Leadership & Navigation

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.

Mark S. Fogel is currently a Director for Clifton Larson Allen’s National HR consulting practice. He is a former CHRO for Leviton, Marcum, and Success Academy Charter Schools, Mark has been the recipient of several national awards including SHRM’s Human Capital Leader of the Year in 2007, SHRM’s Innovation in a Down Economy in 2009, and HR Executive Magazine’s Honor Role in 2010. He has also been recognized as a 50 around 50 award recipient by Long Island Business News. Mark is also a part-time educator employed as a Senior Adjunct Professor of distinction at Adelphi University in their MBA program. Additionally, he facilitates the SHRM SCP/CP prep class for HR Jetpack. Mark has presented over two dozen times at SHRM and World at Work national, regional, and local conferences on a broad range of HR topics. Often Quoted in national media, Mark brings a refreshing point of view to every HR discussion.

Steve Donahue is one of the world’s leading authorities on business applications of Narrative Intelligence. He combines brain science, case studies, mythology and psychology to give leaders powerful tools to drive change, attract talent and engage staff. As a young man Steve crossed the Sahara Desert.  His first book, Shifting Sands: A Guidebook for Crossing the Deserts of Change, which chronicles that epic adventure, has sold hundreds of thousands of copies. His second book, Follow Your Compass, was an instant bestseller in Asia.  Steve’s programs are known for their humor, interactivity and immediately applicable content.

Christine Porath is an Associate Professor at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. She is also a consultant working with leading organizations to help them create a thriving workplace. Her speaking and consulting clients include Google, United Nations, International Monetary Fund, Genentech, Department of Labor, Department of the Treasury, Department of Justice, and National Security Agency.

Porath is a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, and has written articles for New York Times (Sunday Review), Wall Street Journal, McKinsey Quarterly, and Washington Post. Her New York Times articles on "Why You Hate Work" and "No Time to Be Nice at Work" have been shared nearly 150,000 times on social media.

She frequently delivers conference talks, including at Human Resources People and Strategy (HRPS), Work Human, and Conference Board. She has taught in various Executive programs at Harvard, Georgetown, USC, and ESADE. Prior to her position at Georgetown, she was a faculty member at Marshall School of Business at University of Southern California.

Porath is the author of Mastering Civility: A Manifesto for the Workplace and co-author of The Cost of Bad Behavior. Her research has appeared in the Harvard Business Review, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Journal of Consumer Research, and many other journals and books.

Christine’s work has been featured worldwide in over 1500 television, radio and print outlets. It has appeared on 20/20, Today, FoxNews, CNN, BBC, NBC, msnbc, CBS, ABC, and NPR. It has also been included in Time, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Fortune, Forbes, NY Times, The Washington Post, and L.A. Times.

Before getting her Ph.D., she worked for International Management Group (IMG), a leading sports management and marketing firm. Porath received her Ph.D. from Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She earned her bachelor's degree in economics from College of the Holy Cross where she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa as well as the women’s basketball and soccer teams.

Dr. Grant is a member of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and was recently elected to the highly selective Society for Experimental Social Psychology. She gives frequent invited addresses and speaks regularly at national conferences, and is available for speaking and consulting engagements, primarily in education, marketing, and  management.  She  received  her  PhD  in  social  psychology  from  Columbia University, working with Carol Dweck (author of Mindset).

Dr. Hogan is a scholar-practitioner, strategic adviser, consultant and an executive leadership coach. He is a champion of and an internationally recognized subject matter expert on diversity, equity, inclusion, and civil discourse. He is an enabler of executive leadership and organizational excellence. His distinction is the ability to promote transformational leadership development by creating incidents of cognitive dissonance and opportunities for self-reflection, self-discovery and self-awareness by using the arts as an agent-of-change.

Dr. Hogan is a Professor of Practice in Human Resource Management at the Pennsylvania State University, School of Labor and Employment Relations. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in-residence and on-line. His signature class is Ethics in the Workplace. Dr. Hogan’s action research interests include Global Leadership Development, Global Diversity and Inclusion, Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Sustainability, and the convergence of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and human beings in the workplace. He is the founder of the School’s Academy of Human Capital Development and served as Director from 2011 - 2018.

Currently, Dr. Hogan serves as a Scholar-in-Residence at the Center for the Performing Arts at Penn State, College of Arts and Architecture and serves as a member of the Community Advisory Council. In March 2019, he was selected to serve as a scholar for the Penn State Student Engagement Faculty Academy for Academic Years 2019 – 2021.

In this role, he will conduct research and serve as a faculty champion for student engagement and engaged scholarship, and serve on a steering committee responsible for designing, developing, and deploying a university-wide student engagement portal. The portal will incorporate Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

He has been appointed to serve as Diversity Director and voting board member of the Pennsylvania SHRM Council for a two-year term beginning January 2020. In August 2019, he was selected to serve on the 2019 – 2020 Governance Committee of the Penn State Alumni Council. The Alumni Council is the governing body of the Penn State Alumni Association where he is serving a three-year term as an appointed member.

Dr. Hogan has over 30 years of experience as a practitioner and has served in leadership positions in higher education and the corporate sector. Prior to joining the Penn State University School of Labor and Employment Relations, he held the position of Interim Associate Provost, Office of Faculty Affairs at the University of Maryland University College (UMUC). Prior to working for UMUC, he spent 23 years with AT&T in a variety of assignments including sales, sales support, business development, marketing and human resources. In his last assignment at AT&T, Dr. Hogan served as Director of Strategic Talent Acquisition and Retention, Workforce Diversity and EEO/AA.

Dr. Hogan currently is a member of the U.S. Technical Advisory Group of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). In this role, he is involved in developing and representing the U.S. position on global HR standards to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). In December 2016, he was appointed to the ISO Work Group responsible for developing a global HR standard on diversity and inclusion. In November 2016, he was appointed and continues to serve on the SHRM Diversity and Inclusion Special Expertise Panel. Dr. Hogan served on the SHRM 2016 Ethics/Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability Special Expertise Panel. Dr. Hogan also served on the Penn State University President’s Commission on Racial/Ethnic Diversity from 2015 – 2018. He was elected Co-Chair for Academic Year 2017-18. He served as a Scholar-in-Residence at the Penn State University Sustainability Institute from 2014 – 2019. He provided leadership on the implementation of the Penn State University 2016 – 2025 Strategic Plan as a member of the Stewarding our Planet's Resources Steering Committee and the Infrastructure and Support Steering Committee from 2017 - 2019.

Dr. Hogan earned a Doctor of Management Degree (International Operations emphasis) from the University of Maryland University College and a Master of Public Administration and a Master of Regional Planning Degree from Penn State University. He earned a BA Degree in Behavioral Sciences from Point Park College. In August 2017, he graduated from the Georgetown University Institute of Transformational Leadership with a certificate in executive leadership coaching.

Dr. Karlyn Borysenko is the force behind Zen Workplace. An organizational psychologist and executive/performance coach, she is a leader in integrating mindfulness strategies at work to increase productivity and creativity, reduce stress, and create better work experiences. Her practice is based in the greater Boston area and serves clients all over the world. She holds an MBA and a PhD in Psychology, is an experienced trainer and facilitator, coach, and award-winning speaker. Karlyn is a contributor to Forbes.com and the author of Zen Your Work: Create your ideal work experience through mindful self-mastery.