Virtual Pass

Sherri Merbach is an engaging speaker who provides interactive audience learning honed through her years as a Disney Institute edu-train-ment facilitator.  Sherri is a business executive first, having earned her CPA designation while working with a top-5 global accounting firm and subsequently earning her MBA degree.  She is the Managing Director of C-Suite Analytics where she helps companies cut employee turnover 30% and more.  She delivers bottom-line results by leveraging business skills, data analytics, strategic thinking, and tactical training to radically improve retention and engagement outcomes.

Chia-Chia Chang, MPH, MBA, is Coordinator for Partnership and New Opportunity Development for the Office of Total Worker Health® (TWH) at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). She collaborates with partners to share research and promising practices for advancing worker well-being and led the development of the NIOSH Worker Well-being Questionnaire (WellBQ). She has created and delivered presentations and trainings on four continents to a diversity of audiences, including health and human resources professionals, industry associations, universities, and Fortune 500 companies.

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.

Jacob Goldstein is the founder of The Leadership Laboratory, and leverages his experiences in education, the performing arts, and corporate learning & development to his work.  As a performer, Jacob has sung as a backup vocalist for musical artists such as Josh Groban, Idina Menzel, and Patti LuPone, as a recording artist for Netflix series Sense8, and at venues including The United Center, The Chicago Theater, and Chicago Symphony Center.  In the education space, Jacob has served as an educator for high school, undergraduate and graduate students throughout the Midwest, and has been a Guest Lecturer at Northwestern University since 2016.  As a Learning & Leadership Development Consultant, Jacob has worked as a one-on-one coach and group workshop facilitator to organizations ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies in diverse industries, including technology, healthcare, non-profit, and fashion/apparel.  Jacob holds a Bachelor's degree from The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a Master's of Science in Communication from Northwestern University.

Starla Sampaco joins us again this year to serve as SHRM24's Main Stage host! She is a Filipino-American columnist, host, and international speaker with a background in TV news for Seattle's PBS Channel. She is a contributor to Forbes and Harvard Business Review, where she focuses on teaching women and people of color how to advocate for themselves in the workplace. She also leads keynotes for clients like Microsoft and AT&T. As an extension of this work, Starla taught graduate students as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Washington Communication Leadership Master's Program, where she developed a course on executive presence, public speaking, and communication strategy. Prior to anchoring for PBS, she covered Washington state politics as a legislative reporter and hosted a technology news show.

Starla Sampaco joins us again this year to serve as SHRM24's Main Stage host! She is a Filipino-American columnist, host, and international speaker with a background in TV news for Seattle's PBS Channel. She is a contributor to Forbes and Harvard Business Review, where she focuses on teaching women and people of color how to advocate for themselves in the workplace. She also leads keynotes for clients like Microsoft and AT&T. As an extension of this work, Starla taught graduate students as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Washington Communication Leadership Master's Program, where she developed a course on executive presence, public speaking, and communication strategy. Prior to anchoring for PBS, she covered Washington state politics as a legislative reporter and hosted a technology news show.

Starla Sampaco joins us again this year to serve as SHRM24's Main Stage host! She is a Filipino-American columnist, host, and international speaker with a background in TV news for Seattle's PBS Channel. She is a contributor to Forbes and Harvard Business Review, where she focuses on teaching women and people of color how to advocate for themselves in the workplace. She also leads keynotes for clients like Microsoft and AT&T. As an extension of this work, Starla taught graduate students as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Washington Communication Leadership Master's Program, where she developed a course on executive presence, public speaking, and communication strategy. Prior to anchoring for PBS, she covered Washington state politics as a legislative reporter and hosted a technology news show.

Kris Erickson currently serves as co-founder and executive consultant for Workforce Science Associates. In this role, she empowers organizations to discover the unique drivers and motivational aspects that drive performance in their workforce and use these to accelerate a high-performance culture.

Kris has over 25 years of consulting experience with Fortune 500 companies. In this capacity, Erickson worked at both the strategic and tactical levels to develop and deploy comprehensive workforce solutions.

James Longabaugh, Ph.D., joined WSA as an Executive Consultant in 2019.  Previously, Dr. Longabaugh worked at IBM for four years as a Senior Managing Consultant, serving as a trusted advisor to organizations for enhancing the experience of their employees through research-driven employee engagement programs.  In addition, Dr. Longabaugh has extensive experience developing pre-employment assessment and selection programs for organizations to hire their unfair share of high-quality talent, employing assessment and coaching programs to develop the next generation of leaders, and leveraging workforce analytics and artificial intelligence to discover meaningful insight to drive change.

Dr. Longabaugh has over 10 years of experience in talent acquisition, employee engagement and customer surveys, talent assessment, and workforce analytics spanning a variety of organizations and industries.  Prior to IBM, Dr. Longabaugh was the owner and Principal Consultant of a boutique consulting firm specializing in organizational effectiveness, employee and customer surveys, recruitment, leadership development, and pre-employment assessments.  Dr. Longabaugh is an adjunct professor in the graduate I-O psychology department at Seattle Pacific University, is a published researcher, and has presented at multiple conferences and continues to contribute research and best practices to improve the world of work.