People & Talent Management

Valerie helps companies improve their bottom line by elevating employees from tactical thinkers to strategic leaders.

She served in senior leadership roles at RollsRoyce Aircraft before helping to found InterActiveCorp, parent company to Expedia, Home Shopping Network and TicketMaster. She then went to work for Oprah Winfrey, helping to found the Oxygen channel which was later sold to NBC Universal.

Valerie obtained her mechanical engineering degree from Kettering University and her MBA from the Indiana University Kelley School of Business. Val’s book, Clash of the Generations: Managing the New Workplace Reality, helps leaders manage multiple generations in the office.

 

Heather Stefanski is the Chief Learning and Development Officer at McKinsey & Company where she is responsible for Learning & Development for 45,000+ colleagues globally.  She built McKinsey’s Talent Management capability and she is currently leading the work to pivot the firm to a skills-focused development culture.

Throughout the past 19 years at McKinsey, Heather has held a broad range of People roles, including talent acquisition, professional development, and learning.

Prior to her People roles, Heather was a McKinsey consultant serving clients on various operational topics such as procurement, product development and supply chain.  

Heather has an MBA and an MA in Education from Stanford University, and a BS in Engineering and Operations Research from Princeton University. 

After several years producing and facilitating team building programs for a variety of companies, Matt May recognized that there was an alternate way to provide engaging, interactive experiences. As a result, he created Premier Team Building & Interactive Experiences®, delivering programs nation-wide, and abroad. As the company’s president, he is responsible for the design & development of its experiences, overseeing the production and facilitation of these programs, customer support, and staff training. Additionally, in his career, May has served as a producer, director, manager, administrator, educator, and consultant for various event and live entertainment, theatrical, and educational organizations.

 

After several years producing and facilitating team building programs for a variety of companies, Matt May recognized that there was an alternate way to provide engaging, interactive experiences. As a result, he created Premier Team Building & Interactive Experiences®, delivering programs nation-wide, and abroad. As the company’s president, he is responsible for the design & development of its experiences, overseeing the production and facilitation of these programs, customer support, and staff training. Additionally, in his career, May has served as a producer, director, manager, administrator, educator, and consultant for various event and live entertainment, theatrical, and educational organizations.

 

Kathy Kacher, President of Career/Life Alliance Services, (CLAS) and Cofounder of The SMART Workplace, is a workforce transformation expert with a focus on workplace mobility, change management and leadership engagement. She is also a faculty member with World at Work.

As a leading industry expert and 20+ year pioneer of virtual training and hybrid learning, Cindy Huggett, CPTD, has vast experience helping organizations create engaging learning solutions. She’s the author of several acclaimed books including Virtual Training Tools and Templates: An Action Guide to Live Online Learning, and The Facilitator’s Guide to Immersive, Blended and Hybrid Learning. She partners with organizations on learning strategy and teaches trainers how to effectively facilitate online. She’s also a past member of ATD’s global Board of Directors. Based in Raleigh, NC, Cindy serves clients globally.

Joshua Shelton has worked for FedEx for almost 10 years and with the Fayette County Sheriff's Office, Georgia as a detective 13 years prior to that. He currently chairs the Georgia DFCS Region IV Board and seeks to spread the word of violence prevention. Josh is a Certified Threat Manager (CTM) and serves on the Southeastern Region board of The Association of Threat Assessment Professionals, an organization of law enforcement, prosecutors, mental health professionals, and corporate security practitioners in the field of assessing and managing threats of violence. 

Clayton Lord (Clay, he/him) oversees strategy, planning, program delivery, and program evaluation for the SHRM Foundation, the 501(c)3 nonprofit arm of SHRM, which focuses on widening pathways to work and helping every worker and workplace thrive by empowering HR leaders to be forces for social good. He is a social impact executive who has spent his career driving systemic change in the world of work. Clay is also a writer, painter, and quilter, as well as a travel fanatic, and holds a B.A. in English and Psychology from Georgetown University. He lives with his husband and daughter in Maryland.

Cara Chennault-Reid is Koch Industries’ corporate human resource director, based at the global headquarters in Wichita, Kansas. In her role, Cara leads the human resource capability with over 700 HR professionals supporting 125,000 employees worldwide. She helps advance business vision and strategies through talent management while accelerating the application of Koch’s framework, Principle Based ManagementTM.

Cara and her team focus on helping employees who are contribution motivated achieve their full potential.

In 2006, Cara began her career at INVISTA, a Koch company, leading several global human resource and talent acquisition teams. In 2017, she became the chief operating officer at Koch Global Services, driving a vision for the delivery of shared services within the human resources, facilities, and real estate services.

Prior to joining Koch, Cara spent 12 years with a global consumer products company in various human resource and operations leadership roles.
Cara holds a Bachelor of Science in communications and organizational psychology from the University of Tennessee. She and her husband John live in Wichita, KS and have two daughters.

As an award-winning serial entrepreneur, actor, and computer scientist, Romy Malviya has been tirelessly creating enterprise platforms in Silicon Valley to bring automation to every corporation. His latest brainchild is Pulpstream. Founded in 2014, it streamlines how processes are run in an HR department in a large enterprise.

Joe Urbanski believes an Undeniable Culture™ inspires its people to unleash their best selves, take home more wins and less stress to their families, and create incredible value for the company, its customers, and community. For more than two decades, he has worked with HR and training departments, consulting and coaching 750+ executives and leaders at 400+ global organizations, and facilitating 800+ kickass trainings, strategic retreats, and leadership programs for 480,000 people. Joe has a remarkable understanding of how to transform the workplace experience. Plus, you’ll have more fun and laughs than you’d expect.