Matt Dodson, Manager of Organizational Development, is the product owner of the Coaching practice at Chevron. Matt started his career at Chevron over 22 years ago in information technology before discovering his passion for people development. He works alongside an incredible team of global consultants and coaches serving the business units and functions. In previous roles at Chevron, he was a catalyst and coach for leadership evolution for major capital project leaders, helping those around him understand the integral role leadership plays in achieving success both day-to-day and long-term.

Within the last 13 years, he has focused on all aspects of leader and employee development from identification, selection, assessment, succession, and development. Matt has been involved in all parts of the crude-to-customer value chain, bringing the energy that improves lives and powers the world forward.

Matt earned his bachelor's degree in Business from Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, and his master's in Business Administration from the University of California at Davis. When not at work, Matt enjoys being with his wife and kids, reading, and the outdoors.

Paula Harris is senior vice president of community for the Houston Astros and executive director of the Astros Foundation. Before joining the Astros, she had more than 33 years of experience in international oilfield services with Schlumberger.  Educated as a Petroleum Engineer, Paula initially worked in field operations offshore before progressing into leadership roles including training, sales and ultimately, in environmental-social (ES) sustainability She managed the development and implementation of metrics-based, cost efficient ESG programs tailored to meet the local needs of stakeholders, employees, communities, and customers. Implementation of the program helped in aligning negotiation strategies and winning successful new business tenders in Russia, Europe, Nigeria, Venezuela, China and Australia.  During her leadership tenure in training and sales, she developed a life-long civic interest in educational instruction and a personal interest in mentoring minority female engineers.  While working she authored and published two books: For Sister, The Guide for Professional Black Women (2002) and When I Grow Up I Want to be an Engineer (2009.)

Paula retired from Schlumberger and spent a year in retirement until she jumped back into an entirely new industry, the world of professional sports.  She is enjoying the impact to community through engagement and community program design.

She currently also serves on the boards of: Chart Industries (GTLS) The Vantage Group, The Houston Children’s Museum, the Petroleum Club of Houston, the Independent Petroleum Association of America’s Energy Education Center and Energized for STEM Charter School.  She is a founding member of the all-girls engineering school, the Young Women’s College Preparatory Academy, serving primarily minority communities in Houston to graduate girls prepared to attend top engineering universities.  Previously she served on the boards of the Houston Independent School District; the Permian Strategic Partnership in Midland, TX, the Space Center Houston and numerous other education and outreach associations.  In 2020, she received the Women Who Mean Business Lifetime Achievement award from the Houston Business Journal and in 2019, the Women on the Move award from Texas Executive Women and the United Nations Global Citizenship Award.

Pedro Neiva Botelho is currently the Schlumberger Head of HR for the Americas. Throughout his career, he held several HR Management positions within the Schlumberger Group in Africa, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. The spectrum of his roles encompassed topics on HR business strategy, HR practices and People recruiting, training & development. In his previous position he was the Global Head of HR for the Schlumberger Surface Systems Product Line, based in Houston. He is a frequent speaker in conferences on topics related to HR strategy, compensation & benefits and career development.

Pedro has a M.A. from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po).

Julie is the Director of Operations, Data Office at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, where she is working to instill a data-driven culture at HPE by building a data strategy and operating model and highlighting that data quality is everyone’s concern.

Before HPE, Julie spent ten years working in Fortune 500 companies leading IT Operations, Learning & Development, and Organizational Change, and five years in consulting, starting up a coaching and leadership development practice.  Julie holds degrees in Industrial/Organizational Psychology and certifications in Lean Six Sigma, Hogan and Birkman personality inventories, and is a certified executive coach.

Kristi Pittman is the Vice President of Human Resources for Daikin Comfort Technologies (DNA). She began her HR career at Goodman Manufacturing in 1990 as the Personnel/Payroll Coordinator when the Company had only five hundred employees, one manufacturing plant in Houston and approximately ten COD locations in Texas and Louisiana. Goodman was acquired by Daikin Industries, Ltd. in 2012 and now employs over 14,000 employees across the United States and Canada.

For the first phase of her career at Goodman, Kristi was primarily responsible for the development, administration and financial performance of the employee welfare and retirement plans, establishing general HR policies, leave and disability management and HR compliance. For many years, Kristi was responsible for managing a variety of employee activities, providing a unique opportunity to routinely interact with the employee population and fueling her overall passion for people. In 2011, Kristi was promoted to the Director, HR Shared Services, adding HR Technology, Timekeeping and the Employee Call Center to her existing areas of responsibility. Kristi was promoted to the HR leadership role in 2018 and is now responsible for the overall HR strategy, including Talent Acquisition, Succession Planning, Learning and Organizational Development, Compensation, Communications and the Business Partner functions.

Kristi lives in Cypress, Texas and enjoys spending time with her three children and grandchildren, and her dogs Beau and Lucy. Kristi is an amateur photographer who loves to take pictures while traveling, of animals and nature.

A. Denise Malloy, Vice President Diversity & Inclusion, provides strategic and day-to-day operational leadership on all global equity, diversity and inclusion programs, and practices across the 150 countries where Johnson Controls conducts business. She is responsible for the optimal attraction, development and retention for diverse talent and infusing diversity, equity and inclusion principles and practices into Johnson Controls products, outreach and philanthropy. Denise is the architect of the newly designed Johnson Controls Diversity & Inclusion mission, vision and roadmap. She has led the effort to empower every Johnson Controls employee to play an active role in diversity & inclusion. This work has landed Johnson Controls on the Forbes 2021 list of Best Companies for Diversity & Inclusion. Prior to this role, Mrs. Malloy held numerous sales leadership and business development roles within Johnson Controls where she emerged as a repeat Master of Sales performer.

In her prior role as Vice President and General Manager of a global business unit, she implemented growth strategies and customer experience for one of Johnson Controls largest customers yielding year over year double digit growth.

Before coming to Johnson Controls, Denise became known as a sales strategist, market creator and gifted relationship builder. She thrived in numerous senior leadership and business development roles with Xerox Corporation, J.P. Morgan, and Enron. Denise serves on numerous non-profit and corporate boards all of which are dedicated to the causes of women and children. Her servant leadership is key to ensuring that she reaches
back, pulls forward and leaves a legacy of advocacy and support of others. Her corporate board experience is focused on breakthrough medical advances and aiding women and minority start-ups success.

A true champion of the people, Denise divides her time between family, business interests, community service, corporate boards, and philanthropy.

Michael Bramnick serves as head of Administration and a member of the Executive Management Team (EMT) for NRG Energy, a Fortune 500 diversified energy company.  He also serves as Chief of Staff, providing counsel to the CEO and to the rest of the EMT, working across business lines and corporate functions, to ensure strategy is implemented and operations are smooth.  His direct reports within Administration include Human Resources, Sustainability, Business Continuity & Crisis Management, Safety, Security, and Facilities, and he has enterprise-wide responsibility for Corporate and Regulatory Compliance. He helps lead NRG’s COVID-19 response as well as its Diversity, Equity & Inclusion initiatives.

Michael previously served in a number of roles at NRG including as Executive Vice President & General Counsel.  Prior to NRG, he held a number of legal roles in several publicly traded companies.  He began his career as a lawyer at Troutman Pepper LLC.  He holds an undergraduate degree from the George Washington University and a law degree from Penn State Dickinson Law School.

April King has more than 25 years’ experience designing and delivering strategic leadership development initiatives internationally, to support organizations in developing high-potential leaders at multiple levels.

She has consulted with senior executives to create and manage succession planning and performance management processes through the identification of success profiles and competency modeling in order to develop a pipeline of future leaders. April also has significant experience in coaching senior leaders and high-potential executives on their personal development opportunities and action plans.

April joined DDI as a senior consultant in our Hong Kong office, and lived and worked in Asia for nine years, supporting various global and local clients across Asia. She currently lives in Fargo, North Dakota.

Christine has been instrumental in developing the people experience department from the ground-up, which consists of HR, recruiting, credentialing, internal communications, corporate facilities, and employee events. She has experience with rapid-growth companies and brings innovative HR solutions to meet the needs of quickly growing organizations. Prior to joining, Christine served as a founding member of the Virgin America team that brought the company from incubation to an award-winning airline. Christine has a bachelor of business administration degree with an emphasis in human resources from Pace University and earned her master’s degree in human resources from Mount Saint Mary College.

Clelia is currently the Vice President, Human Resources for the Corrosion Protection Platform at Aegion. Throughout her career, she has worked in most areas of the Human Resource function, holding different managerial roles in North & South America, Africa, Asia, and The Middle East. Her experience encompasses recruiting and training, HR business strategy, performance and talent management, HR programs, employee relations and coaching among others. Prior to Aegion, she started her career at Schlumberger, and she also worked for NexTear Oilfield Solutions, previously Keane Group.

In her leisure time, she likes spending quality time with her family and friends. She is also a regular at Memorial Park, where you can find her exercising at the end of the day.

Vijay Swaminathan is the Co-Founder & CEO of Draup, an AI-Driven Reskilling and Talent Intelligence Platform. Vijay has extensive experience in the areas of Product Ideation, Concept to Productization, and Platform enablement. He brings a wealth of expertise in the areas of Data Analytics, Operations Research, and Strategic Management. He has developed numerous quantitative models and heuristics related to global talent, business analytics, and strategic business initiatives.

Vijay is also the co-founder of Zinnov (a leading research & advisory firm) and TalentNeuron (acquired by CEB a Gartner Company (NYSE:IT)). Prior to co-founding Zinnov and TalentNeuron, Vijay held senior positions at Hewitt Associates and KPMG Consulting. He is passionate about translating business ideas into tangible Intellectual Property.

Bob Hamer is the Director and leads ClassPass's Corporate Wellness division here in the US. As a team we help our partner organizations give their employees the best in fitness & wellness. We do this by giving them access to over 41,500 fitness studios, gyms and wellness options worldwide.

For over 15 years, Jason has led sales and customer organizations from Fortune 500 companies to start-ups across numerous industries. Jason is a published author on sales strategies, including his co-authored book Cutting Edge Sales, and frequently speaks nationally on selling to the Fortune 1000, and leading customer-focused organizations.

Jason is currently the Chief Revenue Officer at HiredScore, where he leads the commercial and go-to-market strategy of ethical artificial intelligence solutions to global F500 companies. Before joining HiredScore, Jason was the VP of Sales at WayUp, a recruitment marketplace focused on early careers. Prior to WayUp, Jason was the VP of Sales for Haystack IQ, a knowledge discovery service for innovation and R&D professionals to search the world's patents and non-patent literature. Previously, he also served as the SVP of Sales at BountyJobs, a vendor management marketplace that connects the world’s top employers with the right search firms filling jobs.  Jason has served on the advisory board of several other early-stage technology companies.

Jason was born and raised outside of Philadelphia, PA attended Franklin & Marshall College, and lives in Connecticut with his family, outside of NYC with his family.

Shashank Bhushan is the  Chief Talent Development Architect at BMC Software.

Victor Wright is an experienced labor and employment law attorney, litigator, and strategic business advisor with more than 25 years of professional work experience within the federal government, private practice law firm, and public corporation sectors. A retired military officer and proven leader, Victor possesses a unique client service skill set which quickly allows him to build the requisite trust and confidence of his clients required in handling difficult and complex business matters. Clients particularly value his straight forward and practical approach to solving problems and his ability to remain calm under pressure.

Victor is currently Director, Global Labor and Employment Law at KBR, Inc., where he leads, manages and directs the delivery of all labor law, employment law, and employment dispute and litigation legal support services for more than 29,000 employees globally across KBR’s Government Solutions and Sustainable Technology Solutions business segments.  He has also served in a corporate in-house role as Associate General Counsel and Director at TransCanada Corporation, where he led a cross-border team of Canadian, U.S. and Mexico-based employment attorneys and paralegals responsible for the delivery of all employment-related and immigration law legal support services to the company’s Canadian, U.S., and Mexico natural gas, liquids pipeline and energy business units.

Prior to joining KBR, Victor was Of Counsel at Haynes and Boone LLP where his practice focused on employment law, with an emphasis on traditional labor and employment issues involved in corporate transactions and in drafting policies, procedures, and agreements. A dynamic public speaker, Victor also focused his practice at the firm on delivering client training presentations on various labor and employment law topics aimed at mitigating regulatory compliance and litigation risks.

Victor is a member of the Board of Directors of the University of Houston Law Center Law Alumni Association where he currently serves as immediate past president and formerly served as the Law Center’s First African American President of the Law Alumni Association in the law school’s history.  He is also a member of the Association of Corporate Counsel where he formerly served on the Board of Directors of the ACC Houston Chapter.  In his local community, Victor serves as a member of the Board of Trustees at a local private school and at his church.  He also serves as a mentor with the Big Brothers and Big Sisters of America organization.

Andrea Alexander is the Chief People Officer at Rent the Runway.

Lisa Warner brings people, resources, and ideas together with intention and compassion as the President of AMP Creative. She is a human resource professional, champion of women-owned businesses, and a Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Teacher. Making the connection between employee wellness and the bottom line, Lisa believes that people learn, grow, and thrive in organizations when they are heard, healthy, and driven by a purpose. Lisa has been at AMP since 2010, growing from her role as an office administrator to upper leadership. Through the years she became a leading voice in AMP’s vision, mission, and values. After a period of rapid growth, she took the role of President to mindfully lead AMP through further expansion. Lisa is a mother of three daughters, a beekeeper, and a curious observer of our shared world.

Lan Ni (Ph.D., University of Maryland) is Professor in the Valenti School of Communication at the University of Houston. Her research focuses on the role of culture, identity, and values in how organizations identify publics, build relationships, and manage conflicts. She is the lead author/editor of two books by Routledge on intercultural public relations: Theories for Managing Relationships and Conflicts with Strategic Publics and Realities and Reflections in Practical Contexts. She has received research grants from many funding agencies including the National Science Foundation and Urban Communication Foundation and directed award-winning student campaigns.

Rachelle Davis is the Senior Vice President of Talent, North America, for the Consulting division of RGP, a global human capital and professional services firm. She leads a team of 120 Talent professionals who perform talent acquisition and talent management for about 3,000 project consultants at RGP clients.

Rachelle is responsible for leading strategic initiatives, including projects centered around organizational strategy and design, organizational change, new talent system implementations, workforce planning, KPI development for agile teams, DE&I initiatives within the talent organization, and engaging in user-centered design to create programs for establishing community groups, building career and learning paths for team members and consultants, and supporting the growth initiatives of the C-suite. She participates regularly in RGP’s Executive leadership forums, partners closely with the Learning & Development organization and is a frequent panelist for RGP U, the onboarding university for new hires to RGP.

Prior to RGP, Rachelle worked in the technology staffing industry. Her background includes positions as SVP of talent acquisition, managing director and sales director, and multiples roles in talent acquisition. She started her career in recruiting through a student leadership organization at Baylor University, her alma mater, and has focused her career on recruiting top talent, establishing high-performing teams and building engaging and inclusive cultures and communities.

Wenlin Liu (Ph.D., University of Southern California) is an Assistant Professor of Strategic Communication at the Jack J. Valenti School of Communication, University of Houston. She conducts research on organizational communication, corporate social responsibility, and diverse community engagement. At UH, she teaches a course on intercultural communication and organizations, preparing students for the ever-changing work environment.

Roma is a senior human resources executive with over 20 years of progressive experience within small, medium and global organizations. Roma is currently the Vice President – Human Resources International for MAN Energy Solutions (VW Group Company) and her area of responsibility covers countries in Americas, APAC, MEA and Europe regions.

Roma serves as a strategic business partner who provides counsel and support to her stakeholders to help them achieve strategic and operational goals, while mitigating risk. Along with a strong business acumen, her comprehensive background in strategic HR management, talent management, succession planning, retention, recruitment, total rewards, employee relations, training and development has resulted in strong and trusting relationships with her stakeholders.

Prior to moving into the HR world in 2017, Roma was a Chief Financial Officer for MAN Energy Solutions Canada Ltd.

Roma holds a Master of Science in Strategic Human Resource Management from Saint Joseph’s University – Erivan K. Haub School of Business and a B.Com in Accountancy and Auditing from Gujarat University in India.

Jennifer Vardeman, Ph.D., is the director and an associate professor at the Jack J. Valenti School of Communication at the University of Houston. She is also an affiliate faculty member of UH’s Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies, and currently serves as a visiting scientist with Houston Methodist Hospital’s Obstetrics and Gynecology Department. She conducts research in the main areas of health communication, diversity and identity, and strategic communication. Specifically, Dr. Vardeman takes an intersectional approach in exploring aspects of the public relations field, mainly around the gender and racial inequalities in the composition of the workforce. She’s published more than 30 articles and chapters on topics of public relations, public health communication, and intersectionality.

As a former public relations professional, Dr. Vardeman has worked, taught, and consulted in the public relations field for 23+ years, previously working for firms such as Weber-Shandwick in Houston, Lois Paul & Partners, a Fleishman-Hilliard company in Austin, and ICF International in Rockville, MD. Her clients over the years have varied greatly in size and industry from global giants like IBM Software, Motorola Semiconductors, and Compaq Computers, to local high-tech start-ups. In the public health sector, she consulted for federal government agencies like the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Radiological Studies Branch, as well as local community health organizations and hospitals, like Baylor Teen Health Clinics and Texas Medical Center Health Policy Institute. She’s also provided communication work for public sector agencies and nonprofit organizations such as the American Red Cross, Department of Homeland Security’s Citizen Corps, and Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs.

Finally, Dr. Vardeman serves on several editorial boards for leading journals in the public relations field as well as an advisor lending insight around diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives for industry associations like the Institute for Public Relations.

Lucho Vizcardo is a Global Human Resource Management leader with extensive experience in all facets of organizational development, global mobility, executive and non-executive compensation, benefits, payroll, and employee relations.  His foreign language proficiency includes Spanish and Portuguese.

Lucho currently serves as the Head of International Human Resources, Western Hemisphere at Nabors Industries (NYSE: NBR) and has been with the company since 2019.  He is an active leader of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Council of the company.  He also serves at the Advisory Panel for the Managing Human Resources Certificate Program at University of Houston, Bauer College of Business.

Prior to joining Nabors, Lucho served in a number of HR Management positions at Occidental Petroleum, Kerr-McGee, Anadarko and TETRA Technologies.

Lucho earned his bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering from University of Lima, and his master’s in Business Administration from Pepperdine University in Malibu, California.  When not at work, Lucho enjoys being with his wife and kids, playing tennis, and travelling.