The Human Element | CHRO & HR Leadership Podcast

Summary Jens Hovgaard Jensen, Vice President of People and Culture at ECCO Americas, joins host Barb Bidan on The Human Element for a candid conversation about HR's future in the age of AI. Drawing on a career built from turnarounds and carve-outs at Maersk, Girteka Logistics, and ECCO, plus ten years as an officer in the Royal Danish Life Guards, Jens makes a provocative case: HR should actively...

Summary RJ Jadhav, Vice President of Human Resources at Lumen Technologies, joins host Barb Bidan to reframe how HR leaders should think about AI, transformation, and the role of their function. RJ has spent his career inside the most transformative companies in tech — fifteen years at Microsoft, the hypergrowth years at Google Cloud, and now at Lumen, where he's helping rewire a legacy network co...

Summary On The Human Element, Barb Bidan talks with Jennifer Erfurth, Global Head of HR at the cybersecurity company OPSWAT, about what it actually takes to run an AI-first people function rather than just talk about one. Jennifer canceled a planned Workday rollout, built AI agents on top of BambooHR, rewrote her employer value proposition to lead with AI, and kept her human HR team in place as th...

Summary On The Human Element, Barb Bidan sits down with Joshua Horenstein, who runs both the HR and legal functions at Innophos. Joshua argues that AI governance fails on the org chart, not in the policy document. He walks through his manufacturing-pilot mindset for rolling out AI, names the two reasonable worst cases most HR leaders aren't watching for, and explains why the friction between the C...

Description In December 2024, Christine Aldrich's recruiting team caught their first deepfake candidate. Twelve months later, nearly 1 in 6 applicants at Pindrop shows signs of data manipulation — and every HR leader Christine knows has a story. In this episode of The Human Element, host Barb Bidan sits down with Christine Aldrich, Chief People Officer at Pindrop (the company building identity ver...

Summary On The Human Element, Barb Bidan talks with Q Hamirani, Chief People Officer at HighLevel, about treating AI as a teammate you onboard rather than a tool you install. Q draws on building people functions at Airbnb, Paper, and now a 2,000-person fully remote AI company to argue that the real constraint on AI adoption is human cognitive capacity, not technology. He shares how he trained an A...

Summary In this episode of The Human Element, Chief People Officer John Foster (Tala) makes the case that the biggest risk for HR leaders isn't doing bad work — it's doing great work that the organization isn't ready to receive. John shares the framework he calls scratch OD, his argument for why AI won't fix performance management but will replace it, and the career moment when a boss told him to...

Summary In this episode of The Human Element, Barb talks with Heather Oxley, CHRO at Perficient, about what it looks like to run HR for a firm whose entire business is helping other companies transform. Heather walks through three areas where she's deploying AI across the talent life cycle: project staffing, learning and development, and recruiting. Her central argument is that the value of AI in...

Summary In this episode of The Human Element, Barb Bidan sits down with Azurée S. Montoute-Lewis, Global Chief People Officer at Burson, to discuss what it actually takes to move AI from pilot programs to organization-wide adoption. Azurée argues that the organizations succeeding at AI adoption aren't moving the fastest. They're the ones who built a foundation of trust before deploying tools, desi...

Summary A new hire fills out their 90-day survey and says they're not getting meaningful time with their manager. Instead of filing it away for a quarterly review, Bradford Wilkins pulls the data—and within ten seconds, AI shows him that the manager is spending nearly 50% of their time on pre-sales activities that aren't even part of their job.  Within a week, the team is redesigning job responsib...

Summary In a regulated, data-rich industry like insurance, speed isn't the goal—credibility is.  In this episode of The Human Element, host Barb Bidan sits down with Elizabeth McSaveny, Chief People Officer at Zurich Canada, for a grounded conversation about what it actually looks like to drive AI adoption at scale inside a global enterprise. Liz leads people strategy for a company that already ru...

Summary AI is already inside 75% of companies—and 100% of people are using it—but only 10% actually know how. So what's really standing between organizations and meaningful AI transformation? According to Amanda Scott, it's not the technology. It's us. In this episode, Barb Bidan sits down with Amanda Scott, CEO of North America Talent Solutions at AON and a PhD candidate researching AI's impact o...

Summary What happens when you've actually built AI into hospitality at the scale of 7,000 employees and millions of guests—not theorized about it on LinkedIn? In this episode, Barb Bidan sits down with Ani Nazaryan, Chief People Officer at The Siegel Group and Amazing Brands, for a refreshingly practical conversation about where AI belongs in HR and where it absolutely doesn't. Ani built her found...

Summary If your HR team is buried in inbox requests, you’re leaving no time for the moments that truly need a human touch. Preet Michelson, Chief People Officer at TMS and Morgan Street Holdings, shares how she’s using AI to modernize global HR operations across 44+ countries—without losing the human element.  A former CPA at KPMG who later moved into commercialization, Preet brings a business-fir...

Human-First AI in Healthcare: Guardrails, Frontline Wins, and HR's New Playbook How do you make AI feel human-first in a mission-driven, frontline environment? Ashley Ridgeway-Washington—CEO and Principal Advisor at Leverage Group and former CHRO at JPS Health Network—shares a leadership-led approach to AI that elevates patient care by improving the employee experience. A rare blend of HR strategi...

From Purpose to AI Workers: CCC's CHRO on Scaling AI Without Losing Humanity If you're embedding AI "everywhere," how do you move fast without losing your human center—or burning out your leaders? Christy Harris, SVP and Chief Human Resources Officer at CCC Intelligent Solutions, shares how the 45-year-old, $1B+ AI-powered SaaS company is modernizing the auto claims ecosystem while transforming ho...

Summary How do you build a people strategy for a high-trust, high-stakes environment where your “customers” are caregivers?  Colette Brown, Chief Human Resources Officer at Stony Brook University Hospital, shares how her team centers HR on mission, fixes pay with data, and uses practical AI to return time to human moments. With strong alignment from CEO Carol Gomes, Colette led a compensation over...

Summary In mission-driven organizations, trust isn’t optional—so how do you adopt AI without losing the human element or opening new risks?  Elizabeth Mattila, Chief Human Resources Officer at Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), shares a pragmatic playbook for using AI in HR while protecting culture, candidates, and company data. From her first “wow” moment with ChatGPT to today’s realities—deepfake...

Summary How do you embed AI into HR across a complex, manufacturing-led enterprise without losing momentum, or quality?  Jill Wrobel, Chief Human Resources Officer at Brunswick Corporation (Mercury Marine, Boston Whaler, Sea Ray), shares how her team is turning survey insights (“we have too much work”) into structured pilots and end-to-end redesigns.  Jill explains why HR must pair quick wins—LLMs...

Summary Buying the shiniest AI won’t transform your org—redesigning the work will.  Maggie Ruvoldt, Chief People Officer at Learn Behavioral, a national leader in ABA therapy for children and young adults with autism, lays out a practical, people-first blueprint for AI adoption that HR should lead.  She reframes success away from headcount cuts and toward real operating gains—think shipped automat...

In this episode of The Human Element, Fred Skinner, Chief Human Resources Officer at Eversana, shares a playbook from life sciences commercialization, where compliance and speed must coexist. He explains “Project Windex,” the company’s multi-year effort to clean data to create a more trustworthy AI. Fred details where they started and how AI in HR is changing the game. He also covers governance, t...

Summary How do you accelerate AI without losing the human element?  Erica Koenig, Chief Human Resources Officer at SPS Commerce—the leader in supply chain cloud solutions—shares how her team is co-creating an AI-enabled future with employees while staying grounded in values and customer impact.  Erica explains why curiosity, adaptability, and critical thinking are the leadership capabilities that...

Summary What does it take to build a culture that embraces AI without fear? In this episode of The Human Element, Barb sits down with Diane Sanford, Chief People Officer at Unleashed Brands, the franchise platform behind Urban Air, Snapology, and The Little Gym. With over 25 years of HR leadership experience, Diane shares how she’s guiding her organization through a new era of AI adoption anchored...

Summary If your workforce runs 24/7, employees can’t wait until business hours for answers. DJ Campbell, Vice President and Chief HR Officer at Sanford Health (Bismarck market), shares how to use AI self-service to cut friction for a 60,000-employee system while keeping the experience human.  He outlines what must be true before greenlighting tools—readiness, education, and myth-busting—and how to...

Summary What if the real power of AI in HR isn’t automation—but trust? Angela Briggs-Page, Chief People Officer at Acelero Learning and a Head Start alum, shares how her team uses AI to elevate human-centered practices across a mission-driven, early childhood education workforce.  She explains how AI transforms thousands of open-ended survey comments into timely insight—capturing tone, emotion, an...