Communication

Sharon Podstupka is a Vice President in the New York office of Pearl Meyer & Partners. She is a key member of the firm’s Thought Leadership team and is focused on executive and broad-based employee pay communication consulting. She works closely with her clients in a wide range of industries to develop internal communications that educate and engage people in their pay programs. Ms. Podstupka also has extensive experience in developing critical shareholder communications (CD&As) that clearly explain pay-for-performance in the context of today’s challenging say on pay environment. Her key areas of expertise are communication strategy, stakeholder management and content development.

Ms. Podstupka is a popular conference panelist at The Conference Board and Corporate Board Member (NYSE Corporate Governance) events. She has also contributed to several publications including WorldatWork’s Workspan, Executive Pay Matters, Bloomberg BNA and Corporate Board Member. Ms. Podstupka joined PM&P in 2013 after 17 years at Towers (Perrin) Watson, where she served as a Director in the Talent & Rewards segment. In her most recent role there, she led the Executive Compensation Communications Services team for the Americas. Prior to that, she was a compensation and benefits administrator and communication specialist at EMI-Capitol Music Group.

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.

As Vice President, Client Strategy and Consulting at Globoforce, Derek leads the company’s Insight consulting division. In this role, he helps clients, including some of world’s most admired companies, leverage proven recognition strategies and best practices to elevate employee engagement, increase retention, and improve bottom-line results. In addition to his role leading consulting services for Globoforce, Derek also oversaw the company’s marketing and rewards functions from 2000 to 2010.

Derek is one of the world’s foremost experts on employee recognition and engagement, helping business leaders set a higher vision and ambition for their company culture. As a renowned speaker, author of an acclaimed blog, Recognize This!, and the co-author of Winning with a Culture of Recognition, he teaches HR leaders how to use recognition to proactively manage company culture. His viewpoints and writings are also regularly featured across all major HR publications, including Workspan, HR Magazine, HR Executive, Talent Management, and Workforce Management.

Follow Derek on Twitter @DerekIrvine.

When Nicole Price began her first leadership assignment based on popular and conventional leadership wisdom, she initially found that she was not seeing successful results and, in fact, saw a drop in the level of accountability her team was projecting. Pretty quickly, she learned that there was a better way to achieve results through incorporating a philosophy similar to that of Cy Wakeman's Reality-Based LeadershipTM. She made a fundamental shift in her mindset to call her team to greatness through ditching the drama and finding success in spite of the circumstances and  facts that held them back. She has been living this idea and helping other leaders to gain similar insights ever since. It is no wonder why she and Cy became forces to be reckoned with when they started collaborating in 2011. Since that time, Nicole has created training programs and promoted the idea of bulletproofing employees rather than focusing efforts to try and perfect their circumstances and realities.

Kevin Ames is O.C. Tanner's Director of Speaking and Training. With more than 20 years of experience, he's traveled the globe as a trainer and motivational speaker, entertaining and inspiring audiences from Washington, D.C. to Beijing. Kevin has successfully coached employees in some of the world's biggest organizations, including Coca-Cola and American Express.

Kevin Ames is O.C. Tanner's Director of Speaking and Training. With more than 20 years of experience, he's traveled the globe as a trainer and motivational speaker, entertaining and inspiring audiences from Washington, D.C. to Beijing. Kevin has successfully coached employees in some of the world's biggest organizations, including Coca-Cola and American Express.

Howard Ross is lifelong social justice advocate, and is considered one of the world’s seminal thought leaders on identifying and addressing unconscious bias.  Howard has delivered programs in 47 states and over 40 other countries to audiences including Fortune 500 companies, colleges and universities, and major institutions within healthcare, government, and non-profit sectors. He authored the Washington Post best seller, Everyday Bias:  Identifying and Navigating Unconscious Judgments in Our Daily Lives, ReInventing Diversity: Transforming Organizational Community to Strengthen People, Purpose and Performance. His latest  book, Our Search for Belonging: How the Need for Connection Is Tearing Our Culture Apart, published by Berrett-Koehler in 2018, received the Nautilus Gold Medal for Social Change and Social Justice. His next book, Building Belonging: 9 Pathways to Creating Inclusive and Joyful Organizational Communities, will be published in 2020.

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.

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.