HR Transform 2022 featured two days of keynotes,
roundtables, fireside chats, demos and workshops
from over 200 of the leading minds in the future of
work ecosystem.
Diane Adams is the Chief Culture and Talent Officer at Sprinklr, an enterprise software platform for customer experience and social media management. Her team focuses on accelerating the growth of a high-performing, inclusive culture. Prior to Sprinklr, Diane served as Chief Culture and Talent Officer for McGraw-Hill Education and Qlik Technologies. She also spent four years managing HR at Allscripts Healthcare, where she helped triple the company in size. Additionally, Diane held top HR leadership roles for 14 years at Cisco Systems. Diane is also a chancellor of the International Board of Directors for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.
Bryan is the CEO and founder of Ph.Creative, recognized as one of the leading employer brand agencies in the world. Ph. specializes in building world-class employer brand, EVP and talent experience strategy for companies such as Apple, American Airlines, Glassdoor and Workday.
Bryan is a two-times best-selling author and regularly writes for publications such as Harvard Business Review, Forbes and fast Company. He is considered a prominent employer brand thought leader and his creative, unconventional and even controversial methodologies are said to regularly change the way people think about employer branding and EVP.
Marjorie Ajero is the Chief People Officer at FeedbackLoop, which is the research platform that product teams rely on to test ideas directly with target consumers before they bring products to market. Marjorie brings over two decades of HR experience in the tech, publishing, e-commerce, and digital media space. She is also a member of Chief and a Senior Advisor to TroopHR, a group whose mission is to help people professionals drive change and maximize their impact as employees and leaders. She previously was the CPO at BetterCloud and prior to that served as VP of HR at Group Nine Media, Thrillist, and others.
Susan is the Chief People Officer and an Operating Partner at Renegade Partners, a new VC, where she supports the portfolio across all areas of human capital strategy. Susan also brings deep expertise in operations and product, as well as a particular passion for learning about new future-of-work businesses. In pre-Renegade days, Susan had myriad professional experiences, including two stints at McKinsey; building a $100M P&L as the first Bay Area GM of UberEATS; and serving as VP HR at Zume through capital raises of $425M and employee growth of 500+ in 2 years; she has an MBA from Stanford and lives in Boulder CO.
As Co-Founder and CSO of TalentWall, Jo gets to create the recruiting tools she wishes she’d had during her 20 year career in the Talent space. She’s worked in People roles, primarily in tech companies, in the UK and the US across the whole employee life-cycle, from hiring and onboarding to performance and retention. At the end of the day, we’re all trying to solve for how to get the diverse and high-performing people we need, when we need them. Jo believes transparency of meaningful, easily-digestible data is a game changer in delivering those results.
Tracy is the Founder of TroopHR, an educational platform and professional community for today's modern People Leaders. She has spent the last 20+ years as an entrepreneur working at the intersection of HR, healthcare, and startups. Over the past decade she's grown her HR network to become an influencer and trusted resource for People Leaders. Tracy is a Founding Member of the Forbes Business Development Council, and volunteers as the President of her son's NYC public school PTA.
Abraham is the Director of Total Rewards at Ethos where they are helping millions of people protect their families with access to simple affordable life insurance. With over 15 years of experience in Total Rewards, Abraham’s career has spanned many industries and includes companies such as Disney, Facebook, Block (formally Square), Colgate-Palmolive and Wyndham Hotels.
Stephen Bailey is the co-founder and CEO of ExecOnline, the pioneer of online leadership development for enterprises. Stephen oversees the organization’s strategic vision and broader efforts to engage with corporations to create a diverse pool of future-ready leaders.
Since its inception in 2012, Stephen has raised nearly $90 million, building the company into a leadership development powerhouse that works with Fortune 500 and Global 2000 companies, NGOs and government agencies.
Under his leadership, ExecOnline has grown to now include partnerships with 12 of the world's leading business schools, and was named as a “Top Tech Company to Watch” by Forbes.
Andrew has 25 years of HR experience at organizations across a range of sizes, stages, and industries. He is co-author of "Scaling for Success: People Priorities for High Growth Organizations," has a master's degree from the top program in the HR field, and has been CECP, SPHR, Six Sigma, and executive coaching certified. Andrew now leads Series B Consulting, helping businesses to design "people plans" to accelerate their growth, and serving as an operating partner and advisor to PE and VC firms. He also founded People Leader Accelerator, the preeminent development program for HR professionals.
Jonathan Basker has spent his career becoming an expert in how humans operate and cooperate inside of early stage companies. His early career focused on cultivating talent and culture at companies like Etsy, Barkbox, Handy, InVision and betaworks where he was one of the first people to hold a Talent Partner-type role within venture and developed the Hacker in Residence program- one of the original models for the VC studio ecosystem. He’s studied humans in myriad cultures; learning lessons along the way which are applicable to startups and individuals alike. These days he splits his time between supporting emerging leaders as an executive coach, supporting companies through organizational change and growth, and running around the hills and streams of the Catskills with a fly rod and a bow and arrow. He’s quite passionate about all 3 pursuits.
Reema Batnagar joined Pixar Animation Studios in February 2019 as Vice President, People Team. In her role, Batnagar is responsible for leading Pixar’s human resources department, which includes talent acquisition, leadership/organizational development, total rewards, and employee relations.
Batnagar brings over 20 years of HR experience to the job. Prior to Pixar, Batnagar worked at Sony Interactive Entertainment as Head of HR for Sales & Marketing, where she led learning and development and talent management. She has also held a variety of senior HR leadership and organizational development roles at VMware, Adobe, and Intuit.
Growing up in St. Paul, Minnesota, Batnagar holds a bachelor’s degree in communications and psychology from St. Olaf College and a master’s degree in human resources and organizational development from University of Minnesota. Batnagar currently resides in San Carlos, CA.
Allison Baum Gates is a General Partner at early stage venture capital fund SemperVirens, where she invests in technology transforming work, health, and financial wellness. She is also the author of the upcoming book “Breaking into Venture” (McGraw-Hill, 2023) and she is an Adjunct Professor at Columbia Business School.
Prior to joining SemperVirens, Allison worked on the trading floor at Goldman Sachs; was an early employee at General Assembly (which sold to Adecco for $413mln in 2018); co-founded Fresco Capital, a global seed fund; and was an investor at Trinity Ventures.
Currently based in San Francisco, Allison has lived and worked in New York, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. She holds a B.A. in Economics with Honors, a minor in Film Studies, and a language citation in French from Harvard University.
Elana Berkowitz is a founding partner of Springbank Collective which makes early stage investments in the infrastructure to help working women and families thrive. She also advises the impact arm of Eric Schmidt's family office. A serial social entrepreneur and policy wonk, she's a former Obama Administration technology policy official across multiple agencies and the transition. She also worked at McKinsey as a technology, media, and telecom consultant across 10 countries. Elana sits on the steering committee for Power the Polls, which registered 700,000+ young Americans to serve as poll workers in 2020.
Elizabeth Berman is the CHRO for Harris Blitzer Sports and Entertainment. She leads across all facets of human resources including talent management, change management, internal communications, organizational design and performance, people analytics, training and development, payroll, benefits, and compensation. Elizabeth is a champion of culture as a strong foundation for company success. Her career includes leadership roles with revenue responsibility in both for-profit and non-profit, large enterprise and start-ups, across the hospitality, retail, and consumer products industries; with organizations such as Nike, Estee Lauder and Vevo. She has a track record of leading in rapidly changing environments and is passionate about achieving a company’s vision by attracting and developing top, diverse talent, and building extraordinary levels of employee engagement. Elizabeth has her Master’s in Industrial and Labor Relations and her Bachelor’s in Hotel Administration from Cornell University. She and her husband reside in the Princeton, NJ area with their two children.
Jordan Berman is Founder & CEO of OFC (ofc.tv), a creative agency and video production studio that injects storytelling and entertainment into communications targeting the at-work audience of employees and customers. Jordan helps earn attention and inspire action among busy professionals when cat videos have conquered the coffee break. OFC enables clients like AT&T, PepsiCo and Bristol Myers Squibb to win in the workplace and marketplace by building buzzworthy campaigns. Jordan previously held marketing positions at MTV, Showtime, AT&T, Black & Decker, and DDB. He has a BS in Industrial & Labor Relations from Cornell and an MBA from NYU.
Luke joined Lightspeed in 2014 as the founding member of the Talent team, where he supports startups ranging from single-person Seeds through multi-thousand employee pre-IPO companies. Luke spends his days helping founders solve challenges spanning recruiting, HR, people operations, compensation strategy, and more.
Suneet is the departing President/Board Chair at Boldr, the largest B-Corp certified BPO and PEO. He’s spent 25 years working across sectors and business models while participating in various company transformations and transactions, from raising over $40mm to the purchase/sale of companies totaling over $100mm. Honestly, Suneet has also had some extraordinary misses.
What he’s learned, above all, is that people are the most sustainable, adaptable, valuable, and important drivers of everything you do. So take care of them.
Most importantly, he’s trying to match the bar of excellence set by his children (thankfully, they’re generous and kind). He also runs a coaching practice anchored in storytelling (My Authentic Story) and writes socially impactful children’s books (Dream Village).
As CPO, Bidan leads the talent acquisition and development of culture at Boom. Prior to this role, she led Peloton’s Global Talent department as an SVP, building world-class programs for Talent Attraction, Total Rewards, Diversity, Equity & Belonging, Employee Experience, and more. Bidan has held a number of senior HR leadership roles beyond Peloton, including technology and consumer brands like BlackBerry, Yahoo, Indeed.com and InVision.
She is a graduate of the University of Waterloo and has also earned an MBA from The University of Texas at Dallas.
Sarah Bowe is the Vice President of Customer Success at Spring Health. She oversees all aspects of the customer lifecycle from implementation to ongoing account management and contract renewal for Spring’s customers. In addition to her role at Spring Health, Sarah is a founding member of the Chief Washington, D.C., chapter. Sarah has spent her career in healthcare, starting as a benefits consultant and moving into healthcare tech for several start-ups where she has built and scaled Customer Success teams. Sarah graduated from Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA, where she originally majored in dance.
Cara has deep experience scaling HR operations, recruiting, and learning & development at fast-moving, global companies. Prior to joining Udemy, she was SVP of People at Planet (formerly Planet Labs) and previously served in HR leadership roles at Pinterest, Efficient Frontier, Young and Rubicam, and Knight Ridder, among others. Cara is also co-founder of PeopleTech Partners, a group of HR leaders working to bring new HR/recruiting technologies to market. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Kentucky, holds a master's degree from the University of San Francisco, and completed graduate studies at Stanford University.
Chris Brunson is the Vice President of Total Rewards at General Mills, which includes executive compensation, compensation, benefits and wellbeing. Prior to joining General Mills, Chris was the Vice President of Total Rewards & HR Shared Services at Celanese Corporation, a global technology and materials company. Before Celanese, he spent four years in a variety of HR leadership roles at The Hershey Company, including roles as the Sr. Director, Total Rewards, Global Benefits and Wellbeing and as the Sr. Director, Talent Management and Organization Design.
Shelli Brunswick, COO of Space Foundation, brings a broad perspective and deep vision of the global space ecosystem — from a distinguished career as a space acquisition and program management leader and congressional liaison for the U.S. Air Force to her current role overseeing Space Foundation's three primary divisions: Center for Innovation and Education, Symposium 365, and Global Alliance.
Advocating for space technology innovation, entrepreneurship, diversity and inclusion, Shelli collaborates with organizations around the world to connect commercial, government and educational sectors. Shelli was named the 2021 Global Technology Leader and the 2020 Diversity & Inclusion Officer and Role Model of the Year Award by WomenTech Network.
Shelli plays an active leadership role with United Nations Space4Women, WomenTech Network, Islamic World Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ICESCO), World Business Angels Investment Forum (WBAF) Global Women Leaders Committee (GWLC), G100 Global Chair for Space Technology, New York University, Global Policy Insights – Global Policy, Diplomacy and Sustainability (GPODS) Fellowship program, Global Policy Insights -- Quad Forum, Space Tourism Society Africa, Tod'Aérs, Lifeboat Foundation, America’s Future Series, Women’s Global Gathering, Manufacturer’s Edge, and Colorado Springs Chamber & EDC.
Abbie serves as Collective Health's Chief People Officer. She is passionate about engaging and developing employees, unlocking the capability of leaders, and protecting and evolving company culture as key levers to grow businesses. Abbie has spent more than 20 years working for companies like IBM, eBay, PayPal, and most recently, Splunk. She holds a B.A. in Government and Spanish from Skidmore College and an MBA from the Foster School of Business at the University of Washington.
Emily Busse is the Head of Communications at Loom where she leads internal communications as well as external PR, social, and content strategy. Prior to Loom, Busse led communications & PR programs for a diverse set of fast-growth startups and enterprise SaaS companies at LaunchSquad. She has also worked as a reporter, covering local news in Iowa and as a freelancer in San Francisco.
A multi-award winning performer and instructor, Shannan Calcutt has conducted workshops in clown and play worldwide. Shannan’s a regular instructor at Cirque du Soleil, Celebration Barn Theater and Vegas Theatre Hub. Calcutt has played an eclectic range of venues from the Sydney Opera House, to San Francisco's Bimbo's 365 Club, to the Vegas Strip, where she performed for millions of spectators at Cirque du Soleil's, ZUMANITY. She has designed comic acts for Cirque du Soleil, Spiegelworld, the philanthropic event One Night for One Drop, and Berlin’s Friedrichstadt-Palast, the world's biggest theatre stage. Shannan is fluent in English and sarcasm.
Daniel Callaghan is the Managing Partner of Workplace Accelerator, the premier accelerator exclusively focused on the Future of Work. He is also the CEO of Veremark, a world-leading background and pre-employment screening platform for fast-growing businesses.
With more than a decade in innovation around the Future of Work, Daniel built one of Europe's top freelance marketplaces and previously ran the digital innovation and investment unit across APAC for the world's largest recruitment company, Adecco Group.
He is an internationally published author on career development and has degrees from IESE Business School and Durham University.
With more than 25 years of recruitment industry experience, Glen Cathey is a globally recognized sourcing and recruiting leader, blogger, and corporate/keynote speaker. Glen currently serves as Randstad's Head of Digital Strategy where he focuses on researching, evaluating, and implementing innovative digital approaches and solutions such as conversational UX, recommender systems, ethical AI, and blockchain to deliver value and enhanced candidate and customer experiences.
Sarah Chavarria is Executive Vice President, Chief People Officer at Delta Dental of California and its affiliates which operate in 15 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. Sarah brings more than 25 years of expertise leading people, communications, organizational effectiveness, change management and corporate strategy across multiple industries. At Delta Dental, she oversees a variety of key organizational functions including Corporate Communications, Corporate Social Responsibility, Business Transformation, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging (DIB) and Human Resources.
Angela Cheng-Cimini joined Harvard Business Publishing as Senior Vice President, Talent & Chief Human Resources Officer in 2021. In this role, Cheng-Cimini leads the Human Resources and Facilities & Administration units, spearheading efforts to develop a talent roadmap that supports the business strategy and creates a deeply engaged and diverse workforce. Angela brings over 25 years of both generalist and specialist Human Resources experience, having worked across consumer product goods, professional services, and high-tech as well as nonprofits. She has shepherded businesses through start-up, growth, and maturity with key responsibility for helping organizations identify and build the necessary organizational capabilities. Prior to joining Harvard Business Publishing, Angela was at ClearMotion, Inc. where she led the strategy to develop, recruit, and retain top talent. Previously, she served as the Global Head of Human Resources for Crabtree & Evelyn, where she led an international team spanning four continents and prepared the brick-and-mortar business to go completely digital. Angela earned her undergraduate degree in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University.
Sue is a non-traditional People Operations leader, drawing from 25+ years of professional experience across global management consulting, financial services, and, over the past 7 years, tech startups from Series A through D+. As the Head of People for Venmo, Kickstarter, Petal, and 1stdibs, she's navigated companies from nascency through to profitability, working shoulder-to-shoulder with first-time and veteran CEOs. As Head of People and Portfolio Talent at Anthos Capital, Sue seeks to scale herself and her knowledge across dozens of portfolio companies at various stages and sizes.
Maria Colacurcio is CEO of Syndio, a SaaS startup helping companies around the world create an equitable workplace for all employees, regardless of gender, race, or ethnicity. Prior to Syndio, she co-founded Smartsheet.com, which went public in 2018 and spent three years at Starbucks, one of the first Fortune 50 companies to go public with pay equity results. Colacurcio serves on the board of the nonprofit Fair Pay Workplace and has been named by Goldman Sachs Builders + Innovators Summit one of this year’s 100 most intriguing entrepreneurs. As a CEO and a mom of 7, Colacurcio is walking the walk on eradicating workplace inequities.
Guillermo Corea has been involved in digital technology for over 25 years. He’s currently the Managing Director for SHRMLabs, SHRM's workplace innovation laboratory and venture capital arm. He is charged with establishing SHRM as a research thought leader and product testbed for technologies impacting the future of work and the workplace. Previously, as Director, Digital Media and Business Development at SHRM, he lead e-commerce operations and identified non-dues revenue opportunities through a variety of activities, including business and product development, and content and technology partnerships. Guillermo received his Bachelor’s in Economics from Lynchburg College and an MBA from Cornell University.
Katrina is Head of Talent at global VC investor Anthemis: supporting their portfolio companies in building founding teams, hiring at scale and nurturing Anthemis’ talent network. Beyond hiring, she advises founders on people practice – from organisational design, diversity and inclusion, to employer branding.
Katrina trained as a coach with NeuroLeadership Institute and advises startup The Lo, a community platform for queer women. She started her career at ClearlySo, managing the impact investment firm’s angel investor network and advising entrepreneurs on fundraising.
Katrina read Spanish, Portuguese & Latin American Studies at the University of Manchester before exploring social anthropology in the Philippines.
Jan D’Alessandro is President, Blue J Strategies, advising companies on partnership and social impact strategies. Clients include Unity Technologies, Chime Bank, Unagi Scooters, FutureFuel.io, Lookout, and Pledge 1%. She leads Pledge 1%’s Equity Initiative, where she’s helped ignite two billion dollars+ in new philanthropy. Jan has held senior positions at AOL, Yahoo, Topspin Media (acquired by Apple), The Find (acquired by Facebook) and Backplane (founded by Lady Gaga), and is a Venture Partner at Waterman Ventures, StudioVC, Correlation Ventures, and Savano Capital Partners. She received her J.D. cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center and her A.B. from Brown University.
Lauren is the COO & Co-founder of Cocoon, the platform that makes managing employee leave instant, simple, and big-hearted for HR teams and employees alike. With Cocoon, employees can design their leave plan in private, notify HR when they’re ready, and rest easy knowing that all their paperwork will be submitted for them. Employers don’t have to lift a finger when it comes to compliance, claims, or payroll calculations. Prior to starting Cocoon, Lauren was integral to building the growth organization at Stripe. She graduated with honors from Harvard University with a degree in Economics.
Melissa Daimler helps leaders design, operationalize, and scale their culture. She currently serves as the Chief Learning Officer for Udemy, where she develops learning strategies for both customers and employees. Melissa brings over two decades of experience across Learning and Development, Talent Management, and Organizational Development. Prior to Udemy, Melissa created and built Learning, Organizational, and Talent Development functions for Adobe, Twitter, and WeWork. Melissa is the author of an upcoming McGraw Hill book, ReCulturing: Design Your Company Culture to Connect with Strategy and Purpose for Lasting Success, which is slated for Spring 2022 release.
Michelle is an Operating Partner at Felicis leading Talent and People initiatives. In this role Michelle leverages over a decade of experience from high growth companies like Atlassian, Databricks, Okta and Stripe to advise and assist companies across the Felicis portfolio on their People and Talent practices.
Jelena is the Head of People at Thumbtack. She leads an organization of 65 team members spanning Employee Experience, Recruiting, People Business Partners, People Analytics, Total Rewards, HR Operations, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and Organizational Development. As a senior leadership team member, Jelena is responsible for reimagining the future of work, including the decision to become a virtual-first company.
Before Thumbtack, Jelena was a Case Team Leader at Bain & Company and spent time at Airbnb and Endeavor, focusing on Business Development and Strategy.
Jelena received a BA from The University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
Katelyn is the Managing Director of Avalanche VC, an early-stage venture firm investing in companies enabling decentralization and empowerment with a keen interest in HR Technology companies that humanize the enterprise. She is also the co-founder and board director of Delivery Associates, the leading public sector advisory and technology firm focused on government operations and achieving results.
Heather has spent 15+ years in People roles and is currently the Chief People Officer at Gem, where she leads all things People and Talent. Prior to Gem, she was the CPO at Newfront, where she established and scaled people programs, ultimately leading them through a successful merger. Previous to her CPO roles, she led the HR Business Partner team at Dropbox and held roles in Recruiting, Compensation, and HR Business Partner at Microsoft. In addition to her day job, Heather holds a number of angel investments and advisory roles across early-stage startups.
Anne Dwane is co-founder and partner at Village Global, an early-stage VC fund backed by entrepreneurs including Jeff Bezos, Sara Blakely, Bill Gates, Reid Hoffman, Magic Johnson and Anne Wojcicki. Village Global backs startups and emerging VC managers across sectors and around the world.
Previously, Anne was Chief Business Officer at Chegg, helping take the company public in 2013. Chegg acquired her previous company Zinch, where she was CEO. Prior, Anne co-founded Military Advantage (www.Military.com), acquired by Monster.com. She holds degrees from Georgetown and HBS, and serves on the board of Harvard Business Publishing and Cypher Learning.
Mark Eckert is the Director of Talent Mobility and Immigration at Uber. In this role, Mark is focused on removing friction and barriers associated with internal mobility to create strong, diverse teams across the globe. Mark and his team are creating a culture that celebrates internal advancement and transforming the way Uber ignites opportunity for employees through immersive mobility experiences across the company.
Torin leads a progressive boutique regarding the criticality of diversity and inclusion. He operates as an activist entrepreneur centering transparency, objective clarity, actionable strategy, and rigorous performance monitoring. He is a force within the D&I space coveting trusted partnerships with firms like Social Talent and Workplace by Facebook among others. Co-host of Crazy and The King podcast and published author, he was listed as one of 10 Baltimore tech and entrepreneurship leaders who should run for mayor (Technical.ly Sept 2015), signaling a lighter side of this accomplished and focused practitioner.
Crosschq is Fitzsimmons' fourth entrepreneurial venture, having founded Advanced TV Advertising Company Connekt, Inc., and Interactive Commerce Company, Delivery Agent, which he ran for over 10 years and grew to $175M in revenue. Mike is also a founding partner of sports technology venture fund Intersect Ventures, which manages venture investing for top NBA players and other athletes and celebrities. Named a Forbes Next 1000 in 2021 and leader of a Fortune Great Place to Work company, Mike Fitzsimmons is an industry thought leader who has been featured on CNBC, CNN, Bloomberg, NY Times, WSJ, Forbes, and more.
Michael Fontaine is the National Managing Partner of Human Resources at KPMG. As HR’s COO, Mike focuses on addressing KPMG’s talent priorities and digitally transforming HR. During his 5 years with KPMG, Mike has also led Total Rewards, Talent Acquisition, HR Digital & Analytics, and Shared Services, and serves on several firm committees including legal, risk and regulatory; ethics and compliance; and ESG. Prior to KPMG, Mike led global HR transformation initiatives at IBM and Raytheon. Mike frequently engages with clients and serves as an HR Advisor to SemperVirens Venture Capital and is a Board Member of Universal Promise.
Director Of Employer Brand, Marketing And Communications
LivePerson
Teal Franceschi built and led the employer brand and people communications team at Apple for ten years during a time of tremendous global growth. She recently built the first people communications function at Pinterest and is currently the Director of Employer Brand, Marketing and Communications at LivePerson. She is a passionate builder of high performing teams that connect brands and people creatively and authentically.
Mark Frein has spent the last decade working in venture-backed startups and building out their people teams. Today, he is Chief People Officer at Oyster, a distributed HR platform designed to enable visionary HR leaders to find, hire, pay, manage, develop and take care of a thriving distributed workforce.
Mark is a veteran of high-growth SaaS tech companies, specializing in the distributed workplace and organizational culture. Prior to Oyster, Mark was Chief People Officer & Head of Alumni Programs at Lambda School, Chief People Officer at InVision, and Chief Performance Officer at Return Path. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia.
Cathy is a Partner at Sapphire Ventures where she leads deals in the B2B SaaS space with a focus on the Future of Work and Collaboration. She is deeply passionate about supporting entrepreneurs who are building solutions that allow and empower people to do their best work. Prior to Sapphire, Cathy was an investor at AXA Venture Partners and TA Associates. She was an operator and helped scale Gusto at the Series B.
Cathy graduated summa cum laude from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania with a B.S. in economics and a minor in history.
Kareem Gayle-Fagan is a Human Resources Executive who has garnered over 15 years of Human Resources experience working for iconic luxury retailers before joining Aesop as the Head of Human Resources, Americas. Kareem partners with Senior Leaders to provide strategic support in accomplishing business objectives, including but not limited to recruitment, performance management, learning and development and talent management strategies that focus on succession and development planning.
Kareem holds a B.A. in Psychology from Pace University, an M.A. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology & Human Relations from Brooklyn College, an HR certification from the Society of Human Resources Management and executive certifications from Cornell University.
Systems-thinking CX leader turned Investor. After seven years of building her career and community in Barcelona, she took on her next adventure moving to San Francisco to open Typeform’s first US office. While in the US, she held leadership roles in two hyper-growth SaaS startups where she built and operationalized teams from scratch. As Founder Outcomes Partner at the firm, Cristina values driving growth in people and organizations. To do that, she focuses on keeping the triple-bottom-line in balance - a company's mission, people, and business outcomes.
Garrison (he/him) is a culture connoisseur, hypergrowth expert, internal communications & brand communications specialist, DEI practitioner, and public speaker. He currently works as the Head of People & Communications at Knotch, overseeing both the HR and Communications functions. Prior to Knotch, he worked at Bustle Digital Group, Mic, Rumble, and Barry's. Being brand and mission driven, Garrison has worked exclusively for hyper-growth companies who make a societal impact. He uses this mentality to impact morale and culture internally and further brand perception and awareness externally. He's an expert in innovating and scaling practices, particularly in the startup and hyper-growth stage. His personal values are leading with empathy, practicing proactive transparency, and fostering an inclusive environment. He is openly queer and works heavily in the diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging space.
Christina is an award-winning design leader known for transforming design teams to work at enterprise scale while fostering cultures that drive both business and social impact. Before joining Etsy as Head of Product Design, she spent 25 years gaining cross-functional experience driving innovation at Fortune 500 companies like Accenture, Morgan Stanley, American Express, Omnicom Media Group, The Discovery Channel and others.As an advocate for mental health, she works to help managers lead from a place of authenticity.She is passionate about education and is a leading instructor and lecturer at NYU Stern and General Assembly, to name a few.
Cindy is a people coach and advisor serving mission-driven companies – like Cann, LifeLabs, Noom, Thirty Madison – to help them prepare for and navigate rapid growth. Before launching her own consulting practice, Cindy spent nearly 7 years in the insurtech space, building and leading the people functions at Policygenius and Oscar Health. Prior to tech startups, she spent 15 years at McKinsey & Company. Cindy is also an investor and advisor to a number of people-forward organizations and is a Chief People Officer-In-Residence at Knoetic. In her personal time, she runs a fashion-consulting biz and takes orders from her ferocious Yorkie-poo, Bert.
As Managing Director of Founders Pledge, Danielle works with founders and employees of tech companies to commit to give, and to maximize their impact when they do. She was formerly the Head of the Tony Blair Foundation-US, and has founded successful non-profit and political initiatives, the largest of which, Kids for Peace, engaged 15 million children in 2019. Danielle has traveled to more than 60 countries and worked as a humanitarian in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and South America. She received an A.B. in Religion and Sociology from Harvard College.
Kevin started Aniline in 2020. He comes from 35 years in management consulting. He has held leadership roles in companies like Ernst & Young, Alvarez and Marsal and Willis Towers Watson. In his last role at WTW, Kevin was responsible for identifying and integrating new technology into the firm. Kevin has also been a senior advisor to Plug and Play, and other startups. He is served on public and private boards and is currently on the board of directors of Nassau Financial Group, a Life and Annuity Company.
Kevin W. Grossman is the President of Talent Board and the Candidate Experience Awards. Founded in 2011, it's the first nonprofit research organization focused on the elevation and promotion of a quality candidate experience with industry benchmarks that highlight accountability, fairness and business impact. Kevin has over 22 years of domain expertise in the human resource and talent acquisition industry and related technology marketplace. He's been a prolific industry writer since 2004 and his first business book on career management titled Tech Job Hunt Handbook was released in December 2012 from Apress. His second book titled The Business Impact of Candidate Experience will be released in 2022 by Kogan Page. Kevin holds a B.A. in Psychology from San Jose State University, is an HCI certified Talent Acquisition Strategist (TAS) and Human Capital Strategist, and has learning certificates from eCornell on HR Analytics and Diversity and Inclusion.
Beth is responsible for leading Tripadvisor's global human resources organization, a role she has held since September 2015. Previously, Beth was at Nuance Communications, a global provider of speech and imaging solutions, where she served as the senior vice president of human resources. Prior to Nuance, she spent three years at Sanofi Corporation, a global healthcare organization, where she was the vice president of human resources. Beth also held a number of roles at Genzyme Corporation for nine years, including vice president of human resources, before it was acquired by Sanofi. Earlier on, she held human resources leadership positions at Perot Systems Healthcare Services, Reebok International, Aramark Educational Services and Federated Department Stores. Beth holds a bachelor's degree in English from Cornell University.
Q is the global head of people operations at Airbnb, HR tech geek, startup advisor, board member and a freelance executive coach with a passion for building scalable people functions to help change the world. He has had the privilege of working in various functions in a variety of industries across management consulting (Deloitte), in house Fortune 500s (Aon, JLL & GE), private equity (TPG Capital), hyper growth late stage firms (Airbnb) and his own startups (GoQuali & Supertek Scientific). He brings a unique perspective from each of his experiences to be a creative people & business leader.
Rahab Hammad is the Senior Benefits Manager at Snap Inc. She joined Snap back in 2016 and leads the overall strategy and design for all benefit programs related to health and well-being. Her goal is to build a culture and community that empowers and equips team members to improve the quality of their lives and make their well-being a top priority.
Nikki brings almost two decades of experience in growing companies. She has built high-performing teams across marketing and technology businesses while maintaining a core focus on employee engagement and best-in-class people practices. Nikki is a passionate advocate for diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging.
As Chief Human Resources Officer at Eventbrite, David Hanrahan leads the global human resources team and plays a key role in leading organizational culture initiatives. David’s career has spanned 20 years building strong HR teams and fostering a collaborative team culture across global organizations including Niantic, Zendesk, Twitter, Electronic Arts and Universal Pictures.
Deborah Hanus is the CEO and co-founder of Sparrow, which makes it easier for employers to care for their people with the industry's leading high tech and high touch, end-to-end leave management solution. Prior to starting Sparrow in 2018, Deborah earned multiple engineering degrees from MIT. She then went on to become a Fulbright Scholar, prior to starting her PhD work at Harvard. Under her leadership, Sparrow has quickly grown to cover more than 30,000 employees.
Nathan Harris is an entrepreneur with a passion for improving the experiences that we have inside and outside of work. Over the past five years, Nathan has scaled his workforce innovation company Ease to become the fastest-growing minority tech firm in Arizona. Helping the world's most brilliant minds connect with opportunities supporting innovation teams for the fastest growing tech companies and fortune 500 enterprises in the US. Nathan also serves as one of the youngest members to join the Board of Directors for the Arizona Technology Council, which is the largest tech council in America.
Julia Hartz is co-founder and CEO of Eventbrite, responsible for the vision, strategy, and growth of the company. Under her leadership, Eventbrite has become a global self-service ticketing and experience technology platform that serves a community of nearly one million event creators around the world. Eventbrite has also received multiple awards for its workplace culture, and Julia has been honored as one of Inc.'s Female Founders 100, Fortune's 40 Under 40 business leaders, Inc.'s 35 Under 35, and Fortune's Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs.
Aaron has been a songwriter, a comic book artist, a filmmaker, a sound engineer, a professor, and an architectural designer. It is the summation of these experiences that he brings to his current roles as one of two Creative Directors at the ORG.
As the ECD of Environments at Airbnb, Aaron honed his capacity to shape others' output along the wide-open-yet highly directional-path of creative iteration required to make great space. This mode of working with partner architecture firms allowed him to lead design on over 30 projects, most of which were built, in his seven years at Airbnb.
Stephanie Hathaway is Calm’s Head of Total Rewards, tasked with ensuring strategic competitive advantage for compensation and benefits. A self-proclaimed “data nerd”, Stephanie has a robust background in compensation and analytics. As a heavy benefits user, she carries a deep seated empathy and understanding of how benefits decision making impacts employees lives. Stephanie is personally passionate about pay parity and representation in the workforce. When not geeking out on total rewardsy things, she can be found playing on the trails in her backyard in Boise, Idaho.
Kathy Henrich is the CEO of the MKE Tech Hub Coalition, a non-profit focused on inclusively doubling tech talent in the Milwaukee region. In two years, they have grown from 6 to 115 members collaborating to retain, attract, and build the talent. Kathy has over 30 years in the tech industry leading $500M sales, partnership, and consulting organizations. She has her Masters in Talent Development from LSU.
Denis Hickey is currently the Global Head of Total Rewards and People Operations for Gympass. Gympass is a mission-based portfolio company of Softbank, General Atlantic and Atomico which is transforming the well-being industry. Denis joined Gympass in November 2019 and leads the team responsible for design and implementation of high-impact and scalable rewards programs in support of the Company’s rapid growth. Prior to joining Gympass, Denis held several different executive HR leadership roles at General Electric Corporate & GE Capital and began his career in HR at IBM. Denis holds a BSILR from Cornell University and an MBA from NYU. He lives in Ridgefield, CT with his wife and three children and enjoys basketball, golf and playing the guitar.
Matt is currently a Partner and Head of Talent at venture firm M13. In this role Matt leads all Talent engagement across M13's portfolio, and sits on the board of several HRTech companies. Matt was previously the Head of People at cloud infrastructure startup DigitalOcean, where he was responsible for leadership in the practice areas of people operations, talent acquisition, talent development, and employee experience. In 4 years Matt helped scale the company from under 100 employees to over 500. DigitalOcean has received a number of external recognitions for its innovative People practices, was recently profiled in Harvard Business Review for its agile approach to performance development, and during Matt's tenure was named as one of the Best Places to Work in NYC by USA Today, and the #1 Best Mid-sized Company to Work for in New York by BuiltinNYC . Matt has held a number of HR and people leadership roles at Fortune 500 companies including JPMorgan Chase and Avon, serves on the advisory board of several early stage startups, and is a founding member and the NY lead of PeopleTech Partners. He received his undergraduate degree from Cornell University and his graduate degree in Organizational Psychology from NYU.
Kyle is VP, Total Rewards Advisory at Sequoia with 25 years of experience advising growth companies from start-up to IPO. His experience includes leading the Private Market Practice at Aon as well as founding and leading a boutique consulting firm, Presidio Pay Advisors, that was ultimately sold to Hay Group (now Korn Ferry). Focusing on the technology and life sciences industries, Kyle has had the unique opportunity to work with some of the most well-known founders on helping them shape their total rewards programs. Kyle is based in San Francisco and enjoys golf and bourbon, sometimes together.
Multidisciplinary Association For Psychedelic Studies (MAPS)
Steven Huang is MAPS’ first Justice, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion (JEDI) Officer, leading teams across the organization to address the psychedelic ecosystem’s inequality challenges, as well as its opportunity to provide for collective liberation. Steven has designed and implemented JEDI strategies for organizations across diverse industries, geographies and sizes. At MAPS, Steven is focused on bringing psychedelic healing to all, including marginalized communities, while simultaneously honoring the indigenous cultures from where plant medicines originate. Steven uses psychedelics to better understand one’s innate talents and is consistently inspired by the psychedelic community that has paved the way for a queer, Chinese-American, gender non-conforming activist to join forces with the pioneers of psychedelic-assisted therapy.
Thomas is Head of Talent at Turn/River Capital, an SF-based growth equity firm. He partners with the leadership at portfolio companies to identify and unlock the talent pieces required to accelerate their growth strategies. Prior to joining Turn/River, Thomas led global scaled learning at ServiceNow, founded Trybe.ai, a learning tech startup. He has also had talent and product leadership roles at LinkedIn and Boston Consulting Group. Thomas also enjoys lecturing at Stanford University where his teaching and research focus on data-driven leadership and diversity, equity and inclusion.
Tony Jamous is the CEO and co-founder of Oyster, a global employment platform that aims to remove the barriers to remote work and distributed hiring. Shaped by his upbringing in Beirut, Lebanon during a violent civil war, Tony is passionate about empowering talented individuals from emerging economies through access to global career opportunities.
Tony was previously the CEO of CPaaS provider, Nexmo (now Vonage), before exiting in 2018 and launching Oyster with co-founder Jack Mardack in early 2020. With Oyster, Tony hopes to make it easier for companies everywhere to hire people anywhere.
Katrina Jones is the founder and CEO of Advancing Equity + Inclusion, a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Talent consulting and coaching firm. She helps organizations connect their programmatic efforts to comprehensive DEI strategies that help accelerate their progress in building more diverse teams, and fostering more inclusive, equitable, and psychologically safe cultures. Katrina has more than 15+ years of experience leading and managing functions in DEI, HR, and Talent at companies like AWS, Latham & Watkins, and Year Up. She believes that when we prioritize closing equity gaps, our workplaces can become spaces of learning and growth where everyone thrives.
Golbie's mission is to promote human flourishing and reduce human suffering, especially within organizations. She has diverse experience across industries, business growth phases, organizational structures, revenue models, and economic cycles. Her work centers around three pillars - leadership, people, and culture.
(1) Leadership: Coaching Executive Teams/CXOs to augment their individual and collective leadership especially during growth, transition, or crisis
(2) People: Partnering with CPOs/People Leaders to amplify their people strategies during hyper-growth or resource constraint
(3) Culture: Consulting and Advising Start-ups/Scale-ups to better understand organizational culture dynamics, the HR/People function, and the HR tech-stack underpinning key people practices.
Kerry Karle is the VP of Talent Acquisition for DISH Network, a Fortune 200 company with more than $15 billion in annual revenue that continues to redefine the communications industry. She joined the organization a year ago to transform the recruitment function to enable the organization to scale as it reinvents itself from the Pay-TV and streaming industry to upending the wireless industry with a first of its kind Open-RAN 5G network.
With nearly 30 years of experience in Talent Acquisition, Talent Management and HR, she has a track record of driving change and transformation across multiple industries globally as a leader at Wells Fargo and Hewlett-Packard, and in management consulting with Aon/Hewitt Associates and the RPO and HR Technology space.
In her past time she enjoys running, golf, skiing, and watching her 12 year old son compete in soccer and lacrosse tournaments.
Natasha Kehimkar is an executive coach and strategic advisor to organizations around the world. As CEO and founder of Malida Advisors, she and her team help companies build leadership capabilities, create inclusive cultures, and drive sustainable change, so they can meet and exceed their goals. Drawing on over 25 years experience leading global People & Talent teams in tech, biotech, consumer products, and life sciences, Natasha serves as a board member and advisor and is an accomplished speaker. She holds a BA in Sociology, Master's degree in HR and Labor Relations, SPHR and DDI Trainer certifications, and professional coach accreditation.
Keynote speaker, non-binary LGBTQ+ advocate, and writing expert Katrina Kibben [they/them] teaches hiring teams how to write inclusive, unbiased job postings that still attract exceptional talent.
With 15 years of corporate copywriting and training experience, Katrina knows how to turn talented recruiting teams into talented writers. It takes 2 key ingredients: inspiration and practical advice – of which Katrina has plenty.
Jessica Nam Kim is the Co-founder/CEO of ianacare on a mission to encourage, equip, and empower family caregivers as they navigate the complex journey of caring for a loved one at home. The platform leverages the power of technology and community to organize and mobilize all the layers of support. She is a 3x startup founder, speaker, mom of three kids, and caregiver for her father. Jessica graduated from Brown University and received her MBA from Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management.
Christina King is currently the Vice President of HR at New York City Football Club (NYCFC), who just clinched their first ever MLS Cup championship win in 2021, bringing home the first championship to New York City in over a decade. Over the last 10+ years Christina King has made a career of delivering people-centered HR at organizations experiencing transformational change within the sports and entertainment industry. Her passion is redirecting the cultural trajectory of organizations by implementing best in class people practices to ensure greater employee experience and team performance. Christina started her career at WME and was with the company during their acquisition of IMG and a period of hyper-growth culminating in the creation of Endeavor. At BSE Global (Brooklyn Nets & Barclays Center) she helped redefine the organization’s external employer brand, attracting best-in-class talent off the court as well as spearheaded a redesign of the performance process and talent management framework, helping to rebuild the company culture from the ground up through its people. Christina is a proud UCLA Bruin where she studied Communications and was a member of the women’s rowing team. Born and raised in California, she has earned her stripes and considers herself a true New Yorker after 10 years in the best city in the world.
Ken Klein is co-founder and CEO of Praisidio, a VC-backed Talent Retention Management AI Software company with a mission to improve employee retention. Mr. Klein has a proven track record, scaling enterprise technology companies from pre-revenue to $1B. He has served as a Board Member of 20 technology companies, both public and private, with IPO and M&A exit experience. Mr. Klein holds a B.S. in electrical engineering and biomedical engineering from the University of Southern California. He has served as a USC Trustee since 2009, where he currently chairs the Audit, Compliance, Risk, and Privacy Committee.
Liz focuses on the most critical asset of an organization - its people. She has had multiple exposure points to tech companies from both the in-house and the agency perspective. The People Team at Sift encompasses the entire employee experience: Recruiting, People Ops, Knowledge & Collaboration, Workplace, and IT. She has startup experience from Seed stage through pre-IPO and a MS from Northwestern in a hybrid program where she developed expertise in organizational development, organizational and social psychology, learning sciences, strategy, change management, coaching, and design thinking.
Rajamma has spent upwards of twenty years in Fortune 500 companies driving all facets of Human Resources Technology. Having led large scale global digital transformations, she is passionate about leveraging the power of cloud and data to create productive and engaging experiences. A prolific speaker at Digital HR conferences on leveraging technology to deliver engaging experiences and insightful analytics. She is also a Member, Executive Innovation Board @ SAP Success Factors. Mentor, Advisor to Start-ups in HR Technology . Member, Faculty Advisory Board, WORC & MS (HCAT) at NYU.
Sheila Krueger, MBA, CCP
Sheila is the "People" in "People and Things". Sheila snuck in the back door of HR through a secret IT passage. After implementing an HRIS for an HR team, she just refused to leave. Thus started a career that has encompassed HRIS, Compensation, Benefits, Wellness, Communication, M&A, and many other aspects of the People Experience life. Currently the Head of Global Benefits at Zoom Video Communications, Sheila works to provide a suite of benefits to Zoomies that help them lead their best lives and truly foster the culture of #workhappy. This includes the recrafting of processes as well as implementing creative and useful benefit programs for all, based on the five pillars of wellness. In her spare time, she runs a charity benefiting the unsheltered in Phoenix, spends some time creating paper crafts, and loves to travel.
Dave Landa is the chief executive officer of Kintone Corporation, the San Francisco startup behind Kintone, a teamwork platform with a visual application builder that empowers individuals, teams and organizations to effectively manage their data and workflow for better collaboration. Since 2004, Dave has been on the forefront of the cloud revolution, driving strategic business development on the executive teams of leading SaaS application providers. His career includes stints at Fortune 500 companies (Ball Corporation) and startups (Blue Rice, SPG Solutions, Electric Run), and he was instrumental in bringing a mid-stage company (Active Network) through to a successful IPO.
Vanessa Larco is a Partner at NEA focused on enterprise and consumer tech investing. Prior to joining NEA, she led Product Management teams at Box, working on the next generation of productivity apps across web and mobile. Her passion for design and analytics stems from her experience in gaming, which includes leading the Speech Recognition Experience team at Xbox Kinect, building a top grossing studio at Disney Social followed by founding a kids gaming startup. She's led investments in Cleo, Rocket.Chat, Mejuri, EvidentID, Greenlight Card, Feather, and Lily AI. She is also a board observer at Robinhood, Willow Pump and OmniSci.
Pete Lawson has been in the Talent Acquisition space for over 15 years and most recently was the VP of Talent at Postmates. Pete has a history of leading talent strategies with companies who are experiencing rapid growth, having worked at Postmates, Anaplan, Zenefits, RocketSpace, Glassdoor, and Successfactors during critical phases in their development and accelerated growth trajectory. From building teams and talent functions from scratch to up-leveling an existing talent framework, Pete has experience in leading teams through transformational strategies that will build amazing brands and culture to attract best in class talent, along with processes and tools that will allow for maximum efficiency and positive experiences for candidates in their journeys through the interviewing lifecycle. Outside of work, Pete and his wife, Laurie have 2 beautiful daughters, a dog named Ruby, and live in the San Francisco Bay area.
Tom X Lee is the CEO and visionary behind Galileo — a next-generation health care delivery model that uses mobile technology and human-centered design to make medical care better and more affordable for all.
Prior to Galileo, Tom helped build One Medical into the country’s leading independent primary care group. In addition, he served as the Chief Medical Officer and lead designer at Epocrates.
Tom is a board-certified internist who completed training at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He received his BS from Yale University, MD from the University of Washington, and MBA from Stanford University.
Aline is the founder and CEO of interviewing.io, an anonymous technical recruiting platform where companies like Facebook, Uber, Quora, and Dropbox have hired great software engineers. Before that, she wrote code, ran hiring at Udacity, and wrote a lot of stuff about hiring on the internet. Her data-driven posts about how typos matter more than pedigree, how resumes are a low-signal filtering tool, and how technical interviews aren’t deterministic have been read by millions of people, and her work on the subject has appeared in dozens of publications, including Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, and Fast Company.
Mark is a seasoned big hearted Employee Experience Leader who has focused on bringing humanity to work. Mark was the pioneer of designing the shift to Employee Experience at Airbnb, which has since created significant changes in the way organizations globally are looking at expanding the HR function to focus on the entire employee journey. Mark has taken his learnings to advise CEO/Founders on how to evolve to Employee Experience, how to create an integrated internal and external brand, how to bring the mission and values to life, and how to create a greater connection between the company and their employees, between employees, with the company's customers, as well as the communities in which they operate through social impact. Most recently, Mark has focused his advisory work with under-estimated founders/CEOs and/or organizations focused on social impact.
Rebecca Liebman is the CEO and co-founder of LearnLux, the leading provider of workplace financial wellbeing that blends digital planning with one-on-one guidance from Certified Financial Planner™️ professionals. Founded in 2015, Rebecca has grown LearnLux from startup to established company serving clients across a variety of industries, Fortune 500 businesses, and global enterprises. Rebecca is on a mission to make financial wellbeing accessible in the workplace and create a better world through the power of technology. Rebecca has recently been honored with Forbes “30 Under 30,” Boston Business Journal “40 Under 40,” and Fast Company’s “World Changing Ideas” awards.
Mark Lipscomb serves as Vice President, Global Talent and Employee Experience for Adobe, where he is responsible for driving Adobe's efforts to attract, hire, develop, and engage exceptional people globally to fuel Adobe's growth. Mark has held human leadership roles at some of the most innovative companies including 23andMe, Netflix, Tesla, and Stryker. Before his time in business, Mark served as an officer in the United States Navy where he received the Commendation Medal. Mark is currently a Guest Lecturer on culture and leadership at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Mark resides in San Jose, with his wife, Jennifer, and children, Claire, Emily, and Matthew.
I am on a mission to humanize the workplace. I work with the Conference Board's Fortune 500 corporations-members on rethinking their workplace strategies; lead Reframe.Work Inc. and consult on how to create inclusive workplaces through the use of technology, human-centered design, people analytics, and future-thinking; and founded amazing.community, a nonprofit extending the work horizon for women. Previously I transformed the workplace at the intersection of technology, analytics, and HR at Fidelity Investments, TIAA, IBM, Price Waterhouse, and PwC Consulting and their clients.
Lynee Luque is the VP of People at NerdWallet where she brings more than 20 years of experience working with high-growth tech companies, focusing on defining and operationalizing company culture to support business growth. At NerdWallet, Lynee focuses on partnering with and coaching executives, fostering productive and trusted teams and further expanding NerdWallet's Diversity, Equity and Inclusion efforts.
Prior to joining NerdWallet, Lynee was VP and Head of People at Envoy and Global Human Resources Director for Twitter. Lynee has a B.S. degree from UC Berkeley and an M.B.A. from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Bruce Marable is CEO and Co-founder of Employee Cycle. His company automates the HR reporting & analytics process, by transforming employee data from multiple disconnected HR systems, into a real-time HR analytics dashboard. When Bruce is not helping HR leaders better use data to make smarter workforce decisions, or interviewing them on his company’s HR podcast, he is making dope music playlists on Spotify, practicing self-care through boxing, or hunting for the best bread pudding around town.
Associate Director, Digital/Social Media Recruitment
Eli Lilly And Company
James Marable is a marketing strategist who found his way into the Employer Brand space in 2013 after joining Macy's Inc. as a Social Media Strategist for the corporate talent acquisition (the first role of it's kind at Macy's). Evolving his role into full on Employer Brand Management (EBM) and establishing the EBM group. Now leading EB at Lilly, James manages the employer brand of one of the world's most historic pharmaceutical organizations. Over the years James has overseen the creation of over 100 EB videos, attained over 100,000,000 impressions on his social media campaigns, and developed 1000's of physical collateral pieces.
Sara Marzitelli is the VP of People at Kindbody which is on a mission to make family building & fertility care more accessible, convenient and empowering for all - all genders, all identities, all people. Prior to Kindbody, Sara was the VP, People Operations at Common, the nations leading community-driven residential brand, where she was responsible for scaling the team through a phase of hyper-growth.
Sara has over 13 years of experience in the People Ops and employment law sector, including working at large global organizations, and most recently, responsible for helping start-ups scale. Sara has built and run HR teams across a wide sector of industries including publishing, fashion and beauty, fitness, real estate tech and now health-tech.
Senior Vice President - Human Resources & Internal Communications
Credit One Bank
Todd Mayhew is the Senior Vice President of Human Resources & Internal Communications at Credit One Bank, a top-10 issuer of Visa credit cards in the United States with over 12,000,000 card members. Todd has over 20 years of experience in HR leadership positions, predominantly with global financial services firms like Citigroup and MUFG.
Todd has a doctorate in organizational change and leadership from the University of Southern California. His research focused on the future of work and organizational responses to the impact of computerization on employees. He is adjunct faculty at USC where he teaches in the MS in Human Resource Management program.
Allyson McDougal, Co-Founder of WorkChew is passionate about uncovering unseen opportunities and taking concepts to reality. With over ten years in enterprise sales and marketing with two fortune 500 corporations, including Xerox Corporation & Canon USA, Allyson recognizes it was her seat at the table that gave her the strategic insight needed to grow and scale a company effectively. Allyson hopes to create a space for others to access the same opportunities that contributed to her success. Allyson is an avid lover of the arts and has been a part of The Kennedy Center Washington National Opera Audience Development Committee for over five years, and is the current sitting President of their Young Patron Group, BravO.
Steve and HR Futures ® (HRF) provide interim HR leadership and design services for fast-growth companies and others undergoing transformation. HRF helps such companies attract, develop, and retain high value employees. Steve also advises companies on creating data-driven HR cultures. Previously, he was chief HR officer for Duo Security, New Relic, SRI International, and Exponent. Steve was also the CEO of Saratoga Institute.
Steve earned a PhD and JD, and taught at the BC School of Management, UMass, and UCSB. He served on boards of Forensic Expert Witness Association, Bay Area ODN, Bay Area HR Executive Council, and Palo Alto University.
Cleve Mesidor a Public Policy Advisor to the Blockchain Association and leads the National Policy Network of Women of Color in Blockchain. She serves on the Board of Directors for Value Technology Foundation and Crypto Connect, and is a Mayoral appointee to the DC Innovation and Technology Inclusion Council. A Washington insider, Cleve previously served as an Obama Presidential Appointee, a senior staffer in Congress, and in the leadership of national political campaigns. Recently, she was profiled in the Washington Post, TIME and on NPR. Cleve is author of “THE CLEVOLUTION: My Quest for Justice in Politics & Crypto.” She earned a Master’s of Arts degree from Howard University and is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority.
Shane Metcalf is a pioneer in the space of cultural engineering and human centered workplaces. In his role as Chief People and Culture Officer and co-founder of 15Five, Shane leads an award-winning workplace and oversees the people and culture team. He is responsible for architecting an employee experience that produces positive brain states, builds deep trust and belonging while driving company performance and results.
Caitlyn leads the Recruiting team at Lever. She brings almost a decade of recruiting experience, first helping to successfully grow a Bay Area non-profit nationally, and now scaling the team here at Lever. She believes in the importance of recruiters acting as strong business partners to enable teams to grow to support the business. Being a part of the ‘meta-team’ here at Lever, she collaborates with members of all teams to bring the experience of our customers to life.
Senior Director, Global Benefits, Well-Being & Mobility
DocuSign
Ellen is a Human Resources professional with over 20 years of progressive employee benefits and HR operations experience. She has worked both in-house and as a consultant with companies from the start-up/pre-IPO stage all the way to mature 10,000+ employee companies. She currently serves as the Director of Global Benefits at DocuSign and is an advisory council member for many start-ups in the People Technology space. Ellen has a sharp eye for innovation, and is extremely passionate about helping the community and world.
Amit Mohindra is head of data analytics and insights for Takeda's global corporate affairs group and the founder and CEO of People Analytics Success where he helped organizations and individuals accelerate their success in people analytics through advisory, coaching, and educational services. He has founded and scaled people analytics teams at Apple, McKesson, and Wayfair and has been an HR executive at Goldman Sachs and IBM, a consultant at Willis Towers Watson, and a research economist at The World Bank. Amit holds a doctorate in organizational change and leadership from USC and teaches people analytics at Stanford University.
Danielle Monaghan is the VP of Global Talent Acquisition and Mobility at Uber. Prior to this, she led the talent acquisition team for Amazon's Consumer Division. She also helped build the Amazon/JPMorgan Chase/Berkshire Hathaway health care startup, Haven, as the acting head of HR. She has 20+ years of TA experience having lived and worked on three continents (Asia, Africa and North America). Prior experience includes leading the HR function for Cisco for North Asia (Greater China, Japan and Korea), Cisco Technical Services in San Jose, CA and the HR and TA functions for Microsoft R&D in Greater China and Taiwan, as well as leading various TA functions, including executive recruiting for Microsoft in Redmond, WA. In her role as Sr. Director of Global Staffing and Diversity for Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices division, she also oversaw hiring for the U.S., Canada, UK, China and France. She holds an MBA from the Jack Welch Management Institute, and an Executive MBA from Cornell University (USA) and QueensCollege (Canada). She has a BA in Information Technology.
Kim Moore is a Partner on the venture capital team at Glynn Capital and is passionate about building companies, adding immediate value to businesses during their inflection point, and connecting people in meaningful ways to succeed on two fronts: business development engagements and building out diverse leadership teams and boards. Previously, she was at Innovation Endeavors, an early-stage venture capital firm solely backed by Eric Schmidt. Prior to working in venture capital, Kim worked at Asana. Kim received her undergraduate degree with honors in Social Science from the University of California, Irvine and her Ed.M. from Harvard GSE.
Mr. Moraes is the Co-Founder and CEO at XP Health. Before XP Health, he co-founded Vox Capital, which became a Harvard Business School case study and internationally recognized as a pioneer impact investing fund, mainly focused on healthcare. He is a co-author and co-producer of A New Capitalism, an international documentary available in 190 countries on Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Google Play. He holds a Master in Science and a Master in Healthcare Policy from Stanford University.
Andrea Morales is currently the Head of Total Rewards at Affirm. In a former role, Andrea started the transformation of the compensation structure and took the company on the journey to transparency. Andrea believes transparency builds trust and culture, and as a pay equity champion, also knows it eliminates the pay gap. Andrea and her team capitalized on that success and revamped the entire Total Rewards package and value proposition in creative ways on a small budget. Andrea is on the journey again in her current role.
Cher Murphy is an anthropologist, an OD practitioner, and a reticulist. As a trusted advisor to boards and executive management teams, Cher builds talent strategies,leads executive searches, and assesses organizational effectiveness to drive growth and innovation. Her expertise is advising organizations that are scaling or have reached an inflection point, where a talent strategy is required to thrive in uncertainty and the quickening pace of change. Currently a Senior Managing Director at Teneo, a CEO advisory firm and previously a CPO, Cher understands the perspective from both the consultant and practitioner mindset. She is a member of Marshall Goldsmith's 100 Coaches and is an Adjunct Professor at the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University.
Corinne Murray is VP of Workplace Strategy + Cultural Transformation at IMPEC Group where she advises workplace & employee experience decision makers navigate the ambiguity hybrid work and future of work strategies through her bespoke offering, Effectiveness as a Service. Passionate about expanding our understanding of productivity and experience, Corinne coaches leaders to consider how the concepts are interconnected by leveraging elements of HR, Real Estate, Communications, IT to design more inclusive and innovative company cultures. Based in Brooklyn, Corinne has spent her career in various corners of the Real Estate industry. Prior to IMPEC, she worked at RXR Realty, WeWork, Gensler, American Express, and CBRE and graduated from Gettysburg College with a bachelor’s in religious studies + philosophy.
Bart is the founder and CEO of Countable, a Community-as-a-Service platform for engaging stakeholders around brand purpose and social impact programs. Brands such as Levi’s, Uber, PG&E, DoorDash, and more use Countable’s proven white-label technology and deep expertise in impact campaigning, coalition-building, and digital organizing to drive measurable, world-changing outcomes. A long-time digital media executive and advisor to civic engagement organizations, Bart founded and built a number of startups including SideReel (acquired by Tivo), and is a Strategic Advisor for the Center for Responsible Leadership.
Charlotte Nagy is a servant leader who built a team in 2021 responsible for designing products and a data ecosystem that make it easier for Uber employees to reimagine the way the world moves for the better. Prior to Uber, Charlotte established the first People Analytics and Employee Experience functions at USAA where her team won the 2019 Clarabridge Customer Experience Innovation Award, for industry leading work on Continuous Listening to improve the employee experience. She holds 2 patents and enjoys a multi-disciplinary approach to problem solving by leveraging experience in educational research, marketing, banking, risk management and human resources.
Shawna prides herself in challenging the status quo and has spent 22 years in the healthcare industry doing just that. Over this time, she has worked with key stakeholders spanning the ecosystem – as an underwriter, a consultant, within health technology, in operations, and currently at a Fortune 250 company overseeing Global Benefits & Wellness. Her breadth of experience uniquely positions her to push for evolution with confidence.
Shawna is pursuing her DBA at Drexel, holds an MBA from the University of Oregon, a BA from the University of Hartford in Creative Writing, and a BS in Business Administration from Purdue.
Raphael is the founder and CEO of A.Team, the world’s first team formation platform, enabling companies to form, manage, and scale “cloud-based teams”, instantly. Its TeamGraph connects highly-skilled product builders in an invite-only network —empowering them to escape rigid structures to team up for companies building market-leading products.
Raphael is a technologist, entrepreneur and investor on a mission to unlock human potential with technology. He founded BillGuard—the antivirus for bills (acquired by Prosper), co-founded BlockNation with Apollo Mgmt CEO Marc Rowan to invest in web3 and founded ITC, a not-for-profit for global tech upskilling. A decorated officer of IDF’s tech unit, he was named 30 under 30 by Forbes, and Global Shaper by the World Economic Forum.
Kristie Pappal serves as the Vice President of Human Resources with the Philadelphia Eagles where she provides comprehensive human resources leadership including developing and leading HR strategy and policy, cultivating a positive and productive work environment, talent acquisition, employee relations, benefits and wellness, compensation, and organizational development.
Kristie holds a Master of Science in Human Resource Management from Temple University and a Bachelor of Science in Labor & Industrial Relations from Penn State University. She is a Board member with Penn State University, School of Labor and Employment Relations Alumni Program Board. She is a Board member and Committee Co-Chair with the Power of Professional Women. She was the 2015 recipient of the Penn State University College of Liberal Arts Outstanding Young Alumni Award and 2018 recipient of the Distinguished Alumni from the School of Labor and Employment Relations.
Judy is an investor with Owl Ventures, an education & workforce technology focused fund with $2B+ of AUM. Prior to Owl, Judy was on the founding team of Bain Capital’s Double Impact fund and led the fund’s first investments in education, healthcare, and wellness.
Vinay Patankar is CEO and co-founder of Process Street, the people process platform backed by Accel, Salesforce Ventures and Atlassian Ventures. Thousands of companies like Salesforce and Drift use Process Street to orchestrate and automate their employee onboarding process, as well as other people processes like PTO requests and offboarding. Vinay loves to travel and spent years as a digital nomad roaming the globe and is now based in San Diego. He also enjoys food, surfing, fitness and talking shop.
Pratiksha’s background spans global, industry leaders and high-growth disruptors. In these diverse environments, Pratiksha focused on cultural cohesion, raising the bar on talent, and evolving programs that resonate with progressive ways of working and drivers of employee engagement. Her journey includes detours from People/HR where she learned just how transversal the skills of People people are! Pratiksha geeks out on the latest in tech as a PeopleTech Partners Advisor and is always up for a game of Scrabble or bananagrams.
Nikhil Paul is a leadership team coach who founded We R Human to help senior teams strengthen their focus, culture and execution. Previously, he led an employee engagement SaaS startup and learnt firsthand the challenges leaders all over the world were facing in motivating and retaining their employees. He has a decade of experience in building teams and problem-solving culture issues with clients like Walmart, Airbnb and Salesforce. He has been featured in Forbes and is currently a member of the Hubspot Fellows faculty.
Will Peng is the CEO and Co-Founder of Northstar, the financial wellness platform for employees. Prior to founding Northstar, Will was a venture capital investor. His firm was an early investor in Coinbase, Guideline, Even, and Oscar. Inspired by the positive change fintech can have on people's lives, Will set out to solve the inequality of financial guidance in a way that drives meaningful action. As a Taiwanese immigrant, Will is passionate about supporting underserved communities to help them achieve financial stability and reach their personal goals.
Max helps lead the HR investment practice at FTV Capital, a 20+ year growth equity firm. Since our founding, FTV has raised nearly $4 billion across six funds and invested in more than 125 high-growth companies, creating more than $39 billion in enterprise value. We provide access to 400+ strategic connections within our Global Partner Network as well as to our FTV Propel team to deliver transformative growth opportunities to our portfolio companies.
Torin Perez is a Diversity, Equity & Inclusion consultant on a mission to inspire authenticity and inclusive leadership in the workplace. Featured at TED, Culture Amp as a D&I Influencer You Should Know, and in Forbes as an Anti-Racism Educator Your Company Needs Now, Torin has facilitated transformative learning and development experiences and spoken on many of the world’s most influential stages. His stories and ideas have inspired audiences at leading conferences including PCMA Convening Leaders, Culture Summit, and HR Transform — academic institutions including Harvard, Stanford, and Cornell Johnson — and iconic corporate institutions including Cisco, Microsoft, and Chobani.
Carlos is an Early Stage Investor at Plug and Play, a corporate innovation platform connecting Fortune 1000 companies with Startups. Carlos focuses on the Enterprise and Fintech Vertical. Passionate about the Future of Work, some of his interests are: How are companies going to recruit better and more diverse, Pay Equity Solutions, Culture, Climate Fintech and Embedded Fintech.
Prior to becoming an Investor, Carlos was the Head of Finance at Orbitalads, a marketing automation Startup.
Robby is Co-Founder of PeopleTech Partners which is an organization that works with early stage tech companies looking to build products for HR Leaders. The organization has worked with and advised over 80 companies through the last 7 years and those companies have gone on to raise over 1 Billion dollars in Venture Funding. He is also the Co-Founder of SemperVirens which is an investment firm that focuses on workforce, healthcare, and financial technology companies that want to sell to and through the employer. Across both networks he has built an amazing advisory community of over 300 current and former CHRO’s from companies like EA, Visa, UPS, Peloton, Netflix, Zoom, Twilio, Slack, and Disney to name a few.
Niki Pezeshki is a General Partner at Felicis Ventures. Niki works closely with the firm’s investments in Guild Education, Guideline 401K, Modern Health, Origin, Cleo, and Trusted Health.
Darren Pitura has been performing and teaching Improv throughout North America for over twenty years. A former member of The Second City in Las Vegas, he currently performs as the Town Crier for the Henderson Silver Knights. Darren was Lead Clown in Cirque du Soleils' Mystere and Zumanity and was a lead writer and performer for Cirque du Soleils' One Night for One Drop at the Bellagio's O Theatre. He is the founder of Vegas Theatre Hub, Las Vegas’ premiere playground for physical theatre. He has taught regularly at VTH, Cirque du Soleil and universities throughout Canada and the United States.
Jess Podgajny is a mom, culture curator, podcast host, and the co-founder & CEO of LLUNA - technology to make flexibility scalable. She challenges companies to reimagine the employee experience – introducing a data-driven technology process that makes room for work designed for life. Her passion for people and business fuels her mission to personalize the future of work. Jess and her family live outside Philadelphia, PA and when not helping companies better attract, engage, and retain talent, Jess can be found enjoying one of the many incredible restaurants in and around Philly.
Bryan Power brings more than 20 years of human resources and talent acquisition experience to Nextdoor – most recently as Chief Human Resources Officer at Yahoo. Throughout his time at Yahoo, Bryan was responsible for leading the global People Team, serving more than 10,000 employees in 30 offices across the Americas, EMEA and APAC. Prior to Yahoo, Bryan held a similar role at Square, successfully growing the company from 350 to 1600 employees, and ramping employee programs and HR infrastructure ahead of the company’s successful public offering in November 2015. Previous to Square, Bryan spent eight years at Google. He is also a board member of Avenica, a U.S. recruiting firm that focuses on placing recent college graduates into entry-level career-track positions, as well as an advisor to a number of high growth tech companies in San Francisco.
Guy Primus is CEO and Board Member at Valence. Guy's personal mission is to leverage technology to connect people to the things that enhance their lives. As CEO, Guy is looking to lead Valence to becoming the definitive bridge between Black Talent and Economic Opportunity and Development.
Prior to joining Valence, Guy was founder and Chief Executive Officer of The Virtual Reality Company (VRC), a company whose mission is to become the world leader in the production and distribution of premium, story-driven Virtual Reality content. Guy was the lead inventor on two VRC Patents.
Melissa Pumphrey is a Vice President at the New York City EDC where she leads the fiscal and economic impact group on the Economic Research & Policy team. She also leads economic research for the women.NYC Childcare Innovation Lab, working to frame childcare as an economic development issue and as critical infrastructure for a robust, inclusive economy. Prior to joining EDC, Melissa spent seven years in the finance and consulting industries. Melissa has a B.A. and M.A. in economics.
Uzair Qadeer is Chief People Officer and a member of the management team at Carbon Health, where he oversees end-to-end human resources capabilities enabling employee experience for almost 3,000 employees.
Prior to Carbon Health, Qadeer was Chief Diversity Officer at Alexion Pharmaceuticals where he served on the company’s executive management team and built a market leading diversity function from the ground up. Before that, he served as a leader in Deloitte’s human capital consulting business where he focused on redefining every aspect of HR, including organizational development, culture, and talent management. Qadeer also worked at Bristol Myers Squibb in various roles of increasing responsibilities. Qadeer also taught at the MBA program at the State University of New Jersey.
Qadeer has a track record of helping organizations lead with innovative HR efforts. Qadeer, who also serves on the Board of Directors of Human Resources Leadership Forum, was recently named one of the Top 100 Chief Diversity Officers, and was called a “HR Futurist” by American Healthcare Leader Magazine. Qadeer is also founder of two revolutionary and widely adopted frameworks in HR: “5 Es of Employee Experience” and “10 Dials of Diversity”.
A truly global citizen, Qadeer speaks six languages and has lived in five countries including the United States, Italy, and Spain. Qadeer received his master’s degree as well as his B.A. and B.S. degrees from Pennsylvania State University.
Caroline leads Global Real Estate and Workplace at Cloudflare where she is leading the initiative to completely reimagine the company’s physical environment to support a more flexible, dynamic, distributed way of working.
With 25 years of experience in the Tech industry and the winner of the Elevate Women in Tech award, Caroline has worked with some of the most widely recognized high-growth companies, creating future-focused real estate and workplace strategies on a global scale.
While she has a long track record in tech, Caroline is also an entrepreneur, and spent several years after the .com bust founding, building, and later selling a multi-million-dollar modern home furnishings business.
Angela Rao is the Director of Global Compensation for Dropbox, a company dedicated to building the world’s first smart workspace. In her 15 year career in Compensation, she has focused on helping organizations scale their pay programs and processes and bringing more pay program transparency to employee populations. She firmly believes that understanding begets trust and leads with empathy and an open mind.
Milena Regos is the founder of Unhustle®, a revolutionary approach to the way we live, work, and play, a training and community hub for leaders, entrepreneurs, and teams. She mentors and consults on how to replace Hustle Culture with Human Culture and create sustainable LiveWorkPlay Design to create relaxed success with more focus, flow and fulfillment. She has presented on burnout and mental health at the World Economic Forum and was chosen as the people’s choice award to speak at Wisdom2.0. Unhustle has been called “Amazing” by Arianna Huffington (Founder and CEO of Thrive Global). An ex award-winning marketer, working with celebrities like Madonna, Steve Nash and Dr. Weil, she connects creativity, energy, and purpose to inspire millions worldwide to find the courage to redefine success and work and live with joy, calm and focus replacing toxic work habits with peak performance.
Over the past 20 years, JR has established herself as a leader of transformational talent strategies & teams for high-growth startups, top technology companies, and consumer brands including Apple, Target, Yahoo and Looker/Google Cloud. Her work is predicated on passion and respect for her team, her candidates, and clients around the world. A Detroit-area native and proud University of Michigan grad, JR most recently joined Pendo.io as VP Talent in January 2021 where she is having great days and yet cannot wait to see her team in person again.
After spending 15+ years leading one of the nation’s largest HCM organizations focused on talent business development, George joined SHRM to build and scale SHRM’s new B2B business. Over the last 18 months, George and his team have built SHRM Enterprise Solutions, a unique value proposition for Fortune 1000 organizations. George leads a growing team that partners with enterprise businesses globally in innovative new directions. He is passionate about developing leaders into the most authentic version of themselves, and believes that human optimization is the cornerstone of a successful business.
Brianna Rizzo is a Talent Partner at VMG Partners, who are investors in consumer brands like KIND, Spindrift, Drunk Elephant, Briogeo, Daily Harvest, Honey Pot, and Pill Club and commerce enablement and marketplace businesses like Attentive, Daasity, Shogun, Swell, Ampla, Weee!, Nowsta, among others. She is also a board member at VC Global Platform Community, a peer-learning community for post-investment professionals in venture capital, a board member at the Women on Boards Project, a non-profit helping women secure board seats at consumer companies, and an advisor to Bodily, a resource for women's bodies and maternal health.
Anna launched Ceresa with the mission to build diverse leadership for the future by democratizing access to transformative career and leadership resources. She dedicates her time to shaping the company’s vision and strategy, building a world-class team and culture infused with fun, and shaping a sustainable social impact business model.
Before launching Ceresa, Anna was a Partner at McKinsey & Company. She also served as COO at an early-stage tech company. Anna has two degrees from the University of Oxford and an MBA from Stanford University. Anna lives in Telluride, Colorado, with her husband and three children.
Kim Rohrer is a passionate people person with over a decade of experience building inclusive, sustainable, values-based company cultures at tech companies and beyond. She is currently the Head of Employee Experience at Oyster, and is also the founder of and advisor to OrgOrg, a global community of over 3,500 people operations professionals. Kim believes fiercely in holistic support for working caregivers, and is proud to be a part of the movement to create change as a cofounder at TendLab. Her eclectic career has taken her from theater to tech, always with the common threads of community and care.
Greg Russell has been helping build tech companies in Silicon Valley and New Zealand for over 20 years. Currently the Head of Talent at fintech startup Snapdocs, with a mission to perfect real estate closings, Greg's team has grown the company from 110 - 550 over the past 2 years. Passionate about coaching recruiters in the craft of talent acquisition, he believes there are 48 different things that must be done well to create a great process. Greg is an advisor for early stage people and talent tech companies and has been a member of PeopleTechAdvisors for 4 years.
Marty has practiced in the “People” space for over 28 years and is passionate about building strong People teams dedicated to fostering exceptional, inclusive Employee Experiences. Marty is currently the Chief People Officer for Sequoia, a tech-enabled consulting and services company and has also served as Chief People Officer of Twilio Inc., a publicly traded provider of a cloud-based platform, as the Chief People Officer of Fitbit, Inc., a publicly traded technology company delivering health solutions to consumers and as the Chief People Officer of NetSuite, Inc., a publicly traded provider of cloud-based business management software.
Sarahjane brings her experience both as a veteran tech executive and a busy mother of two to lead team Cleo as our CEO. Prior to joining Cleo, Sarahjane helped build Collective Health as their CMO, and has helped launch and build several startups in a variety of industries, from adtech to social media to energy and enterprise technology. Earlier in her career, she led political campaigns for healthcare and education districts across California.
Under Brandon’s leadership, Zapier's People team attracts and develops dynamic, curious problem-solvers—and empowers them to do the best work of their lives. Brandon is responsible for Zapier's global talent strategy, drawing from prior experience in talent acquisition, talent development, diversity and inclusion, strategy consulting, and venture capital. He holds a BA from The University of Michigan, an MBA from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, and a Masters in Education from Stanford’s Graduate School of Education.
Jahanvi is an investor at Stripes, a $4.5B growth equity firm based in New York. She helps lead Stripes investments in B2B SaaS with a focus on HR tech, fintech, and cybersecurity. Jahanvi works closely with portfolio companies Oyster HR and Paradox in addition to many others. She is passionate about new HR technologies that are far more employee and manager centric rather than being employer centric. Outside of work Jahanvi can be found binge watching The Office or looking for the best pho in NYC.
Marcus Sawyerr is a Former 500 Executive turned startup founder who has spent the last 15 years working within online recruitment and digital transformation - most recently as Global Head of Digital Innovation and President of The Adecco Group's digital innovation unit. After becoming increasingly frustrated over the lack of access to meaningful and life-changing jobs, especially for people of color, he started EQ Community to empower capable and diverse talent to thrive.
Jeremy Schiff earned an undergraduate and PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in 2005 and 2009 respectively, with a focus on scalable machine learning. In 2006, Jeremy co-founded FotoFlexer.com, an online photo editing company that powered companies including MySpace and Photobucket. In 2009, Jeremy joined Ness Computing as VP of Product and Machine Learning, which was sold to OpenTable in 2014. While working at OpenTable, Jeremy saw first-hand the opportunity to transform the way that recruiting works through Machine Learning and Automation, so became founder and CEO of RecruitBot in 2017 to spearhead the mission to automate recruiting.
Lars Schmidt is the Founder of Amplify, a boutique firm that helps companies and HR leaders navigate the new world of work through HR executive search and the Amplify Accelerator program. He's spent over 20 years in the industry building a range of leading global companies. He’s a writer for Fast Company, author of the bestselling Redefining HR book, co-author of Employer Branding for Dummies, and Host of the Redefining HR podcast.
Matt, Founder, and CEO of Pave was previously a software engineer at Facebook. He holds degrees in computer science from Penn and business from Wharton. Matt has had a lifelong passion for helping people fully understand and take control of their personal finances. Outside of work, you can find him mountaineering in the Andes and backcountry skiing in the Rockies.
Ashley has a Master’s in Social Work from the University of Michigan, with focuses in Social Systems and Management of Human Services. Her current research focus is on how organizations can develop inclusive systems that mitigate bias and promote belonging. Ashley spent her first four years at LifeLabs as a Leadership Trainer, before transitioning into the Director of IDEA (inclusion, diversity, equity, and anti-bias) role.
Ms. Scott brings over 20 years of human resources and organizational strategy expertise. She leads human resources at MAPS PBC, supporting the organization and its team through growth and managing change while stewarding its culture.
She is a graduate of Arizona State University with degrees in Global Business and Information Management. She holds the SPHR, SHRM-SCP and, the Veterans at Work certification from the SHRM Foundation. Ms. Scott has been appeared in Sheen magazine, New York Times, and a guest writer for Phx Startup Week.
She founded and serves as the CEO of Civilian Connections, addressing the employment gap for Veterans.
Alex is a passionate People executive who is focused on advancing workplace & performance culture, fostering DEI&B and advocating for organizational health & well-being. He is half British half Swiss, was born and raised in Hong Kong and has been in the US for over 18 years and fell into the People function upon landing on US soil. He has worked across a number of industries, in both generalist and specialist roles, before becoming a Chief People Officer/Head of HR. He is inspired by organizations and leaders that put their talent first, which is how he landed at GHJ.
Shardul Shah has served as a member of our board of directors since November 2012. He is a partner at Index Ventures, an international venture capital firm, where he has worked since 2008. Mr. Shah’s investment focus is primarily centered around cloud infrastructure, security and enterprise software. Mr. Shah currently serves on the board of directors of multiple private technology companies, including 2121 Atelier, Inc. (d/b/a Jumbo Privacy), AttackIQ, Inc., BrightHire Inc., Castle Intelligence, Inc., Coalition, Inc., Expel Inc., Gatsby, Inc., and Wiz, Inc, and currently serves as a board observer of several private technology companies. Mr. Shah was previously a director of Adallom Technologies Ltd. (acquired by Microsoft), BrightBack, Inc. (acquired by Chargebee), FutureSimple Inc. (previously Base CRM) (acquired by Zendesk) and Lacoon Mobile Security (acquired by Check Point) and an investor in Duo Security (acquired by Cisco). Prior to Index Ventures, Mr. Shah was an associate at Summit Partners. Mr. Shah received his B.A. in Economics and Biology from the University of Chicago.
Ellen Silver is the President of Oyster, a global employment platform committed to making it possible for companies everywhere to hire people anywhere.
Ellen’s background in risk, operations, and compliance spans more than 20 years and before Oyster, she was the VP of Trust and Safety Operations at Facebook. Ellen is passionate about the potential for distributed work to create a more equal world. Born and raised in California, Ellen enjoys spending time outside work with her family and two dogs
Mala serves as Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer at Electronic Arts where she focuses on developing EA's talent and cultivating the company culture. Mala plays an integral role in redefining and evolving the People strategy at EA. She is passionate about creating environments which empower people and teams to do their best work. Prior to this role, Mala spent three years as Chief People Officer at Minted where she helped to define the culture and grow the creative and technical teams during a high-growth period for the startup. Mala earned both her Bachelor's degree in Psychology and Art History and her Master's degree in Human Resources Management from Rutgers University. Mala lives in the Bay Area with her family.
Jessica Sloan is the CEO/Executive Director of RaisedBy.Us, a nonprofit that partners with startups to help build and run company-wide social impact programming. Jessica has dedicated her career to social good enterprises with over 20 years of experience in the nonprofit sector. From program development and evaluation to fundraising, communications, and strategic initiatives, Jessica is passionate about building cross-sector alliances that foster opportunities for connection between communities and drive sustainable, long-term change. Jessica has a BA in psychology and criminology from the University of Maryland College Park and an MA in clinical psychology from Teachers College, Columbia University.
Globe-trotting tech founder (ex ebay + facebook) driven to build better societies. Sophie experienced a problem professionals face at transition points in life where flexibility is needed - i.e. caregiving, health, learning, etc. The more strategic or senior the job, the more inflexible it is. So people burn out or leave - this drives gender seniority gaps, harms diversity, and damages economic growth. Sophie started Roleshare to fix this. Roleshare is a platform that matches part-time workers to share full-time jobs. Roleshare has been recognized by the World Economic Forum as a pathway to economic transformation.
Aja (pronounced ‘Asia’) is an intuitive healer, leadership education specialist and certified life coach. She is backed by over a decade of experience as a teacher, supervisor, coach, and mentor to professionals from all socio-economic backgrounds and experience-levels, guiding them toward defining their passions, discovering their authentic strengths and awakening the purpose-driven leader within. Aja also specializes in leadership development coaching and DEI consulting (Diversity, Equity/Equality, Inclusion) for teams in corporate and school-based settings. She is a mission-driven professional with expertise in talent acquisition, program management, employee engagement, community relations, and staff training/development for startups and small-midsize companies.
Elise Smith is the co-founder and CEO of Praxis Labs, an enterprise immersive learning company. Currently focused on justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) topics, they advance equity and inclusion for their clients by providing immersive learning journeys that combine VR-based simulations with actionable insights on their 'learning & listening' platform. They're partnering with organizations like Google, ServiceNow, Morgan Stanley, Uber and others to help make workplaces -and ultimately society- more equitable. Their work and their flagship learning journey, Pivotal Experiences, have been featured in Inc., Washington Post, Protocol and more.
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
Keith E. Sonderling was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on September 22, 2020, to be a Commissioner on the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) for a term expiring July 1, 2024.
Previously, Commissioner Sonderling served as the Acting and Deputy Administrator of the Wage and Hour Division at the U.S. Department of Labor. At the Wage and Hour Division, Sonderling oversaw enforcement, outreach, regulatory work, strategic planning, performance management, communications, and stakeholder engagement.
Before joining the Department of Labor, Commissioner Sonderling was a partner at the Gunster Law Firm, where he practiced labor and employment law.
Jevan Soo Lenox is Chief People Officer at insitro, a biotech company transforming the drug discovery process through machine learning. Prior to insitro, he was Chief People & Culture Officer at Stitch Fix (NASDAQ: SFIX), Chief People Officer at Blue Bottle Coffee, held multiple leadership roles at Block / Square (NYSE: SQ), and began his career at McKinsey & Company as a management consultant and recruiting leader.
Jevan received his MBA from Harvard Business School, his Masters in Public Policy from Harvard Kennedy School, and Bachelors in East Asian Studies from Harvard College. He was named a First Mover Fellow by the Aspen Institute in recognition of his leadership within organizations to align business impact with the long-term health of society and the planet.
Angela Soria loves to tackle creative challenges, which is why she began working with the Zander Media team before the company even had a name. Her vision and expertise is what holds the Zander Media team accountable in all our creative endeavors to produce quality content. When she’s not shooting, editing, or reviewing video, Angela can be found walking her dog Villanelle, or sampling wines in Napa.
Shaun is a facilitator, coach, and speaker who is passionate about creating spaces where people can show up and be seen as their best selves. Shaun has worked across industries helping individuals and groups become more connected and effective through keynote addresses and workshops on leadership, inclusion, and wellness. Shaun’s work is focused on helping leaders adopt new habits, embrace new mindsets, and unleash the potential of their teams. Throughout his career, he has connected with people, using a unique blend of storytelling, humor, and psychology as a bridge to teach, inspire and inform.
Tracie Sponenberg is Chief People Officer of The Granite Group, a 50-location wholesale distributor. She has spent her career working with CEOs to align people & business strategies, in industries like publishing, health and wellness, and professional services. Formerly a paper-pushing, compliance-driven HR person, she became a people-first business leader several years ago, and has since made it a mission to help others do the same, through speaking around the globe, co-founding DisruptHR NH and HR Rebooted, and writing daily short LinkedIn blogs. A bookworm & introvert, several years ago started getting comfortable with being uncomfortable and it changed her life for the better.
Angel is an applied researcher and systems thinker committed to racial equity. She’s led systems change efforts in Philadelphia and Baltimore; developed national, state, and local policy; managed business associations; and developed, led and evaluated workforce and economic development initiatives across the country. Most recently, Angel led efforts to increase wages and the employment rate in Baltimore.
Today Angel is the co-founder and CEO of The Black Brain Trust (TBBT), where she created a patent-pending methodology for measuring diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in companies and a software platform to better collect, measure and analyze comprehensive DEI data within companies.
Cory Stern is a passionate Human Resources executive who has been building, coaching, and leading teams and organizations across Johnson & Johnson since 2004. Cory currently serves as VP, Global Head of HR for J&J’s $9B Ethicon Medical Technology business. Cory’s HR experiences span established and entrepreneurial businesses across healthcare and finance. Prior to J&J, Cory spent 6 years in finance working in investment banking and capital markets.
Cory’s passion and purpose are fueled by the work he does coaching talent at all phases of their career journey. He’s driven to make a difference by blending the artistry and science of values-based coaching to help people experience meaning and fulfilment in their work, achieve career goals, and perform at their best. Cory obtained his Executive Coaching certification from the Columbia University Coach Certification Program.
Cory, his wife and two daughters live in New York City and enjoy every moment experiencing the vibrancy and chaos of the city. Outside of his “day job”, Cory serves as a Mentor Coach for America Needs You (ANY), is an Advisor & Founding Member of TroopHR, an Advisory Board member to the Cornell University School of Industrial & Labor Relations, a Trustee at Temple Israel, and serves on the School Leadership Team at Public School 183 in NYC.
Cynthia is the SVP, Director of Technology Advancement & Outreach at Associated Bank, Wisconsin’s largest bank holding company and leading Midwest banking franchise, offering a full range of financial products and services. She partners with senior leaders and human resources in the development of the strategic vision and collaboration needed to attract, engage and retain a top-tier and highly skilled technology organization. She is also leading the development of the company’s first STEM outreach and engagement program. She has over ten years’ experience providing strategic human resource leadership and support within several industries including financial services, healthcare and manufacturing.
As Chief People Officer at Patreon, Tiffany Stevenson believes that culture is a VERB and not a noun. Tiffany's goal is to build healthy, thriving, high performing communities inside and out. Formerly Chief Talent & Inclusion Officer, Global Head of Communities at Box, Tiffany led several HR centers of excellence including: org/talent development, learning, diversity & inclusion along with communities and Box.org. Prior to Box, Tiffany served for 12 years at Sephora USA Inc. (LVMH), where she led the talent and org development functions and launched the D&I practice for the Americas region. Tiffany currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, along with the Advisory Board for Hitch Works.
Ron is the Chief People Officer at Booster, the last mile mobile energy solution for fleets, businesses, and consumers. He has 20+ years of experience leading people teams at Fortune 500 Companies including Facebook, Google and Lyft.
Ron’s most notable role was leading the People function at Lyft. Joining Lyft in 2013, Ron grew the company from 80 to over 2,000+ employees, and from a cumulative 1 million rides to 1 million rides per day.
Ron can also be heard on podcasts, webinars, or at conferences speaking about the future of work and topics such as culture, growth, and inclusion.
Selena Strandberg is the Founder & CEO of The Know, employer branding software that helps companies manage current news events inside their organizations. Their data aggregator, KnowYourVote, has been endorsed by celebrities, journalists, and national publications, like Forbes and Town & Country, in addition to major consumer brands, like Barry’s and Glossier. Prior to founding The Know, Selena ran vertical expansion at Hired and designed recruitment strategies for top Silicon Valley companies. Her go-to-market and human capital consulting work spans start-ups, large enterprises, and federal agencies. Before moving into tech, Selena was a Strategy & Operations consultant at Deloitte and an analyst at the State Department.
Joanna Strober, is the CEO of Midi Health, a digital-first healthcare platform designed specifically for women 40+, providing personalized expert protocols delivered by clinicians trained in female midlife health. Leveraging specialized at-home labs, prescription medications, supplements, and lifestyle coaching, Midi helps women manage the unique challenges faced by women in this critical stage of their lives and careers.
Prior to Midi, Joanna founded Kurbo Health, a digital therapeutic for childhood obesity that she grew and sold to WW. Before immersing herself in digital health, Joanna spent 20 years as a venture capital and private equity investor, with a special focus on companies helping women and children thrive.
Darren Sudman is founder of Unless, an outsourced corporate social responsibility company. Darren started his career as a lawyer. He had stints in business at America Online and Advanta Bank. In 2005, his career came to a halt when his three-month old son died suddenly and unexpectedly. He and his wife co-founded Simon’s Heart, an organization to prevent sudden cardiac arrest and death in children, teens and young adults. For fifteen years, he led the organization. Today, Darren is leveraging his nonprofit and for-profit experience to bring purpose and productivity to the corporate world.
Tammy Sun is the Co-Founder and CEO of Carrot Fertility, the leading global fertility benefits provider for employers and health plans. Carrot's clinically-managed program includes fertility preservation like egg and sperm freezing, IVF, donor and gestational carrier services, adoption, and pregnancy support; Carrot Rx, a premium pharmacy experience at significant savings; and the Carrot Card, a flexible fertility benefits debit card employees can use to pay for their care. Tammy was inspired to create Carrot after she spent $35,000 of her personal savings to undergo egg freezing. Carrot's mission is to improve access to high-quality fertility care and dramatically reduce the emotional and financial strain for employees who need it. Carrot supports over 250 customers in more than 60 countries across North America, Asia, Europe, South America, and the Middle East.
Tammy has had a successful career across marketing, technology, and politics. Most recently, she was the Director of Partnerships at Evernote. Prior to Evernote, she spent a decade in politics, where she served as a presidential appointee at the Federal Communications Commission during the Obama administration. She also held roles at the Clinton Foundation and The White House.
From recruiting to HR operations, business partnerships, and employee engagement, Leah Sutton leads the team that builds, nurtures, and supports a fully distributed team of more than 2,600 Elasticians in over 40 countries around the world. Prior to Elastic, she led HR at Plum Organics through a period of high growth following an acquisition by Campbell Soup Company. She holds a BA from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and an MBA from Berkeley�s Haas School Business.
Ravi Swaminathan is a seasoned technology executive who is wildly passionate about creating products with social impact that can change the world for the better. He drives the TaskHuman vision forward every day.
Christine Tao is the co-founder & CEO at Sounding Board, the fast-growing scalable leadership coaching platform, combining technology and coaches to drive business impact for global enterprises. She has scaled hyper-growth startups to over $100M in revenue. Prior to Sounding Board, Christine was a Senior Vice President of Developer Relations at Tapjoy, a venture-backed, leading mobile advertising & publishing network. She led the growth of Tapjoy’s publisher advertising business from 0 to over $100 million in revenues in less than 3 years. Prior to that, she led e-commerce partnerships and strategy at YouTube. Christine holds an MBA in Marketing & Operations from Wharton.
Laila Tarraf is a senior human resource executive with over 25 years of professional experience. After graduating with her MBA from the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley, she went on to serve as the Chief People Officer at Walmart.com, Peet’s Coffee and Tea and most recently, Allbirds. Currently, Ms. Tarraf is a human capital advisor, a sought-after speaker, an executive coach and frequent guest lecturer at UC Berkeley. She is the author of Strong Like Water which shares her personal journey and hard-won insights towards becoming a more compassionate and integrated leader.
Erina Tashiro is the Culture Strategist & HR Admin for Kintone Corporation, which provides a teamwork platform that empowers individuals, teams, and organizations to effectively manage their data and workflow for better collaboration. In her role, Erina works to promote a culture of transparency to attract, retain, and motivate top talent. Specifically, she utilizes Kintone's teamwork platform and methods to encourage open communication, collaborative problem-solving, and transparent decision-making. Through her work, Erina supports Kintone's HR policies and practices to allow 100 Different People, a 100 Different Workstyles.
Gabriela is President of the Equal Pay Group, responsible for business development, client engagement, and overseeing marketing and business management.
As a dedicated advocate of equity and employment change, Gabriela has supported HR development, recruitment, data analysis, and operations management. Having recently worked for the third-largest staffing agency in the country, Gabriela has keen insight on the impact of organizational policies, compensation, and diversity as it relates to the interest and engagement of candidates looking for employment opportunities.
Gabriela has her Certification in Compensation Analysis and is obtaining an MBA concentrating on Corporate Renewal at Northeastern University in Boston, MA.
Lenke Taylor is on the leadership team at Level, America's fastest growing fintech benefits company. Backed by Visa, Level creates benefits products such as dental, vision, lifestyle funds and more that employers and their teams love. Recognized as one of the most innovative HR leaders focusing on DEI by Business Insider, Lenke has lived and traveled around the world while working at Twitch, BuzzFeed, Google and NBC Universal. She graduated from Northwestern University with a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering and earned an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University.
Master Certified Coach and M. Ed., Alexa has a passion for translating business vision to reality through global strategy, business acumen, behavioral science and unlocking the potential of all people. Rooted in her education in adult learning principles, organizational psychology and coaching pedagogy, Alexa is a leader in the realm of leadership development. She has developed and executed upon strategies related to talent acquisition and development, fostered learning cultures, and built systems to support career growth and Equity & Inclusion at organizations ranging from startups to a trillion dollar finance company to a multinational tech giant.
AJ leads the Human Experience Design and People Experiences Team at X, the Moonshot Factory. Her experience includes several roles that have spanned sales, support engineering, product & design, and leadership. Her unique journey also includes deep experience in executive and leadership capacities most recently serving in C-Level positions such as Vice President of People & Culture, CHRO, and Head of Talent roles at several enterprise technologies and startup companies like T-Mobile, Adecco, Iron Mountain, HP Enterprise (Nimble Storage), Ten-X and Auction.com. She is also the Chief Explorer and Founder at BrainCandy Labs. Her board advisory work through BrainCandy Labs, Women in Technology International, and Roleshare support shaping the future through education, women empowerment, and the new world of work.
Colin Tobias is a principal at SemperVirens, an early-stage venture fund focused on investing in technology transforming work, health, and financial wellness. Prior to joining SemperVirens, Colin was an investor at Tenaya Capital, a leading early growth venture capital fund. At Tenaya, Colin identified, evaluated and executed growth-stage investments across enterprise and consumer verticals.
Mai Ton is currently Chief People Officer at Kickstarter. She formerly led the People team at White Ops, HelloSign, OneLogin, RichRelevance and Trulia. She is the author of a new book called Come into My Office: Stories from an HR Leader in Silicon Valley from New Degree Press.
Mai has 20 years of experience leading all aspects of Human Resources in several small and mid size rapidly growing businesses in the San Francisco and New York areas. Over the course of her career, she has been the first Vice President of Human Resources at six companies, including five start-ups. She helped these companies through IPOs and M&A transactions and built the people function from scratch at every company where she has worked.
Mai has won 14 awards for her companies, and was named to the list of the Top 50 Most Powerful Women in Technology, Top 50 Tech Leaders in 2019, and Top 20 Tech Trailblazers from Insights Magazine. Mai is a Board member of LEAP a non-profit organization that helps Asian Americans break the bamboo ceiling. She is an advisor to some of the newest HR technology software companies and shares her knowledge with others by speaking at various HR conferences.
Mai received a BA in Sociology from the University of Texas, Austin. You can find her in New York City.
Tobin (Toby) Trevarthen is the CEO/Founder of Spatial Shift, LLC, a Strategic Narrative Design consultancy, and CEO/Co-Founder of The Narrative Playbook, a Narrative Design Lab.
Toby is a modern elder and curious polymath that brings over 30 years of executive management knowledge to his pioneering narrative work. His background represents a consistent thread of revenue creation, solving for complexity, and designing for new categories. All of which spans Fortune 100, scale-ups, startups, and non-profits.
Toby is the Co-Author of Narrative Generation, a groundbreaking book focusing on the significance of narrative in a world besieged by noise and transformation.
Ricky M. Turner is a vigorous advocate for more humanity in the workplace.
He is a successful human resources executive with over 20 years of values-based human resources leadership experience. He loves people....and believes he was born to make lives better. As a sought-after keynote speaker and host of his podcast RealTalk- HR, Ricky has a passion for helping organizations create humane, diverse, and inclusive workplaces that will produce strong and engaging employee relationships.
Ricky has held executive leadership positions in Human Resources at several fortune 100 companies like Meta (Facebook), Nike, and Whirlpool Corporation. He has a Juris Doctorate from Rutgers University and is a graduate of world-famous Tuskegee University.
Ricky is married to his wife Gwendolyn. They have two energetic and charismatic little boys; Asa James is 12 and Beau Hendrix is 9. Ricky is a novice triathlete, Little League baseball coach, fly fisher, cigar lover, and an enthusiastic member of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity Inc.
Ruth Umoh is an Editor at Fortune, overseeing its executive leadership and management coverage. She was previously the the Editor-in-Chief of The Filament, a news source for DEI leaders in tech. A veteran business journalist, she served as Forbes’ D&I Editor and was a CNBC reporter covering leadership strategy, corporate management, and equity issues prior. Ruth has held producer roles at both Rolling Stone and New York Daily News where she covered breaking news and politics. She’s a graduate of the University of Maryland and received a master’s degree from Columbia University's Journalism School. She was also one of ten awardees for MIT Sloan's 2018 Digital Leadership seminar. In 2021, she was named one of the top 15 journalists who hold companies accountable for diversity efforts.
With an extensive background in politics and public affairs, Jona Van Deun was formerly Vice President of Small Business Coalitions and Engagement for the US Chamber of Commerce before returning to her native Nebraska as President of the Nebraska Tech Collaborative (NTC).
The NTC is a business-led Aksarben Foundation workforce Initiative committed to convening leaders from government, education, and not-for-profit organizations across the state with the sole focus to develop, attract, and retain tech-talent and entrepreneurs to Nebraska.
Brian oversees the US Talent Inclusion practice at Publicis Media. He is responsible for the success of several inclusion programs & initiatives across the Publicis network. He has more than 15 years of experience in the media and marketing industries.
He is a founding member of Do the WeRQ, and sits on the Board for the American Association of Advertising Agencies Diversity & Inclusion Steering Committee; and T Howard Foundation. He is a recipient of the 2018 Leadership Excellence, and is a 2020 AEF Talent Champion.
Cornell Verdeja-Woodson is the Director of DEIB @ Headspace Health and the Founder/CEO of Brave Trainings, a boutique DEIB consulting firm. He has been working with organizations and their leaders on building and implementing DEIB strategy for over 10 years. Cornell lives in California with his husband and their two dogs, London and Rome.
Ambrosia is currently Chief People Officer at Ironclad, leading all functions of the people and workplace team. Previously, she was an early People executive at both Duo Security and Hootsuite, spending the past decade leading the hyper growth technology organizations to global scale and top employer recognition. Operating Partner at Operator Collective fund, Advisor at People Tech Partners, and Co-founder of the HR Open Source community, she is a frequent speaker on fostering progressive people and culture practices.
Ms. Wachsman is a Senior Advisor to Frazier Healthcare Partners, a $5 billion growth buyout private equity firm. Ms. Wachsman is the former Director of Strategy and Engagement for the Walt Disney Company, where she was responsible for a $2.4 billion annual health spend. At Disney, she led the implementation of innovative initiatives including the largest full risk direct contracting deal in the country. She served as the Chair of the Pacific Business Group on Health, the comprised of the largest US employers, and remains active as one of the founding members of the Employer Healthcare Innovation Roundtable a group of select employers that evaluate various venture capital portfolios. Ms. Wachsman also spent 15 years at two benefit consulting firms, including being Principal and leader of the West Region benefits practice of Arthur Andersen.
Michelle Wagner leads the team at Mindstrong towards their Mission to empower people who experience serious mental illness via advanced clinical care and access to unparalleled health tools. Mindstrong's platform connects members and providers quickly and with care, helping members engage in their care in a way that puts them in the driver seat. Using data and care together, the company strives to improve clinical outcomes for members through innovative, measurement based care and technology.
Michelle has more than 20 years of Operational and Leadership experience and a passion for improving mental healthcare.
Kellie Wagner is a speaker, diversity, equity, and inclusion practitioner, and founder of the industry-leading company Collective - A DEI Lab. Merging tech-driven principles like design thinking and agile strategy with a focus on building trust, navigating differences, and empowering marginalized communities, Kellie has led Collective in promoting inclusive workplace cultures and systems at innovative brands like Spotify, Peloton, and Food52. Kellie's thought-leading work on inclusive recruiting, intersectionality, and mental health has been featured in national publications like Forbes, New York Magazine, and GQ.
Suzy Walther is the Head of People at FalconX, a crypto prime brokerage giving the world’s
largest financial services institutions an edge as they navigate cryptocurrency investments.
Before joining FalconX, Suzy was the Chief People Officer at Carta, a company revolutionizing the way founders, investors, and employees manage equity and ownership.
Prior to joining Carta, Suzy was the Global Head of Talent for Bloomberg, L.P. During her 22
years with Bloomberg, Suzy navigated progressive roles in sales and product, ultimately leading and growing multi-million dollar businesses. Her extensive global operating experience gives her unique perspective in the development and execution of innovative talent strategies.
Noah has been managing people and teams in Canada and the US for over ten years. He is currently the Head of People at Guusto, an employee recognition and rewards platform that is reshaping the way companies recognize their teams. As Guusto’s Head of People, it is his primary focus to create and reimagine what a “People-first” company looks like. Through his work at Guusto, he is able to not only support his team but also advise Guusto clients on best practices for building a People-first culture. Previous to Guusto, Noah was COO/Cofounder of Battlesnake and Director of People Operations at Dyspatch.
Geoff Watson is a mission-driven leader with a passion for building businesses at the intersection of education and the future of work. Geoff is an SVP at Guild and previously led venture incubation at Entangled, where he helped launch 6 new edtech companies. Geoff was also a partner at Monitor 360, where he introduced a new analytics platform to blue-chip clients, including Gates Foundation, Starbucks, Microsoft, and Pfizer. Earlier in his career, Geoff was President of Intrax, an international education company serving over 50k students annually from 80+ countries. Geoff has an MBA from Wharton and B.A. from Dartmouth College.
Rob Watson is the Senior Vice President of Enterprise Partnerships at Spring Health. He oversees Enterprise Sales, Strategic Alliances, and Clinical Partnerships. In addition to his role at Spring Health, Rob serves as a board member at Gateway For Cancer Research. Gateway is underwritten by Cancer Treatment Centers of America and invests in next generation patient-centric research. Rob has spent the majority of his career in healthcare after spending several years in investment banking. Rob graduated from DePaul University and holds an MBA from Kellogg.
Alyson Watson is the founder and CEO of Modern Health. Modern Health empowers employers to lead the charge in acknowledging that mental health is just as important as physical health, destigmatizing coaching and therapy, and increasing accessibility of mental health services for all. Prior to starting Modern Health, Alyson held leadership roles including health industry strategy consulting at PwC, healthy behavior change management at Keas (acquired by Welltok), and partner point solution integrations at Collective Health. She graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a degree in global environmental change and sustainability. Alyson has been named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 and Fortune 40 Under 40 lists.
Matt is the co-founder and CEO at Origin where he is working to solve employees number one source of stress: money. Prior to Origin, Matt was a founder at Indio Technologies, a software platform for commercial insurance which was acquired by Applied Systems in 2019. Matt started his career in Citigroup's investment bank trading high yield credit in the power and mining industries. He is an alumnus of Johns Hopkins University.
Brandon is the Co-Founder and CEO at Nava, a modern benefits brokerage on a mission to provide high-quality, affordable access to healthcare to all Americans. Prior to Nava, he co-founded VTS, a company that transformed the commercial real estate marketplace, and is now used in over 50% of all office buildings in the United States. Outside of work, he enjoys getting into nature, and is passionate about backcountry skiing, mountaineering, and trail running.
Dr. Alexandria White has 16 years of experience delivering training around servant leadership, social justice, and equity. Dr. White consults with organizations on ways to create more diverse and inclusive workplaces, and has a podcast “Call In” providing lessons for leaders on navigating today’s cancel culture. She founded S.A.M.S. (Student Affairs MomS), the largest online community for mothers who work in the student affairs profession. She holds a BA from Indiana University, MA from Ball State University and a EdD from University of Mississippi. Dr. White is adjunct faculty in the School of Education at the University of Mississippi.
Ian White is the Founder and CEO/CTO of ChartHop. Previously, he was the Founder and CTO of Sailthru, the marketing cloud delivering billions of personalized newsletter emails per month for top publishers and e-commerce brands. Before that, Ian was the first head of engineering at Business Insider and built the publishing platform that powers today's highest-trafficked business website.
Through this, Ian felt the pains of planning and building a team -- and wanted to build something better than the spreadsheets and legacy HR systems he'd been struggling with. ChartHop was born to help organizations better plan with alignment and transparency.
Louis Willacy is a future-focused, strategic thinker with experience innovating and scaling consumer product and technology companies. He has 20+ years of leadership experience in operations, finance, HR and legal at venture-backed digital publishing, social media and blockchain companies and has helped launch new products and applications that have driven hundreds of millions of dollars in digital sales. Currently, Louis serves as the Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel of Tari Labs, developer of a blockchain protocol designed for the issuance and management of programmable non-fungible tokens (NFTs). In his role, Louis oversees global operations, finance, talent development, regulatory strategy and commercial transactions.
Ariglad (https://www.ariglad.com/) is the Future of Work company transforming the HR tech sector and building the world’s first AI/ML analytics HR dashboard that captures and organizes siloed communication between employees and HR. Ariglad focuses on producing predictive HR analytics and industry trends for HR Executives. Sophie Wyne, Ariglad’s Founder, is a cybersecurity veteran and past State Department staff member who worked on technical diplomatic relations projects in Copenhagen. Sophie and team of 4 is based across Vancouver and Ottawa in Canada.
Based in Palo Alto, Michael Yang is a Managing Partner with OMERS Ventures, a multi-stage trans-Atlantic venture firm. Michael has been an early investor and board director for employer and benefits-centric companies such as Accolade, Brightside, WithMe Health, PeerWell and Landed.
Erica started her teaching computer courses to people from low-income communities on how to use a computer. Since joining SHRM, Erica has held three roles. She started off building organizational products, then moved onto the founding SHRMLabs team, where she explored the intersection of work and technology. Now, Erica connects enterprise organizations with solutions that positively impact people and business.
Erica has a master’s degree in applied Industrial/Organizational Psychology, with a focus in instructional systems design. She earned her SHRM-SCP and consistently speaks on trends within the future of work and belonging, upskilling, and tech.
As the CEO of TECNA, Ms. Young is tasked with advocating on behalf of the technology industry as well as creating a platform for the members of TECNA to benchmark and share best practices. TECNA is comprised of more than 60 technology trade organizations from across the United States and Canada that collectively represent more than 22,000 technology related businesses.
Prior to joining TECNA, Ms. Young served as the Director of Policy and Public Affairs for Life Sciences PA, a statewide Pennsylvania association that advocates on behalf of the medical device, pharmaceutical and life sciences related industries. She also served nearly 12 years as the Director of Government Relations and Industry Networks for the Pittsburgh Technology Council.
Robin P. Zander is an entrepreneur, strategist and bestselling author. With 15 years of experience in everything from management consulting to the circus, he has devoted his life and career to working with individuals and companies to improve performance.
Robin is the founder and CEO of Zander Media, a creative shop that makes irresistible explainer videos. He is also the executive director of Responsive Conference, an annual industry event about the future of work.
Robin is the author of two books: “Responsive: What It Takes To Create A Thriving Organization” and “How To Do A Handstand,” a national bestseller in Japan.
Serena is Vice President of, People, Talent Acquisition, and Places at ThirdLove, which is a digital first lifestyle brand that creates elevated essentials to help all women become comfortable and confident. Prior to ThirdLove, Serena was CPO at RobustWealth, during which she led selling the company to PFG. At Zenefits, she founded its Customer Community Customer Advisory Board. What drives Serena is taking an antiquated function, human resources, and leveraging technology and psychology to help individuals develop into their best selves and enable teams to build something larger than themselves. Serena’s top VIA strength is awe, and her top 5 Gallup Strengths are: Achiever, Woo, Futuristic, Learner, Positive, and Futuristic. Before leading the People function, Serena attended law school, passed the bar and received a master’s in applied positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania.
