100% agree.

The larger the design team you work for (ie. Shopify size & up), the more important your personality, general interestingness, and the way you signal yourself becomes. In a scaled company the product is already a hit. They don't need design geniuses and left-field innovators (successful companies build war chests of excess profits to acquire innovation). They just need careful stewards of an already successful product.

Trying to implement your ideas from within a large organization is 90% a game of politics and 10% actually having good ideas. It's simply the dynamics of what happens when you get a large group of people together. Look at government for example. In that environment soft skills and standing out go much farther than technical ability.

After checking out the case studies, I think Helen's actual design work is just average at best, but she has positioned herself as more of a future corporate leader vs. just a designer. Which is not a bad thing.

Would I hire her to lead the design an innovative product from the ground up? No.

Would I hire her to be a member of a Fortune 500 design team and groom her for more of a leadership role? Absolutely.