Business (Behavioral)

Joshua Shelton has worked for FedEx for almost 10 years and with the Fayette County Sheriff's Office, Georgia as a detective 13 years prior to that. He currently chairs the Georgia DFCS Region IV Board and seeks to spread the word of violence prevention. Josh is a Certified Threat Manager (CTM) and serves on the Southeastern Region board of The Association of Threat Assessment Professionals, an organization of law enforcement, prosecutors, mental health professionals, and corporate security practitioners in the field of assessing and managing threats of violence. 

James Reid is a labor and employment attorney who counsels business owners, entrepreneurs, C-suite executives, in-house counsel, and human resources directors to make strategic business decisions, from hiring to firing, while complying with the ever changing and overlapping laws, including the ADEA, FLSA, FMLA, NLRA, and Title VII. He brings a business focused and proactive approach to legal matters to help employers make strategic business decisions to minimize the potential for litigation and business disruption.

His deep understanding of his clients' businesses enables him to deliver clear and concise counsel to meet each client's specific needs. If litigation is involved, he enforces restrictive covenants and defends employers against charges filed with the EEOC, state, and federal agencies.

James regularly conducts audits and investigations into employers' wage and hour practices and claims of discrimination and harassment. He provides training and prepares employment documents, including employee handbooks, employment agreements, and separation agreements, to cover all aspects during the life cycle of an employee.

James is also a sought after keynote and national speaker at conferences and events, including the American Payroll Association, SHRM, Tedx, and HR Day.

James Reid is a labor and employment attorney who counsels business owners, entrepreneurs, C-suite executives, in-house counsel, and human resources directors to make strategic business decisions, from hiring to firing, while complying with the ever changing and overlapping laws, including the ADEA, FLSA, FMLA, NLRA, and Title VII. He brings a business focused and proactive approach to legal matters to help employers make strategic business decisions to minimize the potential for litigation and business disruption.

His deep understanding of his clients' businesses enables him to deliver clear and concise counsel to meet each client's specific needs. If litigation is involved, he enforces restrictive covenants and defends employers against charges filed with the EEOC, state, and federal agencies.

James regularly conducts audits and investigations into employers' wage and hour practices and claims of discrimination and harassment. He provides training and prepares employment documents, including employee handbooks, employment agreements, and separation agreements, to cover all aspects during the life cycle of an employee.

James is also a sought after keynote and national speaker at conferences and events, including the American Payroll Association, SHRM, Tedx, and HR Day.

Judge Mary A. Celeste (ret.) sat on the Denver County Court bench 2000-2015. She was the Presiding Judge 2009-10 and the co-founder of the Denver County Court Sobriety Court. She is currently a law school professor teaching Marijuana and the Law at California Western School of Law and at the Florida Gulf Coast University Fall 2023. She is considered a national content expert and speaker on the topic of cannabis and the law. She recently coordinated the successful National Interdisciplinary Cannabis Symposium 2022. She is a former board member of the IALGBT+ Judges’ Association and member of the Judicial Advisory Board for the Foundation for the Advancement of Alcohol Responsibility (FAAR); Faculty for the National Association of Drug Court Professionals (NADCP) and the National Judicial College (NJC). She has also served as the past chair of ABA National Conference of Specialized Court Judges; the President of the American Judge’s Association and the Colorado Women’s Bar Association Foundation, and, as a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) Judicial Outreach Liaison. She has written many articles and is a national expert and speaker on the topics of cannabis, marijuana, marijuana and drug impaired driving, drugged driving, and cannabis and specialty courts.

Bill Pace is President of Cardinus LLC. He has worked in the US HR software market since 1995 and has specialized in ergonomics solutions for business for over 12 years. He has worked with several Fortune 500 and 100 companies including the University of California (all 12 campuses, 5 medical centers, and research facilities), Marsh, and Visa.

Global Speaker Sonia Aranza has presented on the international stage from Spain to Singapore.  She brings 27+ years of experience in Diversity, Inclusion & Global Leadership. Her clients include Boeing, CIA, McDonald’s and more. The U.S. Department of Labor describes her work as “Outstanding” and was selected to execute programs for landmark cases. SHRM featured her as a Diversity & Inclusion Expert in HR Magazine and she is a LinkedIn Top Voice in Leadership. She serves on the Faculty of Howard University’s Executive Diversity Program; named “100 Most Influential Filipina Americans in the United States” and honored “100 Most Influential Filipina Women in the World.”

Hayley Nicholson is the Employee Experience Manager at Diversified Automation, an industrial automation solutions provider in Louisville, Kentucky. Hayley received her Master’s Degree in Business Administration - Human Resources from the University of Southern Indiana and her Six Sigma Green Belt certification from Syracuse University. She has spent over nine years working actively in Human Resources and is passionate about compliance, training and development, employee relations, and benefits. She enjoys leveraging her education and experience to positively impact company culture.

Anjelica Dortch is Senior Director of U.S. Government Affairs at SAP – the world’s largest provider of enterprise application software – where she manages the company’s cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and workforce policy portfolio. Prior to joining SAP, Anjelica led scale up of tech policy positions at IBM within the Government and Regulatory Affairs team with a focus on artificial intelligence, hybrid cloud, and intellectual property.

Anjelica spent 10 years working for a variety of federal agencies to include being a Senior Technology Advisor within the White House where she led coordination of several tech policy initiatives within the U.S. Government.  She was co-author to U.S. policies and strategies including the National Cyber Strategy, the U.S. Federal Cloud Computing Strategy (Cloud Smart), and the Administration’s Report on Artificial Intelligence.

Anjelica is the recipient of the IBM Landmark award, Women Leading for Impact award, the University of Maryland Outstanding Alumnus award, and Federal Computer Week's Rising Star award. Anjelica holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy and a Master of Science in Financial Management and Information Systems from the University of Maryland.

Megan is the Deputy Lead of the Responsible AI team at Booz Allen Hamilton, with a focus on scaling the operationalization and advancement of Responsible AI across the Civil, Defense, and Intelligence sectors. In addition to her work advancing Ethical AI, she leverages her unique learning and development (L&D) and I/O Psychology experience as an advisor on AI change management initiatives.

Previously Megan helped launch and served as COO for CertNexus, a personnel certification company focused on developing vendor neutral high stakes certifications for emerging technologies including Data and AI Ethics, Data Science, AI, IoT and Cybersecurity. As part of this she managed the organization’s ISO accreditation, and DoD 8140 Directive approvals, co-led marketing and served as a subject matter expert for the business credentialling curriculum including co-authoring the Data Ethics for Business Professionals course, and as an instructor and advisor on two Coursera specializations on AI and AI Ethics.

Megan currently serves as lead on the NIST’s National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education Talent Management employers guide to effective job descriptions project team, and formerly sat on the board for the Cybersecurity Credentials Collaborative, and California Technology Council. 

Megan holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts and Psychology from Alfred University and is currently completing her Master of Science in Industrial/Organizational Psychology at George Mason University, where her research is focused on the impact of microaggressions on perceived organizational fit. She is the proud mother of two young adults and one canine and resides in Rochester, NY, with her husband. 

Clayton Lord (Clay, he/him) oversees strategy, planning, program delivery, and program evaluation for the SHRM Foundation, the 501(c)3 nonprofit arm of SHRM, which focuses on widening pathways to work and helping every worker and workplace thrive by empowering HR leaders to be forces for social good. He is a social impact executive who has spent his career driving systemic change in the world of work. Clay is also a writer, painter, and quilter, as well as a travel fanatic, and holds a B.A. in English and Psychology from Georgetown University. He lives with his husband and daughter in Maryland.

Cara Chennault-Reid is Koch Industries’ corporate human resource director, based at the global headquarters in Wichita, Kansas. In her role, Cara leads the human resource capability with over 700 HR professionals supporting 125,000 employees worldwide. She helps advance business vision and strategies through talent management while accelerating the application of Koch’s framework, Principle Based ManagementTM.

Cara and her team focus on helping employees who are contribution motivated achieve their full potential.

In 2006, Cara began her career at INVISTA, a Koch company, leading several global human resource and talent acquisition teams. In 2017, she became the chief operating officer at Koch Global Services, driving a vision for the delivery of shared services within the human resources, facilities, and real estate services.

Prior to joining Koch, Cara spent 12 years with a global consumer products company in various human resource and operations leadership roles.
Cara holds a Bachelor of Science in communications and organizational psychology from the University of Tennessee. She and her husband John live in Wichita, KS and have two daughters.

Karl Ahlrichs specializes in helping professionals make order from chaos. He is a national speaker, author, and consultant, presenting on the people issues in all industries, and is often quoted in the local and national media. 

Karl’s experience is ideally suited to times of organizational change as he pulls on risk management and organizational development theories to replace “best practices” with “next practices”. He owes much of his communications mastery to working as a writer and editor in daily media, to on-the-job writing experience and to the process of becoming a published author.

He joined Gregory & Appel in 2010 after serving as a founding partner of ExactHire, bringing his HR, operations, diversity & belonging, and learning & development skills with him. Karl’s affinity for design, composition and learning started at a very young age, by taking and examining thousands of boring pictures with the goal of improving his craft. He loves deploying that practice-to-improve approach with all manner of hobbies including writing haiku, mastering cutting-edge technology and learning Spanish.

In 2003, he was named the SHRM Human Resource Professional of the Year for the State of Indiana. He is on the Boards of several organizations, including the Maryland CPA Society.  He has lived in Scotland and Spain and lives to explore new experiences with his wife and family.