Chicago Live 2026: People & HR

Jaclyn Trovato was recently appointed to Exelon’s newly created role of VP, Employee Experience and Analytics. In this role, she will continue to report to the SVP and Chief HR Officer.

In her new role, Trovato will be responsible for defining and executing Exelon's employee experience, workforce analytics and HR technology strategy, leveraging data, AI, automation and innovative workforce solutions to transform how employees experience our organization and, ultimately, how we realize a more technologically enabled high-performance culture. Previously, Jaclyn held the position of ComEd’s VP, HR Operations, since 2021, reporting to the CEO of ComEd as well as the Chief Human Resources Officer of Exelon. In that role she helped to plan the HR strategy for over 6,000 employees as a member of the senior leadership team. Prior to that, Jaclyn served as Director of HR Operations for ComEd for three years where she was responsible for staffing, employee and labor relations, occupational health and safety and day-to-day HR operations as well as strategic HR priorities such as the ongoing HR transformation initiatives.

She previously served as Chief of Staff to Joe Nigro, Exelon’s previous Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. In this role, she was responsible for leading the Finance culture plan, served on the Finance transformation team, worked to help consolidate information amongst Exelon’s operating companies and acted as a liaison with external banks and creditors. Prior to that role, Jaclyn served BSC HR as the HR Manager for Finance and the Corporate strategic functions. Jaclyn joined the company in 2015.

Jaclyn is a member of the Board of Trustees at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, Chicago. In addition, she also served on the HeForShe steering committee creating strategies both internally and externally for increasing the representation of women in corporate leadership roles and providing resources for elementary and high school girls to begin learning about careers in STEM.

Jaclyn graduated from the University of Minnesota’s College of Liberal Arts with a degree in History.

Krista Fischer is Managing Director of Human Resources at United Airlines⁠, where she leads HR strategy for corporate functions, partnering with executive leaders to drive talent, organizational effectiveness, and workforce transformation. With more than 20 years of HR leadership experience, Krista is passionate about developing leaders, building skills-based organizations, and helping businesses navigate change in a rapidly evolving workplace. More recently, she has developed a strong passion for exploring how AI is reshaping the future of work, leadership, and talent. Outside of work, Krista enjoys spending time with her family and celebrating life’s special moments together.

Camryn supports the sales function at Leaderology by fostering relationships and delivering excellence to clients and strategic partners. Driven by a genuine curiosity for what motivates people, she values meaningful connection and enjoys supporting others as they uncover and develop their unique strengths. Before joining Leaderology, Camryn worked in Talent Acquisition at a staffing agency in San Francisco where she partnered with clients across industries to support their hiring needs. She earned her B.S. in Business Administration with a concentration in Human Resources and Management from California Polytechnic State University. While at Cal Poly, she served as Vice President of New Member Operations for the Human Resources Management Association, where she led the freshman mentorship program. She also interned with Leaderology during her college career and contributed to both the sales and operations functions. Outside of work, Camryn enjoys running by the coast, snowboarding, and discovering new restaurants and coffee shops. Feel free to reach out and say hello!

Michele joined family-owned IDEAL Industries, Inc. as CHRO in August 2022. IDEAL Industries, Inc. is a global, growing multi-national corporation that has made its mark for over a century by developing practical technology demanded by critical industries like data communications, aerospace, electrical, wire processing, construction and more. The IDEAL family of brands provide safe and reliable tools and value-added solutions for managing power, connectivity and electrical distribution.

Michele was the CHRO at Wells Enterprises Inc, a 100+ year privately held and family-owned manufacturer of ice cream and frozen treats. She formerly held HR leadership positions with ITW, Brunswick Corporation and IMC Global Inc.

Michele holds a degree in public relations from Bradley University in Peoria, Ill., and her master’s degree in industrial relations from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 

Kristy Callahan is the Head of Learning & Development at GE Healthcare. She is passionate about eevating individuals and teams by leaning into strengths to excel beyond expectations in the healthcare industry.

Omar is a seasoned HR consultant with over 20 years of experience helping forward-thinking organizations redefine the future of work. Since joining Workhuman in 2019, he has served clients as an educator, advocate, and trusted advisor, driving impactful people strategies. Omar began his career in the U.S. Air Force as a combat pilot and training operations director, leading and developing high-performing teams. He later expanded his expertise through consulting roles at Deloitte, Appirio, and the NeuroLeadership Institute. Omar holds a Bachelor of Science from the U.S. Air Force Academy, a Master of Human Relations from the University of Oklahoma, an MBA from California Polytechnic State University, and a Juris Doctor from St. Thomas University School of Law.

Jody Robie is Senior Vice President, North America, at Talent Works International, a global talent consulting and recruitment outsourcing firm. During her 12-year tenure, she has partnered with organizations to transform talent acquisition through employer branding, workforce strategy, Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO), executive search, and contingent workforce solutions. Prior to joining TW, Jody worked as the US Head of Employer Branding for Alexander Mann Solutions and a Vice President of Business Development and Strategy for Buyer Advertising in Boston.

A former broadcast journalist and media executive, Jody brings more than 20 years of experience helping organizations rethink how they attract, engage, and retain talent. She serves as Vice Chair of The Women's Edge, a non-profit dedicated to the advancement of women and is a frequent speaker on the future of work. In 2022, she was recognized nationally by the Stevie® Awards as a Bronze Winner for Maverick of the Year.

Jody is a long-term Bostonian who graduated from Boston University and Harvard University’s Certificate of Business Program. She lives in Natick, MA with her husband Michael and two daughters.

Michelle Relerford is the Weekday Morning Co-Anchor for NBC 5 News Today.

Pat Garland’s HR career spans 40 years, in roles that ranged from individual contributor to VP for a very large global division of a $16 billion corporation. Her expertise includes compensation and benefits design, organization development, labor relations and executive coaching. She is the author of “33 Ways Not to Screw Up HR” and is an adjunct instructor at the Quinlan School of Business at Loyola University of Chicago.

Katie Fairbank leads product marketing at CodeSignal, where she helps bring innovative hiring and learning solutions to life. With over a decade of experience in HR tech, including leadership roles at Cornerstone OnDemand, Katie has built positioning, go-to-market strategies, and messaging that truly connect with customers.

Kathi Moore is a seasoned Human Resources executive with extensive experience advising C-suite leaders on global HR strategy, talent management, and compensation and rewards. She has successfully led enterprise-wide HR initiatives and managed budgets exceeding $20 million across Fortune 500 companies in the technology, telecommunications, and fast-food industries. Kathi is recognized for aligning people strategies with business objectives to drive organizational growth and leadership excellence.

Katie Stangel is a Vice President of Learning & Development at The Aspen Group, where she helps organizations transform learning into a strategic driver of business performance.

With a career spanning healthcare and retail environments, Katie has built and led teams focused on leadership development, role-based capability strategies, and scalable learning ecosystems that improve retention, accelerate readiness, and strengthen frontline execution.

In her current role, Katie partners with senior leaders to align workforce capability with business priorities across more than 1,300 healthcare locations. She is passionate about helping organizations move beyond traditional training models and build integrated learning systems that connect leadership, culture, frontline performance, and data-driven insights.

Katie’s work sits at the intersection of scalable learning ecosystems, sales and clinical capability, and measurable performance impact—helping organizations create learning strategies that drive meaningful business results.

Kase Konkright learned what work means from his grandparents. She was a school cook. He was a janitor. Their work was essential, mostly unseen, and woven into their community, and they raised him to believe that work is contribution, that integrity beats recognition, and that success carries a responsibility beyond yourself. He carried that into a 25+ year career inside some of the world’s most demanding companies, sitting in the seats where hiring decisions couldn’t be undone. Global giants and family-run businesses, different scale, different complexity, the same human stakes. And across all of it, one pattern held: the hires that changed everything were never won by volume, process, or optics. They were won by judgment. Listening carefully. Asking better questions. Understanding the work beneath the title. He also watched what the recruiting industry did with those stakes: extractive fees, rushed searches, systems built to bill rather than to help. So he built the firm he kept wishing existed. Signal & Strand is that conviction with a business model around it: founder-led, relationship-first, priced honestly, and built to give a large portion of its profits back to the community, because his grandparents would have expected nothing less. The work lights him up as much as ever. Lately that's meant building and rebuilding C-suite teams for companies shifting to people-driven leadership models, then watching that shift show up where it counts, in revenue and margins. It's meant guiding clients through the AI and RPA struggles, where the hard question isn't which tools to buy, it's which leaders can carry people through the change. And it's meant pro-bono searches for non-profits that can't afford to get a hire wrong, the work he'd happily do all day. Outside of work, he’s kept honest by two dogs, Braxton and Tootsie, who enforce the daily disciplines of loyalty, presence, and care.

Courtni Hughes-Bochenek is Senior Vice President and Head of People & Culture at Zeller Realty Group, where she leads enterprise people strategy spanning leadership development, organizational effectiveness, talent, employee experience, total rewards, and culture.

With more than 16 years in People & Culture, Courtni has built her career around a simple belief: better leaders build better workplaces, and better workplaces can change lives. She partners with executives to build stronger leaders, create scalable people systems, and navigate the increasingly complex realities of modern work with both accountability and humanity.

Beyond her work at Zeller, Courtni hosts Worth The Work, a podcast featuring honest conversations about engagement, culture, leadership, and modern work. She is also a member of the Forbes Human Resources Council, TroopHR, and The People Collective, and serves as an advisor with CareerSpring.

Courtni is especially passionate about leadership development, organizational strategy, and the evolving role of People leaders in shaping workplaces where both people and businesses can thrive.

Stefan Holt is an award-winning anchor of the NBC 5 News every weeknight at 5, 6 and 10 p.m.  He anchors with Allison Rosati. Holt rejoins the NBC 5 news team after spending more than four  years working for WNBC-TV in New York. Prior to that, he was in Chicago for nearly five  years, where he anchored the NBC 5 News Today with Zoraida Sambolin.  

Stefan is the recipient of several Chicago and New York Emmy Awards. In 2022 he received an  Emmy Award for a series of reports called “Flying Under the Radar”, that explored the barriers  faced by many airline pilots when they try to seek mental health treatment.  

Stefan was recognized with a national Edward R. Murrow Award as part of team coverage during  the deadly 2019 police standoff in Jersey City, New Jersey.  

He was one of the first U.S. journalists to report live from Havana following the death of former  Cuban President Fidel Castro.  

Stefan’s career in local news began in West Palm Beach, Florida, where he served as a weekend  anchor and reporter for WPBF-TV.  

Holt was born in Chicago and spent his childhood growing up in Lincoln Park.  

An avid aviation enthusiast, he is an instrument-rated pilot and frequently reports on the airline  industry and transportation safety.  

Stefan graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in broadcast telecommunications and  a B.A. in political science from Pepperdine University in Malibu, California.  

That is where he met his wife, Morgan, while both were attending the university. They are now  parents to three boys. 

Abby Fordham is an enterprise talent and learning executive who believes the employee experience is built in the everyday moments that shape how people feel, grow, and perform at work.

She partners with CHROs, HR leaders, and business executives to design and integrate talent, performance, learning, and leadership strategies across complex, manufacturing-led organizations. Throughout her career, Abby has led large-scale transformation and integration efforts, unified talent and performance frameworks, and built learning ecosystems that strengthen growth, accountability, engagement, and leadership at every level.

Abby is particularly passionate about the moments that matter most—from onboarding and development to performance conversations, leadership transitions, and organizational change. Her approach combines strategic rigor with empathy, translating enterprise priorities into human-centered experiences that leaders and employees can actually put into practice.

At the heart of Abby’s work is a simple belief: people want to feel heard, not managed. She brings authenticity, accountability, and a relentless focus on creating workplaces where people feel seen, supported, and capable of doing their best work.

Austin Mace is a creative technology and transformation leader working at the intersection of brand, product, and emerging technology.

Over the past decade, he has taken ideas from zero to one and guided them through growth—co-founding a creative technology studio that partnered with brands including Coca-Cola, Amazon, and Google; leading programs spanning storytelling, marketing, and emerging platforms; and building the operational structures that help innovation stick.

His work has earned recognition including Forbes 30 Under 30 and an Emmy nomination, with industry coverage from Ad Age and Fast Company.

Today, Austin explores how AI and emerging technologies can transform the way people work, create content, shape culture, and operate businesses. His focus is practical: turning new technologies into strategies that accelerate growth, align teams, and unlock creative possibilities.

At the core of his work is a simple belief: innovation only matters when it creates real outcomes for people.

Hal Lanier is a seasoned leader in client impact and enablement, with over two decades of experience guiding organizations to use technology for meaningful, lasting change. At Everway, Hal partners with companies to deploy assistive technology that supports neurodiverse employees and advances digital accessibility without requiring disclosure or red tape.   His work has helped thousands gain confidence, overcome cognitive barriers, and unlock their potential demonstrating that with the right support, every mind can thrive.

Dr. Peter A. James is the President and CEO of HCG Strategic Partners, where he leads a team whose mission is to partner with organizations in order to build stronger and more resilient cultures from the inside out; HCG accomplishes this through executive coaching, leadership development, and transformational change initiatives.

His path to this work is anything but ordinary. He's led soldiers as a U.S. Army officer, driven growth inside a Fortune 100 corporation, shaped the next generation of business leaders as a tenured professor, and launched entrepreneurial ventures of his own. That breadth of experience is exactly what he brings to the leaders he serves today.

Dr. James holds a PhD in Organization & Management, an MBA, and a PCC credential as an executive coach. In addition, he is a certified DiSC and Emotional Intelligence assessor. But what truly drives him is his deep commitment to helping leaders navigate the messy, unpredictable realities of leading people and organizations through today's most complex challenges.

Todd has been both an ART client and advocate for well over a decade. He has, as a result, helped an incredible number of people Feel Better Faster, by bringing the ART on-site wellness program to facilities across the US. With his experience as a Regional EHS Manager for multiple fortune 250 companies, and his OSHA 10 and 30 hour certifications, Todd is uniquely qualified to discuss the benefits of the ARTCS business. A family man at heart, he enjoys spending time with his wife, daughter, and son.

Dr. Stuart Yoss has been practicing since 1995. Dr. Yoss completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Pittsburgh, earning his B.S. in Behavioral Neuroscience in 1992. He went on to receive his Doctor of Chiropractic at Palmer College of Chiropractic and has since earned numerous rehabilitative and sports injury related certifications, as well as dry needling. Dr. Yoss is also a certified ART instructor, teaching and training other practitioners. In addition to treating professional athletes from across the country, Dr. Yoss is currently the official team chiropractor for the Chicago Blackhawks, Chicago Bears and Bulls.

Kim Quillen is a business editor at the Chicago Tribune. Earlier in her career, Kim held editing positions at The Arizona Republic and at The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune, where she was involved in that newspaper's Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of Hurricane Katrina. Kim is past president of the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing, a national business journalism organization.

Jen has been with ART for 3 years and has 19 years of experience in both the Marketing and Advertising space. She began her career early on the brand side, working within the restaurant and retail verticals. Since then, she has spent a lot of her career in the digital marketing, ad tech, and in the agency space. She’s a huge music lover and attends as many live concerts as she can, and also enjoys being active and outdoors, with a particular passion for snowboarding and running.

Brian McGarry is a veteran sales leader with 17+ years of experience scaling revenue teams across SaaS, HR tech, and high-growth startups. Perhaps most importantly, he's been a hiring manager for more than 15 of those years building championship teams. He currently serves as Area Manager, North America at Teamtailor and previously led global sales as VP of Sales at Spark Hire. Brian is known for building high-performing teams, driving consistent growth, and guiding organizations through critical stages of expansion.

Nicole Rogers is the Chief Operating Officer at whiskerDocs, where she oversees business strategy, sales, account management, program implementation, and operational P&L management. Before joining whiskerDocs in 2015, she managed two veterinary practices in Philadelphia and co-developed a cat care website with over 250,000 monthly visitors. Her extensive veterinary experience spans work as a technician in shelters, animal hospitals, and wildlife rehabilitation.

Ben Robins is Vice President of Client Success at Corporate Traditions, where he helps HR Leaders build meaningful employee gifting and recognition programs. He has partnered with thousands of HR leaders, focusing on practical, scalable employee recognition solutions.

Bojan Balaban is a global Total Rewards and HR executive who specializes in building compensation, equity, and people infrastructure for fast-scaling and PE-backed organizations.

Over his career, Bojan has led Total Rewards through both hypergrowth and significant business downturns, giving him a practical perspective on designing people systems that can withstand changing business conditions. He built a global Total Rewards function from the ground up in four months, supported a 200% growth trajectory, and later led the same organization through an industry downturn and two company-wide reductions in force.

His work has delivered measurable business impact, including more than $20 million in cost efficiencies and a 13% increase in employee engagement, $10 million in annual savings for three consecutive years after centralizing Total Rewards across 17 markets, and a redesign of compensation and rewards that extended organizational runway from 2.3 to 5.1 years in a single quarter.

At Netflix, Bojan led a $500 million equity program that grew to a record 60% employee participation rate.

Today, Bojan works with CEOs, CHROs, and boards to build and rebuild Total Rewards, equity compensation, and global HR operations that can perform under real-world pressure and at significant scale.