Deisy Bach is the CEO and owner of HR Ideas, a Bay Area-based business that handles human resources for small and mid-sized companies, including many in the hospitality industry. Before participating in a panel on what San Francisco can teach Obamacare, she talked chocolate mousse, out-of-the-box thinking, and having a talent for teaching in the Zócalo green room.
What surprises you most about your life right now?
How hard kids are to raise.
How old are yours?
I’ve got an almost-17-year-old and a 21-year-old, and they have much more of an entitlement attitude than my generation had.
What dessert do you find impossible to resist?
Chocolate mousse.
What’s your worst habit?
Probably when I get really stressed, I start picking at my fingernails.
Where do you go to be alone?
I go to Point Reyes, hiking.
What’s your favorite thing about working in HR?
The challenge of understanding the law and then applying it to the situation—coming up with creative, out of-the-box solutions.
What’s your most prized material possession?
It’s a painting that my youngest daughter did when she was 5 years old, and it won an award and was displayed in a museum.
What profession would you like to practice in your next life?
I’d be an environmentalist working with marine mammals.
What’s your hidden talent?
I don’t know that it’s hidden. I’ve learned through age that I’m a really good trainer. I love being with people and teaching people of all ages, from children all the way up. It doesn’t matter what the topic is.
If you could take only one more journey, where would you go?
I’d want to go to South America, to go to the Amazon and see it before it gets totally destroyed with all the logging and pollution. That’s the environmental side of me.