Julia is a trusted partner to Fortune 500 C-suite leaders focused on driving people strategies that promote performance excellence through innovative HR strategies, talent development, and inclusive workplace environments. She is known for seamlessly integrating business strategies with cultural transformations to build the high-performing workplaces of tomorrow.

She has been a key figure in building operations and cultures from the ground up along with revitalizing faltering business models by leveraging a dynamic and strategic approach to drive positive change and achieve sustainable success for the teams and organizations she serves.

Starting her career in consulting, Julia led global projects working as the second employee at a boutique start up as well as at Gartner and PwC Consulting before joining IBM Consulting. Julia’s consulting clients include The New York Times, Verizon, Marriott, and General Motors. She has deep experience with HR technology and has led global teams through growth, transformation, and new ways of working.

Her expertise centers on customer insight, relationship building, and delivering business results. She has led over 30 M&A deals, managing everything from due diligence to establishing the growth ramps and talent integration.

At Kyndryl, Julia was Chief Talent Officer for 88,000 employees across 63 countries, where she designed and delivered best in class programs. Her efforts contributed to Kyndryl’s recognition as one of Newsweek’s Top 100 Global Most Loved Workplaces for four consecutive years.

Currently, Julia is Vice President at IBM working in Software where she leads the HR integration for Confluent, IBM’s second largest acquisition for $11B in 2025. She is active in HR and business networks, supporting the future of work and AI-driven innovation. Julia lives near NYC with her family and is involved in philanthropy in support of education and healthcare.

Pascale Thomas is Managing Director and Head of Employee Benefits & Wellbeing at BNY, one of the world’s most influential financial institutions, trusted globally for safeguarding more than $47 trillion in assets under custody and administration. In this role, she leads enterprise-wide benefits and wellbeing strategy, shaping programs that support a high-performance culture across a global workforce and advancing BNY’s commitment to employee experience, resilience, and long-term wellbeing.

Pascale’s career spans more than 25 years across some of the world’s most iconic and industry-defining brands. She previously served as Vice President of Enterprise Employee Benefits & Wellbeing at The Walt Disney Company, where she led global benefits for 230,000 employees across 50+ countries. Her leadership drove major cultural transformation and award-winning innovations recognized by PLANSPONSOR, Pensions & Investments, and the Business Group on Health. Her earlier executive roles include senior benefits and total rewards leadership at Thermo Fisher Scientific, Newell Brands, Hearst Corporation, Becton Dickinson, Unilever, and Verizon.

Pascale is also a respected voice in national health policy and employer innovation. She currently serves on the Business Group on Health Board of Directors as the Chair of the Governance Committee and the Hyacinth Foundation Board of Trustees.

Scott Turner, a Partner at Mercer, is architecting the emerging blueprint of how work gets done in the Age of AI and how great companies will design their new employee value proposition to win. In an era of immense human consequence, he's delivering the "New Architecture of Work."

Unlike most AI commentators, Scott's vision is based on boots-on-the-ground experience leading engineers, product managers, and designers delivering rich AI experiences. Most recently as a technology leader at Disney, reporting directly into the Chief Digital Officer, he architected and delivered Agentic AI-powered systems to improve the guest experience for millions of daily users.

Scott's current obsession is solving the dual crisis facing executives today: how to make defensible people decisions at scale while deploying AI responsibly, and how to design employee value propositions that help humans truly thrive alongside intelligent systems—not despite them.

His approach bridges human strategy and agentic systems—designing the handshakes between what humans do, what AI does, and where they collaborate.

He believes the organizations that master this new architecture won't just survive the AI transformation—they'll define it.

Paul Tiesler is Senior Vice President of Talent Development at Moody's Corporation, where he leads global learning strategy and enterprise talent capabilities for 14,000 employees across 40+ countries. He specializes in AI-enabled workforce transformation, skills-based organizational design, and data-driven talent analytics. 

Most recently, Paul architected Moody's enterprise GenAI upskilling initiative, achieving 99% adoption across the global workforce and earning a Brandon Hall Excellence Award for learning innovation. He is currently leading the company's transition to Agentic AI enablement and building skills-based infrastructure including AI-powered career pathing and enterprise learning analytics.

Paul is a member of Harvard University's Learning Innovations Laboratory (LILA), an invitation-only consortium of CHROs and Chief Learning Officers exploring cutting-edge research in learning, leadership, and organizational development. He holds a BA in Drama and Economics from Hofstra University and is Lean Six Sigma Green Belt certified. Before entering corporate learning, Paul managed high-volume retail operations and performed professionally as an actor—experiences that inform his unique approach to executive presence, storytelling, and change leadership.

Stephanie is the Global Head of Benefits for Moelis & Company, a global independent investment bank headquartered in New York, NY. She has spent 12 years focused on cost-effective and strategically aligned employer-sponsored plans in the US, UK, APAC, and EMEA. She has served on the Board for multiple years as a Co-Chair of Education and Treasurer. Stephanie is focused on creating a value member proposition for chapter members and CEBS students.

Courtney Vinopal is a senior reporter for HR Brew covering total rewards and compliance. She regularly speaks with CHROs and chief people officers to better understand how executive teams view human capital in light of current economic trends. She's interested in how HR leaders make high-stakes decisions regarding compensation, restructuring, and benefits, and how those choices reflect the direction of corporate strategy.
 
Before joining HR Brew, Courtney contributed to a variety of print, broadcast, and digital outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, PBS NewsHour, and Quartz.

Cadie Thompson is an executive editor at Business Insider. She oversees the trending business desk, politics, and the legal affairs team. Previously, she was the deputy executive editor of business news, overseeing all tech, media, transportation, and retail coverage. She also led the emerging tech team at Tech Insider. 

Natalie is Paradigm’s Co-Founder and the Managing Director of the Strategy and Learning Teams. Paradigm’s Strategy Team helps forward-thinking companies assess, design, implement, and benchmark their talent and culture strategy through long-term partnerships. Her work with the Learning Team helps scale these strategies through live workshops and keynotes on topics spanning leadership, communication, talent management, and the future of work. Natalie also helps develop new products and services, including Paradigm’s AI-native talent and culture intelligence platform, Surface. Natalie has led engagements with dozens of companies across industries and across the world, and has partnered with executives at innovative companies including Airbnb, Box, Capital One, GE, IDEO, NerdWallet, Lyft, Amazon, American Express, Greenhouse, Paramount, and Stripe.

Before co-founding Paradigm, Natalie was a part of Google’s People Analytics team, developing and analyzing a wide range of talent and culture initiatives. During her time at Google, Natalie was one of the original facilitators of Google’s Unconscious Bias training, delivering hundreds of sessions across the United States and Europe. Natalie received an impact award for her meaningful work with Gayglers, Google’s LGBTQ+ employee resource group, where she organized an effort to bring Gayglers from around the world to celebrate Global Pride in India. 

Natalie holds a master's degree in Organizational Psychology from Columbia University’s Teachers College.

Sallyanne Oettinger is a Managing Consultant in HR & Talent Advisory at LHH, where she partners with senior leaders to shape the future of work through leadership, culture, and organizational transformation. She brings a unique blend of consulting and industry experience, helping organizations navigate complex change while building the capabilities needed to thrive in an evolving workplace.

Sallyanne has spent her career exploring how shifts in business, technology, and human expectations are redefining how we work—and what people need to succeed. She has advised Fortune 50 companies, high-growth organizations, and global NGOs on leadership alignment, talent strategy, and large-scale transformation, translating ambitious strategies into practical, people-centered solutions that drive real impact.

Her approach is both pragmatic and creative, grounded in the belief that meaningful change happens at the intersection of business performance and human experience. She is particularly passionate about helping leaders build cultures where people can do their best work, grow, and adapt in a rapidly changing world.

Vivek Ravisankar is the Co-founder and CEO of HackerRank. He has built a community of over 30 million developers who use the platform to hone their skills.

Vivek grew up in India, studied Computer Science at NIT Trichy, and worked at Amazon before starting HackerRank with his college classmate Hari Karunanidhi. Both were on interview panels, inundated with endless hours of resume reviews, phone screens, and onsite interviews. They watched unqualified candidates make it through while some of their most capable friends were passed over because of their GPA or lack of a prestigious degree. That broken system became the problem they set out to fix. HackerRank was the first India-based company accepted into Y Combinator and is now a global platform where every second, two candidates take a HackerRank assessment.

We are in a pivotal moment in tech. AI is redefining the developer role, and engineers today are becoming orchestrators of AI agents. Vivek and the HackerRank team are at the center of this shift, helping developers and the companies that hire them adapt in real time.

Learn from Vivek what HackerRank is seeing across thousands of companies and millions of developers, and what it means for hiring, upskilling, and building teams in the age of AI.

Nicole is the VP of B2B Partnerships of Rula Health, a behavioral healthcare provider group enabled by technology. Rula’s mission is to make mental healthcare work for everyone through improving access, equity, quality, and a modern consumer experience to over 120m members that Rula covers today. Nicole has a proven track record in developing new channel opportunities, managing key partnerships, and leading high-performing GTM teams, she's achieved outstanding results across B2B verticals, with a special focus in the HR, healthcare, and wellness industries, most recently at ClassPass, Preply, and Kaiser Permanente. Nicole lives in San Francisco with her husband and their cat, and enjoys traveling, skiing, hiking and sharing a great meal with friends.

Michele Moskowitz is Group Head of Talent at TP ICAP, a FTSE 250 global financial services firm operating across 20+ countries, where she has shaped and scaled the firm’s Talent function into a global capability underpinning its £70M enterprise transformation. She reports regularly to the Board on organizational health, employee engagement, and D&I, and has delivered a 15% lift in engagement scores alongside a 50% reduction in talent acquisition costs through end‑to‑end redesign of company values, recognition, learning & development, talent acquisition, and employee listening strategies.

Operating at the intersection of people strategy, technology, and business performance, Michele brings a rare dual lens to her work. Before moving into HR leadership, she spent more than a decade as a strategic partner and transformational change leader for C‑Suite executives at Liquidnet, and for consulting clients prior to that, giving her a grounded, operator’s view of how organizations actually function and scale. She is also an early champion of AI in HR, serving as executive sponsor for one of the firm’s first agentic AI solutions and leading the integration of AI into talent, learning, and employee experience design.

Michele is the creator and host of TP ICAP’s first internal podcast, Shift In Sight, which explores how individuals, leaders, and emerging technologies are reshaping the firm’s culture and future of work.

An executive coach and SHRM‑SCP, Michele is an engineer at heart who believes the best solutions are discovered through curiosity, experimentation, and continuous learning. She is driven by a simple conviction: there is always a better way and everyone has the potential to discover it and turn it into impact.

Bill Beegle is a Senior Global Business Solutions Architect at Degreed, where he partners with enterprise HR and L&D leaders to design AI-powered, skills-based learning ecosystems to solve real business challenges. Working hands on with customers, he uses generative AI developer tools to rapidly prototype solutions to their toughest learning problems. He advises clients on multi-agent architectures and the use of Model Context Protocol (MCP) to embed learning directly in the flow of work, turning every employee tool into a moment of growth. Internally, Bill is reshaping how solutions architecture is practiced at Degreed, leveraging AI to deliver significant efficiency gains. Previously, as an Associate Director at Verizon, he launched the company's enterprise Learning Experience Platform and helped architect its emerging AI learning strategy.

Owen O’Neill is a strategic leader in HR technology and operations with over 20 years of experience supporting global organizations to optimize the employee lifecycle and drive meaningful business change. He has a proven track record of leading high-performing teams and delivering large-scale transformation initiatives across more than 20 countries.

Known for his ability to bring clarity to complex challenges, Owen partners with diverse stakeholders to challenge conventional thinking and unlock new possibilities. His hands-on, pragmatic approach enables organizations to navigate ambiguity and implement sustainable change.

Outside of his professional work, Owen has a keen interest in rugby and current affairs, and enjoys hiking in the countryside with his dog, Alfie.

Naomi Dishington is the Director of consulting at Workhuman. Naomi is a seasoned leader who heads a team of Strategic Advisors, offering consultative services to global organizations seeking to cultivate high-trust, high-performing, and resilient cultures. Specializing in the design, implementation, and adoption of engagement programs, she helps businesses achieve measurable ROI across key metrics. Naomi is a strong advocate for leaders who aim to shape their organizational culture through recognition, growth, and authentic human connections, providing them with the tools and insights to build sustainable, thriving workplaces. Naomi received her MEd, as well as her BA in english language and literature from Framingham State University.

Serina Pak currently serves as the Senior Vice President of Talent and Total Rewards at Danone U.S.. With over 28 years of experience in Human Resources across various industries, Serina began her career at Viacom Radio and Viacom Interactive Media. She later joined iVillage.com during its start-up phase and played a strategic role in launching iVillage’s Initial Public Offering. After a six-year hiatus to raise her three children, Serina joined Danone North America in 2008 as an HR consultant and subsequently transitioned to a full-time role, marking the beginning of her 15+ years with the company. She initially served as a People and Organizational Development Manager before being promoted to Vice President of Human Resources for Danone Waters of America. Following this role, she became the Senior Vice President of Human Resources for Supply Chain and Research and Innovation at Danone North America.

Serina holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Dickinson College and a Master of Arts in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from the University of New Haven. She resides in Thornwood, NY, with her husband and their three grown children, aged 27, 25, and 22. They are also proud parents of a seven-year-old Shichon dog. Serina and her husband enjoy traveling and hosting family and friends at their home.

Ben Howard is the Co-Founder of Sheer Health and a veteran of healthcare and technology, having spent years at Google Cloud leading healthcare and life sciences partnerships, as GM at Tempus Labs, and most recently as Head of Health Plan Partnerships at Google's Fitbit Health Solutions. That career gave him an unusually clear view of where the health system consistently fails — not in coverage, but in the gap between what employers provide and what employees can actually navigate. 

In 2023, he co-founded Sheer Health with Jeff Witten and Dan Horbatt to close that gap, building a benefits navigation and claims advocacy platform that handles the insurance work employees and benefits teams shouldn't have to do themselves. Sheer Health has since supported 35,000+ lives, recovered $18M+ in reimbursements, and saved members 95,000+ hours of insurance-related burden — and was recently featured on CBS News Sunday Morning in April 2026 for its work fighting claim denials on behalf of patients.

Kinsay Conner, originally from Florida, has been a Doctor of Physical Therapy for more than 15 years, with experience spanning patients of all ages and a wide variety of clinical settings. Throughout her career, she has worked in skilled nursing, hospice care, and outpatient rehabilitation, including serving as a Clinic Director for outpatient companies in both Virginia and Florida.
Kinsay also spent five years working at the U.S. Pentagon, supporting and caring for our military service members. In addition to her clinical work, she serves as an adjunct faculty member for Clarkson College, where she teaches both undergraduate and master’s-level students. For the past 3.5 years, Kinsay has been with Sword Health, where she works closely with members each day while also serving as a Clinical Specialist. Outside of work, Kinsay enjoys traveling, cooking, attending F45 workouts, and spending quality time with friends and family.

Tania Rahman is the Social Media Director at Fast Company, where she oversees social strategy while supporting cross-functional team needs. She has a decade of social marketing experience spanning B2B, advertising, and editorial industries, and previously led social at Yext and IBM Watson. In addition, she serves as the Director of Communications on the executive board at the South Asian Journalists Association, helping create a platform and community for current and aspiring journalists in the South Asian diaspora. 

Stephan is the James P. Gorman Professor of Business Strategy at Columbia Business School and leads the Humans in the Digital Economy Lab as part of the school's AI in Business Initiative.

He grew up in Switzerland, a country where many cultures interact, and has been fascinated by how people interact with each other since he was young. This interest led him to pursue an MA in history, economics, and political science at the University of Zurich, followed by a doctorate in economics at the same institution. Since his work as a PhD student, he has studied how both motivation beyond income maximization and limited rationality affect decision-making and impact organizations. 

Since 2008, Stephan has taught and conducted research at Columbia Business School. He teaches about the “human side” of strategy in the MBA and executive education programs. As coordinator of the core strategy course, he has helped shape how MBA students learn about strategy formulation. In addition, he has designed and taught a number of electives focused on global business, the future of work, and consulting. He was honored with an award for Excellence in the Classroom.

Stephan lives with his family in Manhattan and has ample opportunities to observe human behavior on a daily basis in the Big Apple. In his free time, he enjoys traveling to as many places as possible, attending all types of art events, sailing, playing the drums (not good but loud!), and spending time with his family.

Amy Liedke is Executive Vice President of Human Resources for LexisNexis Legal & Professional. In this role, she is responsible for leading the HR function in the delivery of best-in-class strategies to advance and accelerate the goals of the organization. She is a member of the RELX HR Leadership Team where she collaborates to advance HR transformation across the enterprise.

Ms. Liedke brings more than 25 years of global HR leadership experience to LexisNexis. Most recently she served as Vice President, Human Resources at Raytheon Technologies and just prior led Global Talent Development for United Technologies Corporation and its 200,000 employees. Here she was responsible for strengthening organizational capability through innovative learning, leadership development and engagement strategies and drove large-scale transformation of performance practices for the company. Amy spent her early HR career at CIGNA.

Amy received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Acting and a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from The University of Connecticut. She attended the Executive Leadership Development program at Darden School of Business, University of Virginia, the Global Leadership Development Program at INSEAD (France) and is a certified administrator and trainer of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).

Amy lives in Connecticut with her husband, 2 children and 4 dogs.

Alicia Archer is a Master Trainer at STRETCHIT. With over a decade of teaching experience, Alicia Archer thoughtfully guides users through comprehensive stretching, mobility, and flexibility sequences, in order to unlock their movement potential. Alicia is Group Fitness Certified by AFAA (The Athletics and Fitness Association of America) and a Certified FRC® (Functional Range Conditioning) Mobility Specialist by Functional Anatomy Seminars. Her qualifications also include a BFA in Dance from Fordham University/The Ailey School.

Dr. Angela Lindberg is a Business Psychologist, HR practitioner, and the Principal Account Executive leading global partnerships to build mentally healthy workplaces at Unmind. Drawing on an extensive background in Industrial-Organizational psychology and enterprise SaaS partnerships, she helps leadership teams navigate modern workforce challenges by embedding therapy and clinical-grade mental health solutions into the corporate fabric. A frequent industry speaker and passionate advocate for sustainable workplace environments, Angela specializes in translating behavioral research into actionable corporate strategies that unlock both human potential and organizational performance.

Dr Max Major is the Principal Clinical Psychologist specialising in AI at Unmind, where he leads the clinical AI function – overseeing governance, safety architecture, and evidence strategy across the company's AI portfolio, with Nova, Unmind's AI wellbeing coach, at its core. He sets the clinical direction for how Unmind develops, evaluates, and governs AI at scale, and shapes the company's broader approach to responsible AI in mental health. With over a decade of experience across the New Zealand health system and the NHS, Max works at the intersection of evidence-based psychology, ethical AI, and digital scale. His focus: ensuring AI serves as a safe, effective bridge that connects people to the right level of care – without compromising clinical rigour or the irreplaceable value of human connection. Max is a frequent contributor to industry discourse on responsible AI, advocating for systems that prioritise safety, therapeutic alliance, and transparent governance over engagement at all costs.

Cesar Salas is a senior global Human Resources executive recognized for leading large-scale HR transformations and building high-performing organizations across the Americas, Europe, and Asia. With extensive experience in Fortune 100 companies across information technology, life sciences, logistics, and consumer sectors, he brings deep expertise in HR transformation, global operating models, HRIS platforms, and the strategic application of AI in HR.

Currently, Cesar serves as Vice President and Head of HR Operations for the Americas at EXL Holdings, Inc., where he leads regional HR strategy and delivery, driving operational excellence and digital innovation across the employee lifecycle. Throughout his career, he has held senior executive HR roles at globally recognized organizations including Fast Retailing, A.P. Moller–Maersk, Philips, Johnson & Johnson, Philip Morris, Kraft, and Abbott Laboratories. He began his career with IBM in Peru, working at the intersection of Human Resources and Information Technology—an experience that continues to inform his leadership in HR digitalization and transformation.

Cesar is a doctoral candidate in Business Administration through Maastricht School of Management (MSM) in the Netherlands and CENTRUM in Lima, Peru. He holds an MBA from Universidad ESAN and a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering from Universidad de Lima. He is also a certified Senior Certified Professional (SHRM-SCP), reflecting his commitment to advancing the HR profession.

Based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Cesar is an active voice in the global HR community, with a passion for shaping the future of work through technology, data-driven decision-making, and inclusive talent strategies. Outside of his professional work, he enjoys photography, the arts, yoga, and international travel.

Siobhan is a New York-based Strategic Account Executive at CareBenefits, the enterprise division of Care.com. CareBenefits partners with leading employers, including many Fortune 100s, to deliver family care benefits that help employees navigate caregiving across every stage of life.

With more than 12 years of experience supporting HR and benefits leaders, Siobhan helps organizations evaluate and implement workforce solutions that strengthen employee well-being, productivity, and retention. Her work is deeply purposeful: as the proud mother of a 3-year-old daughter and a caregiver for her aging parents, she understands firsthand the challenges many working families face. This perspective fuels her passion for helping employers build more resilient, supported workforces.

As SVP of Content Strategy at Method Communications, Lydia takes a journalistic approach to working with executives across a range of technology companies to define and execute multi-channel content strategies focused on storytelling and thought leadership. Prior to joining Method, Lydia was a senior editor at Fast Company, where they were responsible for sourcing and editing industry experts in the publication's contributor network across multiple verticals. As a reporter, Lydia has written for CBS MoneyWatch, Entrepreneur, Fortune, The Guardian, Popular Science, and The New York Times, among other publications.

Jessi Hempel is the host of the award-winning podcast Hello Monday, and a senior editor-at-large at LinkedIn. For nearly two decades, she has been writing and editing features and cover stories for magazines including Wired, Fortune, and TIME about work, life, and meaning in the contemporary age. She has appeared on CNN, PBS, MSNBC, Fox, and CNBC, addressing the culture and business of technology. Hempel is a graduate of Brown University and received a master’s in journalism from UC Berkeley. She lives in Brooklyn with her wife and children.

- Over 18 years of experience in employee benefits
- Advising groups with 50 to 5,000 employees
- Based in Seattle, WA

Approach
Julie’s consulting approach begins with a thorough evaluation of each organization’s workforce, culture, and unique challenges. She leverages data to uncover trends, identify opportunities, and inform strategic recommendations. From there, she crafts a customized strategy aligned with the organization’s goals. Her clients typically include a mix of fully insured and self-funded organizations, often operating across multiple states and locations, with a strong emphasis on long-term strategic planning.

Achievements
- Selected as one of Employee Benefit Advisor’s 2016 Most Influential Women in Benefit Advising
- Certificate in Employee Benefits from the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans
- MBA in Project Management from Capella University
- BA in Theatre Arts from California State University, Long Beach

Responsibilities
- Guide you during plan design and vendor/carrier selection
- Educate you about market conditions and products
- Oversee the process of marketing benefits
- Analyze marketing results to present you with only the best plan options
- Negotiate your contracts and renewals with carriers
- Prepare in-depth financial analyses and expense management strategies
- Prepare and present quarterly or semi-annual updates
- Meet with you regarding specific service guidelines (e.g. Objective Setting Meetings, etc.)
- Ensure your satisfaction by mentoring your service team and overseeing your deliverables from other Alliant departments

Austin is Marketing Director at Corporate Traditions, helping HR teams turn recognition into something employees actually look forward to. He works closely with clients to build gifting programs around Gift Card+, GiftYouPick, and Grocery Vouchers — no fees, no contracts, no guesswork. 

Alex is a highly experienced employee engagement consultant, trainer, and speaker. For over 25 years she has helped HR and business leaders implement strategies that drive true culture change.  Her wealth of knowledge comes from coaching and training thousands of managers from a wide range of industries across the globe. Alex focuses on providing organizations with proven practices that drive results for varied leadership styles and the multiple generations in the modern workforce. Her presentation will leave you motivated and better equipped to lead your organization on a path to a more engaged workforce, making the world a better place to work.