Plenary Session

Rachel Sheerin, CPBA is an award-winning keynote speaker, emcee and employee engagement consultant on a mission to help people feel better, think better and do better - together!

A Certified Professional Behavior Analyst, audiences are transformed and recharged with energy and leave equipped with strategies and tangible tools. What makes Rachel connect is the fact that she has been on all sides of business - sales, operations and executive leadership.. She's built multi-million dollar sales teams for organizations that want to grow profits and boost happiness and delivered organization-wide training for different vocations from machinists to executive director, SVP and beyond.

She's also burned out, failed and ruined her career a couple of times - which makes her messages of burnout prevention, happiness and success sincere, impactful and hilarious. With a strong dash of vulnerability, Rachel meets audiences where they are and with her background in meetings and events, gives planners and executives the 5-star surveys they want most.

With Fortune 500 clients such as The Ritz Carlton, WAL-MART, National Associations in Healthcare and Banking, Hilton, Berkshire Hathaway and many more, Rachel is also Co-Founder of MAGNET METHOD, an employee engagement and retention consulting firm for growing cultures.

Rachel's continued research and motivational content around burnout, happiness and success can be seen regularly on her LinkedIn profile and read in her upcoming book, BETTER: How to Feel Good as You Live, Lead and Succeed (8/8/23, Hawthorn Road Press).

Currently serving on the Board of Directors for the Association for Women in Events (AWE), Rachel is a proud member of Meeting Planners International (MPI), supporter of the Appalachian Bear Foundation and can often be found playing ping pong badly with her husband, Jeff.

Jason Averbook is a leading analyst, thought leader and consultant in the area of human resources, the future of work and the impact technology has on that future. He is the Co-founder and CEO of Leapgen, a global consultancy helping organizations shape their future workplace by adopting forward-looking workforce practices and fast-innovating technologies personalized for their business. Prior to founding Leapgen, Jason served as the CEO of The Marcus Buckingham Company (TMBC). In 2005, he co-founded Knowledge Infusion LLC and served as its CEO until 2012, when the company was sold to Appirio. Earlier in his career, he served as the Chief Business Innovation Officer at Appirio Inc., where he led the HCM business. He has also held senior leadership roles at PeopleSoft and Ceridian Corporation. Jason has more than 20 years of experience in the HR and technology industries, and has collaborated with industry-leading companies in transforming their HR organizations into strategic partners.

Jay Polaki, SHRM-SCP, SPHR, is a global HR technology innovator and thought leader in HR digital transformation, future of work, ethical AI in HR, talent selection and assessment systems, and employee experience. She brings her experiential learning and insights to her keynotes and regularly contributes to Forbes, HRD, and other global HR publications. Meeting the challenges of people right where they are, taking the people-first approach, and providing transformational workplace technology solutions is why Jay loves working in the People function. As the founder & CEO of HR Geckos, a digital HR operations platform powered by an AI chatbot, Jay's mission is to transform employee experiences in the hybrid workplace so that people and organizations thrive. Making HR as agile as a gecko is Jay's motto! Jay lives in the Washington DC Metro Area, reads Agatha Christie, grows tomatoes and roses in her verdant garden, swaps HR tech stories with global HR leaders on her podcast HR Bytes, solves puzzles and crosswords, and loves training her chatbot, HR GeckoBot, with her little nephews.

Aradhya Srivastava is a product and technology thought leader with extensive experience and expertise in leading people/HR technology products from inception to shipping. He is currently working at Intuit and playing a leading role in HR technology programs with a focus on total rewards and shared services. Aradhya has worked with global companies such as Levi Strauss Co. ,ESRI , Capgemini and Accenture, where he successfully delivered an Enterprise Technology portfolio of multi-million-dollar programs for several years. He loves working on new products and complex business problems to provide simple, delightful, and scalable solutions that create exceptional customer, employee, and shareholder experiences. He is a turnaround and transformation expert who specializes in bringing structure to chaotic functions/programs and leading product-enabled transformation.

Aradhya has a dual passion for people and technology, and HR tech is a blend of the two. He is passionate about improving the 'technology experience' at large corporations so that all employees have the same flawless experience when interacting with all technology touchpoints at work as they do with consumer technology.

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Tomer is the co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Gusto. He is responsible for the development and execution of the product vision — reimagining how modern payroll, benefits, and compliance should operate.

Deborah Hanus is the CEO and co-founder of Sparrow, the first high-tech, high-touch leave management solution to help employers care for their people. By managing federal, state, and local leave compliance, Sparrow ensures employee leave is stress-free for human resources, payroll, compliance, managers, and employees. Before founding Sparrow, Deborah earned multiple engineering degrees from MIT, worked in Cambodia as a Fulbright Scholar, and started a Ph.D. in AI at Harvard. Under her leadership, Sparrow has quickly grown to impact hundreds of thousands of lives.  

Jocelyn Samuels is Vice Chair of the Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), appointed by President Biden in 2021 and confirmed for a second term ending in 2026. Prior to joining the Commission, she served as the Executive Director of the Williams Institute, the leading research center on sexual orientation and gender identity law and public policy. During the Obama administration, she served as the Director of the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services and as the Acting Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice where she supervised enforcement of civil rights laws through litigation, rulemaking, policy development, and public education across a range of civil rights issues and was an architect of numerous government policies applying federal law to remedy discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. She previously served as a Vice President of the National Women’s Law Center, Labor Counsel to Senator Edward M. Kennedy, and a senior attorney at the EEOC in the Office of Legal Counsel. She received a J.D. from Columbia Law School and a B.A. from Middlebury College. 

Hakeem Isaac is a former investment banker and passionate entrepreneur who is dedicated to ensuring future generations have equity and belonging in the workplace. He earned his Accounting degree from Morehouse College and was professionally trained by the likes of Goldman Sachs, PricewaterhouseCooper, and Fifth Third Bank.

Hakeem is the Co-founder of unboXt, Inc., a platform focused on improving the employee / manager relationship. unboXt takes employee feedback and provides managers with real-time feedback and insights to drive team motivation, morale, and engagement. Prior to founding unboXt, Hakeem worked at Fifth Third Bank. While there Hakeem had the opportunity to work in a variety of markets and was named the youngest appointed Corporate VP within the bank’s $170B footprint.

When Hakeem is not working on his startup, he enjoys competing in triathlons, or teaching financial literacy to anyone willing to listen.

Jennifer McCollum is CEO of Linkage, Inc., where she oversees the strategic direction and global operations of the Boston, MA-based leadership development company. With a mission to “Change the Face of Leadership,” Linkage has dedicated 30 years to improving leadership effectiveness and equity in hundreds of organizations globally. Linkage provides assessments, training, coaching, consulting and conferences, with Solutions designed to Accelerate Purposeful Leaders; Advance Women Leaders; and Create Inclusive Organizations. 

Jennifer is a highly sought-after consultant and speaker, with a deep expertise in Inclusive Leadership and Advancing Women Leaders. She has delivered workshops, keynotes, webinars and podcasts to thousands of leaders globally on live and virtual stages, including 100 Leaders Live (Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches conference), Chief Learning Officer Exchange, Chester Elton’s “Leading with Gratitude” LinkedIn Live, John Baldoni’s “Grace under Pressure” LinkedIn Live, Candy O’Terry’s “The Story Behind Her Success” podcast, and VoiceAmerica radio broadcast. She is a contributing author to Leadership in a Time of Crisis and has been published in The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Chief Talent Development Officer, CEO Refresher, and Real Leaders. She is a member of the Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches.

Background & Experience:

Jennifer has 20 years of experience building and leading businesses in the leadership space. Prior to Linkage, Jennifer spent a decade growing businesses within Korn Ferry and Corporate Executive Board (CEB), now Gartner. At CEB, she led product management within the leadership division, driving innovative solutions that helped organizations select, develop and place leaders at all levels. She also ran CEB’s Leadership Academies business, which developed more than 30,000 professionals in 2,100 companies throughout 50 countries and grew revenue at a 97% combined annual growth rate across five years. 

Previously, Jennifer served as CEO of IntraVision, a leadership consultancy she founded and grew over the course of eight years. She worked with public companies, start-ups, associations and nonprofits. Her passion is creating vision, executing strategy and managing cohesive teams toward aspirational goals, with a special focus on supporting women in leadership roles.

She is an avid tennis player and skier, and lives in Bethesda, MD, with her husband and three children.

Education & Training:

Jennifer has a master’s degree in communications from the University of Stirling in Stirling, Scotland, and an undergraduate degree from Wake Forest University in psychology and communications.

Dr. Vaneeta Sandhu, Head of Emotional Fitness at Coa

Dr. Vaneeta Sandhu is the Head of Emotional Fitness at Coa, an first-of-its-kind online learning platform for employee mental health. Coa offers employers & their teams hundreds of live & on-demand emotional fitness classes on topics like resilience, leadership, burnout, building psychological safety, and more. All of Coa’s classes are rooted in an accessible, interactive, and therapist-led approach that employees love. They work with hundreds of companies including NBC, Skillshare, Qualtrics, Salesforce, General Assembly, and more.

As Head of Emotional Fitness, Vaneeta leads the creation of Coa's live class experiences and curriculum, and the training of our skilled facilitator team. Through her background in clinical psychology and facilitation, she brings an engaging and down-to-earth approach in helping people prioritize mental health through the practice of emotional fitness. With more than 10 years of experience as a clinical psychologist, facilitator, educator, and public speaker, Vaneeta has worked with teams at Lyft, Yelp, Twitter, Reddit, and Dropbox to help managers and executives develop core leadership skills. Her expertise includes principles of behavior change, cross-cultural dynamics, and adult learning.

You can learn more about Coa: joincoa.com/employers

Follow and learn more about Vaneeta: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vaneetasandhu/

Ariela Safira is the Founder and CEO of Real, a mental health care company building a new therapy model rooted in health equity, affordability, and a true brand evolution, ensuring we all engage with preventative care and feel proud doing so. Starting her career at IDEO, she studied, researched and developed new concepts to approach mental health care and mental wellbeing. Building on her research, Ariela joined Cityblock, founding their first behavioral health clinic in Brooklyn, NY. Ariela earned a BS in Mathematics and Computational Science from Stanford University, where the impetus for her work in mental health care began. Later, she joined Columbia’s Clinical Psychology program to train as a therapist and left the program in 2019 to launch Real. She’s biked across multiple countries to fundraise for suicide prevention. Ariela is the recipient of the 2019 American Psychiatric Association’s Innovation Award, recognized as Forbes 30 Under 30, and Inc’s Top 100 Female Founders.

Tim Sackett, SCP, is the CEO of HRUTech.com, a leading technical recruiting firm. Tim has over 20 years of combined executive HR and talent acquisition experience working for Fortune 500 companies. Tim is a highly sought-after international speaker on leadership, HR &TA Tech, talent acquisition, and HR execution. Tim is currently a Senior Faculty member with the Josh Bersin Academy. He is also an Angel investor and advisor and sits on multiple HR Technology corporate boards.

Tim is the author of the newly released book The Talent Fix, Vol. 2. He also writes daily on his blog, the Tim Sackett Project. Tim is married to a hall-of-fame wife, has three sons, and his dog Tucker. In 2023, he was named a Top Global HR & Recruitment Influencer by HR Executive. He has more Twitter (X) followers than his 3 Gen Z sons and is sponsored on stage by diet Mt. Dew.

For over 20 years, Ian has been an investor, entrepreneur, and advisor to education and technology companies. He has a deep global network in the education sector and brings a wealth of investing and board experience to the Owl Ventures team. Ian serves on the boards of Degreed, BenchPrep, LeLe Ketang, Sanjieke, and Abl and works closely with MasterClass. Prior to joining Owl Ventures, Ian led the education sector at Warburg Pincus and was a technology investor at Silver Lake Partners. Earlier in his career, Ian was a consultant at Bain & Company and also helped launch BigMachines, a SaaS company that was acquired by Oracle.

Ian serves on the Advisory Board for SEO, a non-profit that provides educational, career, and mentoring programs for young people from underrepresented communities. He is a member of the Advisory Council for Gladeo, a digital social enterprise dedicated to providing career guidance to underserved youth of diverse backgrounds. Ian was also the lead author of Caution: Watch for Scholarships Ahead, a practical guide for students to navigate the complex scholarship application process, which was endorsed by Stanford University’s Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid.

Ian is a graduate of Stanford University, where he earned a B.S. in Industrial Engineering, with Distinction, and an M.S. in Industrial Engineering, with a concentration in technology management and entrepreneurship. He also received his M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar and Arbuckle Leadership Fellow.

William is the President of RecruitingDaily. At the intersection of HR and technology, he’s a Writer, Speaker, Advisor, Consultant, Investor, Storyteller & Teacher. He's been writing about HR related issues for over a decade. William serves on the Board of Advisors / Board of Directors for 20 HR technology startups. William is a graduate of the University of Alabama of Birmingham with a BA in Art History. He also earned an MA in American Indian Studies from the University of Arizona and an MBA from Case Western Reserve University.

Brigette Lau is a co-founder and General Partner at Firework Ventures, an early-stage fund leading investments in the future of work. At Firework, she invests and works closely with startups that create access and opportunity, driving economic and social mobility for all. This definition and investment thesis cuts across multiple traditional investment verticals–HRtech, fintech, well-being tech, and edtech –with work at the center. Currently, she sits on the boards of Stride and Tilt.

Prior to co-founding Firework, Brigette was a co-founder and Partner at Social Capital, a venture firm with $1.2B AUM where she invested in EdTech and HRTech. Outside of venture investing, Brigette is active in her community, and serves on the executive board of the Golden State Warriors. Brigette earned her computer engineering degree from the University of Waterloo and her MBA from Georgetown University. Brigette is also a Kauffman Fellow.