Jen Shirkani is a nationally recognized expert on emotional intelligence and a featured speaker at several national SHRM conferences and at state affiliates in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Washington. She is the author of Ego vs EQ and Choose Resilience, guides to leveraging the power of emotional intelligence. She has spent over 25-years working with organizations as a business consultant and executive coach. In addition to emotional intelligence, she frequently speaks and writes about workplace challenges including interviewing and selection, employee engagement and motivation, generational differences, and coachability. Jen has been a frequent guest of several national radio programs, and has been featured in Bloomberg/Businessweek, Leadership Excellence magazine, Investors Daily, Business Insider, Reader’s Digest, Publishers Weekly, Fast Company, and Upstart Business Journal.  She holds a Master’s Degree in Organizational Leadership and has devoted herself to improving leadership effectiveness and on making common sense more common. 

Mike Aitken has worked at SHRM since 2003 and currently serves as the Senior Vice President of Government Affairs. Prior to joining SHRM, he served for 14 years as associate director for Governmental and External Relations at the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR). Previously, Aitken worked on state public policy issues at Bonner & Associates, a public affairs firm in Washington, DC. Currently, he is based in Alexandria, VA.

Pat Wadors currently serves as Chief Talent Officer for Procore, the digital workflow company focused on improving the lives of everyone in construction. That purpose, as well as Pat’s longtime focus on building healthy companies that scale, drives her vision to create amazing employee experiences for Procore’s people around the world. 

Prior to joining Procore in November 2020, Pat was the Chief Talent Officer of ServiceNow and prior to that, she was the Senior Vice President, Global Talent Organization at LinkedIn, where her focus was on recruiting and developing top talent, driving organizational transformation, supporting a highly engaged workforce, and growing LinkedIn’s global footprint.

Pat has also held human resources leadership positions at Plantronics, Yahoo!, Align Technology and Applied Materials. Pat earned her B.S. in business management with a concentration in human resources management and a minor in psychology from Ramapo College of New Jersey.

 at currently serves on the boards of directors for Accolade and Ultimate Kronos Group.