Lydia Dishman is Fast Company’s senior editor for growth and engagement. She has also written for CBS Moneywatch, Fortune, The Guardian, Popular Science, and the New York Times, among others.

Sheila Jagannathan is Lead Learning Specialist and Program Manager of the Open Learning Campus, OLC, which is part of the Development Economics Knowledge Management practice of the World Bank.  She serves as the organization’s focal point on digital learning and issues at the intersection of technology use and education in emerging countries.   She is an innovative and strategic educational leader with over 30 years experience in designing and managing distance learning programs/knowledge products and transforming the use of online and classroom pedagogies and technology. Sheila also provides policy advice and technical assistance to World Bank country-level capacity building programs (both government and training institutes seeking to introduce technologies in their educational systems)  in, East Asia, China, the Middle East and North Africa, Africa and South Asia

Her current areas of interest and activity include:  Disruptive technologies for learning, the changing nature of work and continuous learning, AI enriched learning environments, adaptive and personalized learning, chatbots, MOOCs, experiential pedagogy, online/hybrid strategies, development of rich multimodal and social learning environments, big data and learning analytics, LMS and learning ecosystems. She serves on the advisory board and planning committees of several professional associations such as e-Learning Africa, the International Conference on e-Learning (ICEL) and the Association of Advancement of Computer Education (AACE). She holds a Masters and Certificate of Advanced Graduate Studies from Boston University in Education Media and Technology and Artificial Intelligence-based systems for learning respectively.

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the BBC, The Washington Post, Quartz at Work, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.

Kristen Duffey is the Head of IT People Operations at National Instruments.

Working in the field of Human Resources for over 20 years, Michelle has held various positions leading different functional areas within Human Resources. In addition, Michelle has experience working in different industries such as supply chain, automotive and energy. Currently, Michelle is Vice President, People & Culture for Vestas.  

Vestas designs, manufactures, installs and operates wind turbines that produce clean energy. She is in Portland, Oregon, the regional headquarters for the U.S. and Canada. There are approximately 5,000 employees in the region and 24,000 employees globally.

Lorrissa Horton is the SVP/GM and Chief Product Officer, Collaboration, at Webex by Cisco Systems. 

Mary Burke is the SVP, Head of HR at Experian.

Sadie is the Vice President of Innovation and Deployment of People Systems and Digital Experience & Intelligence at Hewlett Packard Enterprises (HPE) where she is responsible to deliver exceptional people
experiences through our people Systems, as well as enable intuitive digital services through process improvement, robotics and document automation, and the use of artificial intelligence. Prior to joining HPE, she worked for Dow Inc for several years serving in Senior Leadership roles across HR, Digital Manufacturing, and Information Systems. Sadie also worked with The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company in Business Intelligence and Analytics and as a programmer for CSC. She is active in the communities where she has lived and is a philanthropist, especially for causes related to education, STEM, women, and equity. Sadie holds a master’s in mathematics from the University of Arizona and a Bachelors in Secondary Education. She is married and has 3 lovely children. She loves God, her family, tennis, and music.

Andrea is an experienced leader specializing in global mergers, acquisitions and divestitures, strategy, organization effectiveness, leadership, coaching and human resources. Her leadership experience centers around partnering with senior executives and general managers to tackle business challenges. She has developed and implemented talent and leadership solutions to improve employee performance and maximize
business results. She has a proven ability to coach leaders to create environments fostering strategic business growth and change. Her comprehensive knowledge of industry leading people practices includes organization design, succession planning, employee relations, program management, workforce planning, global HR, employee development, recruiting, transformation and diversity.

As the head of HR for the Genesys product development and management organizations, Andrea leads a global
team of HR partners in a time of significant growth and transformation. The Genesys team delivers experience as a service by orchestrating personalized end to end customer experiences while accelerating their client’s cloud and machine learning adoption. Andrea previously served in HR leadership roles at IBM, British Nuclear Fuels and Tenera. She has a dynamic HR leadership background in HR strategy, acquisitions, leadership development and change management. Andrea is based outside of Denver, Colorado with her husband and 2 children. They are joined by Rocky, Jack (dogs) and Moonshadow (cat) when listening to music and enjoying the beautiful Rocky Mountains.

Casey has been committed to improving the world of work for more than a decade. In 2010, he founded a tech recruiting firm with the lofty ambition of fixing recruitment on a global scale. Over the next few years that company became EQIQ, and Attuned one of its keystone businesses, all with a combined mission of blending humanity with data to create purposeful and frictionless work lives.

Casey holds an MBA, is fluent in Japanese, produced the first startup-themed feature film in Japan (Startup Girls, released in 2019), and is the author of two books of interviews with Japanese entrepreneurs,  2015’s #1 best-selling  未来をつくる起業家 (Eng. The Quiet Comeback) and  2018’s 未来をつくる起業家 vol 2.  His top three intrinsic motivators are competition, rationality and autonomy.

Rob Catalano is WorkTango’s Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer. Rob has spent the last 20 years building HR Technology companies. He was on the founding team at Achievers, where he spent the majority of his 10+ year tenure leading their Marketing function as well as the final few years leading their global expansion out of the UK. Rob’s passion for improving the employee experience led to him co-founding WorkTango in 2015 to help companies collect and act on authentic employee feedback. He has been named as a top 101 Global Employee Engagement Influencer every year since 2017, and has had the privilege of speaking to HR leaders at conferences in over 45 cities. Rob is an avid hockey fan, traveler, once played guitar in a metal band, and is a self-proclaimed ‘pointaholic’ – collecting loyalty points for anything and everything. Get in touch with Rob at rob@worktango.com.

Jenny von Podewils is the co-founder and co-CEO of Leapsome, a people enablement platform backed by Insight Partners, Creandum, and Visionaries Club. Leapsome helps more than 1500 companies (including Spotify, Unity, and monday.com) build high-performing teams by driving employee development, productivity, and engagement.

Jenny is an alumna of the Universities of St. Gallen and Oxford, and a fellow of Singularity University. Prior to Leapsome, Jenny led teams in business development, corporate development, and digital transformation roles in media and tech companies. In recognition of her work, Jenny was awarded Female Founder of the Year 2023 in the prestigious German Startup Awards and has been listed as one of the top 50 female entrepreneurs in Germany by Handelsblatt.

Matt Charney is a Talent Acquisition Community Leader at HR.com

Vivek has been researching and writing about team participation and remote team behavior for most of his career.  His focus has been on improving team participation so that everyone can be heard. ReTeam is focused on providing tools and processes to be used in course of everyday to improve interpersonal relationships, wellness, idea sharing and team participation without having to pull people away for offsite or meetings. 

Vivek is a published author having written several articles, and holds multiple patents for technical innovations.

Raphael Crawford-Marks is the Founder and CEO of Bonusly.

Hector Hernandez is the Leadership Development Facilitator at ThinkHuman.

Ray Stevens is the Global Head of Talent Management at State Street.

Jacqueline Fearer is the Head of Culture and Engagement Communications at Iron Mountain.