Communication

Mike Lorenca is the Chief Human Resources Officer for the Honickman Group headquartered in Pennsauken, New Jersey. Mike joined them in 2013 and is responsible for human resources and labor relations for over 5000 employees on the East Coast. The Honickman Group is the second largest Pepsi and the largest Canada Dry franchise bottler and distributor in the U.S. The enterprise also owns investments in beer distribution companies in the Northeast. Previously, Mike spent seven years with the Philadelphia Media Holdings, which owns the Philadelphia Inquirer. He last held the position of Chief Operating Officer and Associate Publisher.

Richard H Johnson, Jr. SHRM-SCP, Chief Human Resources Officer with Citizens National Bank in Meridian, MS.  Richard has over 25 years of HR experience in the fields of finance and healthcare.  Richard began his career as a Recruiter with NationsBank (Bank of America) and progressed with Washington Mutual, Ochsner Health System, and Community Health Systems.  While with the City of West Palm Beach, he gained his experience with unions.  

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.

Internationally recognized as an expert in the field, Mr. Kushner is one of the nation's most sought after speakers on HR strategy and employee benefits. He has advised four U.S. Presidents on health care and has testified before the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee and the U.S. House Small Business Committee on employee benefit issues.

A frequent resource to the media, Mr. Kushner contributes to the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, AP, Knight-Ridder, the Kiplinger Washington Newsletter, CNN News, Fortune, MSNBC and Good Morning America among others. More importantly, he and his wife Tamis have five children and four wonderful (and amazing!) grandchildren.

Amy Hirsh Robinson, M.B.A., is Chief People Officer for King’s Hawaiian, a global producer of irresistible Hawaiian food. Amy was brought on to King’s Hawaiian to re-envision the employee experience and transform the People function from traditional HR to a strategic driver of business growth. During her time at the company she has worked to radically redefine the purpose, structure and activities of HR with significant results. Prior to her role as CPO, Amy ran a successful human capital consulting firm, The Interchange Group, helping executives and HR professionals retool and adapt their strategies to rapidly changing workforce expectations and business landscapes.

Jun is an HR professional with nearly 20 years of deep HR body of knowledge and experience (10+ years of which are Japan-focused) across the entire HR value chain gained from both the public and private sectors and various industries such as manufacturing, academe, training, recruitment, and HR consulting. He is not only considered as Japan's premier HR-focused search consultant but also a practicing HR consultant providing services and solutions in various HR areas like performance management, compensation & benefits design, organizational design and development, change management, coaching, and career counseling. He holds a Japan-focused MBA from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and an MS Industrial Engineering degree from the University of the Philippines. He also completed his HR Studies Certificate from Cornell University.

Randy Anderson has a true passion for teaching the “how’s” and “why’s” of engaging, equipping, and empowering people in work and life. He teaches ideas and strategies that he learned from working for and managing in organizations ranging from 5 to 35,000 employees. Over the last 25 years, he has developed and taught these principles to tens of thousands of people in all sizes of organizations from front line to back office to upper management. Whether learning to improve your performance, or so you can train others to improve theirs, Randy will transform your thinking, your productivity, and your influence. 

Matt is the Director of Talent Acquisition at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta – one of the nation’s leading pediatric healthcare systems and consistently ranked as one of the “100 Best Companies to Work For” by Fortune magazine. With the support of a strong team, Matt is working to evolve and optimize the recruitment platform at Children’s.

Prior to working at Children's, Matt helped reshape talent acquisition at Ericsson, the world's leading provider of communications technology and services, operating in 180 countries and employing more than 100,000 people. In his five years with Ericsson, Matt lived in both Australia and Singapore. He drove innovation in the employer branding, sourcing and recruitment strategy for Ericsson regionally and globally.

He has past experience as a senior strategy consultant with a U.S. recruitment communications firm, helping leading organizations implement innovative employer branding and digital strategies to attract top talent. Matt is a graduate of The Florida State University in the USA. He is an author and featured industry speaker on best practices in Talent Management at international HR events.

Former U.S. Department of Justice attorney Michael Johnson has trained thousands of people on skills for detecting signs of deception and truthfulness, including presenting at dozens of conferences for human resource professionals and other busines executives.  

He has spoken at numerous conferences around the world for HR, legal, law enforcement, and other professionals.  He has provided numerous client-specific sessions for international organizations such as the United Nations (in New York, Congo, and Sierra Leone) and the World Bank, government agencies such as the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Social Security Administration, and dozens of Fortune 500 companies such as Google and Northrup Grumman.

 As an attorney with the US Department of Justice, Michael was the lead attorney on one of DOJ’s first “pattern or practice” sexual harassment cases.  Michael has served as an expert witness in cases challenging the adequacy of employer’s investigation procedures. 

He is a graduate of Duke University and Harvard Law School.

Ms. Plunkett has more than 14 years of experience leading a wide variety of human capital initiatives including performance management reform, workforce and succession planning, organization assessment, business process analysis, training, and change management.  She has worked with both public and private sector clients internationally and domestically to improve human capital management practices, leveraging data-driven solutions to inform management decision-making.  Ms. Plunkett currently works for Lockheed Martin, and has previous experience with the Department of Defense, Deloitte, and ICF International. She graduated with a Bachelor's from American University and is a certified Project Management Professional.