Concurrent Session

Jennifer McClure is an entrepreneur, keynote speaker, and high-performance coach who works with leaders to leverage their influence, increase their impact, and accelerate results.

Frequently recognized as a global influencer and expert on the future of work, strategic leadership and innovative people strategies, Jennifer has decades of in-the-trenches leadership and executive experience working in and with startups, privately held companies, and Fortune 500 organizations in a variety of industries.

As a top-rated keynote speaker, Jennifer has shared her insights with thousands of leaders at conferences and corporate events around the world. Clients include Procter & Gamble, General Electric, IBM, SAP, Bloomberg, Charles Schwab, Stryker, LinkedIn, Notre Dame University, Society for Human Resource Management, Association for Legal Administrators, and Association for Talent Development.

In her informative and entertaining keynote programs and workshops, she shares a blend of research, best practices, case studies and storytelling which leaves audience members inspired and motivated to take action when they return to work.

Jennifer is also the Chief Excitement Officer of DisruptHR, a global community designed to move the collective thinking forward when it comes to talent in the workplace, and she hosts a weekly podcast – Impact Makers with Jennifer McClure – sharing conversations with practitioners, entrepreneurs, authors and speakers who are changing the world while building careers that they love, and lives that matter.

Tom Cielak is the Director, HR Operations for ACCO Brands. He is responsible for managing US payroll, HRIS, time and attendance and the employee call center. He holds a BBA in Finance and Accounting from the University of Iowa.

Victor is a certified and trained instructor, and has delivered hundreds of presentations, training sessions, and learning events internally at Ricoh. He began work as a certified technical trainer in the 1990s and directed the Sales Training & Development organization at Ricoh from 2006-2010

Derek Newell is the CEO of Jiff. For 20 years, he's been leading innovative health tech and service companies, including Robert Bosch Healthcare, which he helped build into the world’s largest remote patient monitoring company, and LifeMasters, pioneering the first patient-centric disease management platform. Derek started at WebOS, which developed an early web-based operating system, and holds graduate degrees in Business and Public Health from UC, Berkeley.

Howard A. Wallack has been the Deputy Chief Human Resources & Administrative Officer since 2016 in the Global Human Resources (GHR) department at Jhpiego in Baltimore, MD, an international, non-profit health organization, affiliated with Johns Hopkins University. Jhpiego is dedicated to improving the health of women, children, and families in lower-resourced countries, with approximately 4,200 employees worldwide in 38 countries. At Jhpiego, Howard spearheads the organization’s leadership development program and leads a team of 5 regional HR business partners who support country HR operations, himself currently backstopping Ghana, Guatemala, and Mozambique. During his 40-year career with experience in nearly 90 countries, Howard has had senior-level positions in HR, training and development, global business development, and program management in for-profit and non-profit businesses and the US Peace Corps. In April 2023 Howard was recognized with an OnCon Icon peer-voted award among the “Top 50 HR Professionals” for having made a considerable impact on their organization and/or previous organizations; made strong contributions to their community through thought leadership; innovated in their role/career; and exhibited exceptional leadership. He has advanced degrees in international affairs and international human resources and globalization and holds multiple professional certifications, including the SHRM Senior Certified Professional (SHRM-SCP), and the GPHR® & SPHRi™ qualification from the HR Certification Institute. As a volunteer he has served on the Board of Directors of Cultural Vistas since 2011.

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.

Stewart Levy’s 25-year healthcare career includes leadership positions in the pharmaceutical industry and health promotion organizations. As Director of Sales and Marketing at Novo Nordisk and then Merck, Stewart developed and implemented marketing initiatives for the largest payers and providers in healthcare, including government, managed care organizations, retail chains, and employer groups. During his tenure at Merck, Stewart was involved in helping develop the first pharmacy-based cardiovascular outcomes study, “Project Impact.” This breakthrough project involved the American Pharmaceutical Association (APhA) and helped document the effectiveness of retail-based cholesterol testing in reducing cardiovascular risk through pharmacists.

Stewart spent the next ten years as Senior Vice President and Principal of Impact Health, a national health promotion organization. Under Stewart’s leadership, the breadth of customer groups embracing health promotion expanded to pharmaceutical companies, food companies, advertising agencies, patient recruitment firms, retail chains and more. While at Impact Health, Stewart assisted and authored two outcomes studies. The first was a three-year study with over 12,000 participants which documented the metabolic risk of Hispanic populations in multiple types of venues. The second was a pharmaceutical-sponsored study which documented the effectiveness of a targeted health education campaign with biometric screening on two divergent employee populations. Under his leadership Impact Health expanded from a regional company servicing local employers and managed care organizations in the Northeast, to one of the largest national biometric screening companies in the industry.Stewart founded Health Promotion Solutions (HPS) in January of 2009 to focus on the need for effective, evidence based solutions for chronic disease prevention, identification and management. His expertise in the health promotion industry have led to business with government agencies, employer groups, retail clinics, insurance brokers, and other healthcare organizations nationwide. Stewart has presented as a leading expert at a number of healthcare conferences including the Employer Benefits Conference, Medical Fitness Association, Convergent Care Meeting, World Healthcare Congress, New York Business Group on Health, American Dietetic Association and Society for Human Resources.
 

Sheldon Blumling is a Partner in the Irvine, California office of Fisher & Phillips LLP, a national labor and employment law firm. He is a member of the firm’s Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation Practice Group. He advises clients with respect to all aspects of employee benefits and executive compensation, including retirement plans, health and welfare benefit plans and equity-based compensation plans.

Follow Sheldon on Twitter  @labor_attorneys.

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.

Mike Psenka is the senior vice president of Workforce Analytics for Equifax Workforce Solutions and the founder of eThority, a provider of world-class analytics to the human capital, higher education, commercial, and government markets. In 2011, Equifax Workforce Solutions acquired eThority to offer an unparalleled analytics tool to its customers. Earlier in his career, Psenka worked with PricewaterhouseCoopers within their Open Systems Technology group implementing financial and manufacturing systems. He graduated from Princeton University with a degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. Psenka has focused a great deal of passion toward the creation of 'user-obvious' platforms. When not executing day-to-day business operations, he dedicates himself to the development of innovative solutions that provide vital answers to the marketplace.