoy looking for better ways or disrupting the way we have always done things.” 

Disrupting has looked like many things for Schott. Showing up as her authentic self. Taking risks throughout her career. Reimagining what advocacy and allyship looks like.

As the director of diversity, equity and inclusion at Krause Group, Schott aims to disrupt perspectives and mindsets that have historically prevented everyone from having their voices heard. 

“If you start to disrupt how you’ve been doing things with new voices and new innovations, your business starts to succeed in a different way,” Schott said. 

Growing as an inclusive leader

Schott grew up on a small farm in Minnesota. Her parents were originally from Iowa and they still had ties across the region. She attended college at Morningside University and studied math and business, hoping to work as an actuary. 

A professor encouraged her to interview at Principal Financial Group for a job path she wasn’t expecting as a Common Business-Oriented Language (COBOL) developer. She cites her work ethic as putting her on this trajectory that led to her fulfilling DEI work. 

“I took a risk and said, ‘Yeah, I’ll go learn COBOL on the job,’” she said. “I started out developing products with actuaries, and it worked well for me because I could translate how they talked about the product and what they needed in the code. I learned that I was more social than I expected and enjoyed leading projects.” 

Schott said several strong and powerful female mentors guided and challenged her at Principal, encouraging her to try financial analyst roles and getting involved with the company’s LGBTQ+ employee resource group. 

She helped grow the membership from 25 to 150 employees in her first leadership year. 

“Principal noticed that I led differently,” Schott said. “We got a lot of allies involved. We started telling stories in an impactful way and others got involved.” 

She joined Principal’s diversity council as one of the three non-executive members, eventually becoming the company’s first full-time DEI employee. This began a career driven by a desire to make room for more types of people in spaces they maybe hadn’t previously been welcomed. 

“DEI in the workplace is figuring out whose voices are missing,” Schott said. “Who is missing out on opportunities to grow careers? There are folks that want to do good in the world and also want to make money. You can do both by figuring out how to make sure everybody has access to doing good and making money.” 

Making change, person by person

Today, Schott is the director of diversity, equity and inclusion at Krause Group, a company based in Des Moines that owns a diverse set of brands in soccer, wine and hospitality, real estate and agriculture around the world.  

She enjoys getting to work in such different spaces to ensure everyone feels welcomed and included. 

“It’s a non-negotiable that we’re going to invest in women’s sports and women in sports,” she said. “In wine, it’s the experience. How do we make sure that our vineyard workers are being treated respectfully? We have a lot of Macedonian workers in our Italian wineries, how do we make sure our training works for both languages and is positive? When we’re building out hospitality and real estate initiatives, can we get everyone to the spaces that we’re trying to show off so everyone can feel like they’re part of it?” 

Schott explained she takes the approach of meeting others where they are at in her work. This way, she’s able to make an even bigger impact.

“I’ve never been positioned where I can come in and say, ‘Thou shalt do everything I say,’” she said. “I have to understand what’s important to that other person, and then I have to give them the mindset and the tools to think about their problem differently.” 

Schott said the leadership at Krause Group is supportive of her work, which allows her to spend her time elevating their businesses through inclusive practices rather than making a case for the company to continue investing in DEI. 

She’s able to look at systems holistically and embed inclusive practices within everyday operations, rather than as a second thought. 

She used soccer as an example of how she approaches her work, describing how leaders often have experience in sports that taught them leadership skills. For young girls, who participate in sports at lower rates than boys, they miss out on those learning opportunities that would benefit them in their careers later. 

Her question becomes, how can Krause Group offer more opportunities for girls to be involved in soccer, leading to a world where women have more opportunities to access leadership positions? 

“Little boys learn how to be supportive of each other through sport, and that never goes away,” Schott said. “Little girls do too until about 13, and then we see a huge dropoff from girls being involved in sports. What if we could spin that? They develop these networks and strength and it changes everything.” 

Schott is a member of the LGBTQ+ community and has experienced the trauma of oppressive systems herself. She won the DEI Leader of the Year award from the West Des Moines Chamber of Commerce in 2024. She has been involved with the Iowa LGBTQ Chamber of Commerce and the Greater Des Moines Partnership Diversity & Inclusion council. This work is meaningful to her, and when she can connect with someone on these issues, even the smallest changes matter.

“At the end of the day, I have a deeper calling,” Schott said. “I don’t believe I’m changing the world, but I believe there’s a percentage of people in every session or every conversation I have that have the ability to change the world. It’s my job to influence them.”