Wednesday, July 12

8:15 am – Registration & Breakfast

8:45 am – Welcome to the CHRO Institute

Discovering Hidden Talent in Underserved Communities

As globalization ebbs and flows, cities need to establish themselves as global centers, careful not to slip into market obsolescence, especially when facing difficulties in labor force supply chains. In order to alleviate the difficulty in supplying industry-ready professionals to a city only recently maturing into the digital-centric business world, firms need to adapt to an “on-demand” and GIG approach. The value drawn from this paradigm lies in its cyclical nature. By obtaining localized underserved human capital at a lower cost, firms can generate a fundable supply chain of talent and diversity as markets change over time.

Art Langer
Faculty Professor
Columbia University

10:00 am – The Transformation of HR into Talent Management

The HR function has crossed the threshold into the era of digital business, where speed, resilience, culture, creativity and high aptitude teams are the only enduring sources of competitive advantage. Winning is not about technology, but about people. Not surprisingly, we have witnessed the rise of the Chief People Officer, as traditional HR functions are outsourced in order to focus on building high performing, feedback driven cultures. Companies must learn how to take Millennials, gig workers, and strategic partners and seamlessly weave them into a cohesive workforce. This interactive talk will engage the audience to think through how HR must transform itself into a talent management function capable of helping leaders get the best out of their people, so they outcompete their rivals in this new world of work. It is not an exaggeration to say that the transformed HR organization will not only be strategic, but will become one of the most important functions in the Digital Enterprise.

Frank Wander
CEO and Founder
PeopleProductive.com

11:00 am – Break

11:15 am – Revenue Generation in HR: Monetizing Assets

HR leaders have talked about becoming ‘more strategic’ so much that the listening audience has left the room. All too often, what’s lagging behind is the real breakthrough and disruptive thinking that catapults the field to center tables of C-Suites. There are fewer things that could have more of a strategic impact than increasing corporate revenues. Topline growth is on the mind and agenda of every CEO.

Joanne (Jo) Rencher has long had a passion for finding ways to take the HR profession to another plain. Operating as ‘business leaders first, HR leaders second’ has been her mantra during her 25 years of business experience across corporate, global, nonprofit, consulting and start-up settings. Her current role as Chief Business and Talent Officer at the Girl Scouts of the USA is a first for that organization. In this session at the CHRO Institute, Jo will impart strategies and tools to help you to increase your company’s bottom-line. Whether through revenue-impact, select vendor management or direct profit, the opportunities exist and Jo will talk about how you can mine them.

Joanne Rencher
Chief Business and Talent Officer
Girl Scouts of the USA

12:30 pm – Lunch

1:30 pm – CHRO: The True Agent of Transformation

Assurant has been on a multi-year journey of transformation and HR has been the co-pilot. When newly named CEO, Alan Colberg, led the company through a portfolio evaluation and organizational restructuring, Robyn Price Stonehill, CHRO, Assurant, worked closely with him to enable the culture change necessary to increase the effectiveness and productivity of transformations across the enterprise. Robyn will share the learnings from her journey as well as her successes and how they have shaped her thinking for the path forward.

Robyn Price Stonehill
EVP, CHRO
Assurant

2:45 pm – Break

3:00 pm – Spin-offs, Divestitures, Separations and the CHRO

HR Experts over the years have deftly dealt with all kinds of challenges over the past century: mergers and acquisitions, IPOs, bankruptcies, right shoring, the rise of personal computers, then the rise of personal phones etc. The first two decades of the 21st Century however saw CHROs battling with a new hydra – divestitures, spin-offs and separations.

Bala led the redesign of the new organizational structure for Xerox as it recently spun off its services company after almost a decade of being merged. During this session he will discuss how he and his team successfully navigated the separation process and subsequent redesign of the new Xerox.

Bala Sathyanarayanan
EVP, Business Transformation and Human Resources
Xerox

4:30 – 6:00 pm – Networking Reception

Thursday, July 13

8:00 am – Breakfast

8:30 am – Colleagues as Clients: Bringing a Revenue Mindset to ‘Non-Revenue’ Functions

Lisa will discuss learnings about bringing business expertise to subject matter experts. Insights gained from running a revenue business to becoming the COO of Global Compliance. Lisa will offer expertise about compliance and rules, and how talented people had never been taught some important things about running their business well — relationships, different ways to think about excellence, and more.

Lisa Shalett
Former Partner, Goldman Sachs;
Advisor to Startups

9:45 am – Break

10:00 am – Curating the Employee Experience

As “employee experience” has become a critical factor in recruiting top talent, Sunita’s session will explore the growing employee experience challenge and the increasing demand for a holistic and integrated work/life experience. She will also discuss the various factors that contribute to a positive/productive employee experience and help uncover barriers companies often face in creating optimal employee experiences.

Sunita Holzer
EVP & CHRO
Realogy Holdings Corporation

11:30 am – Lunch

12:30 pm – The “What” and the “How”: Shifting Priorities for Senior HR Executives

Businesses are rapidly evolving. Workforces are more dynamic today than ever before and the amount of data that exists in the workplace is overwhelming. The rise of the digital age and the ways in which consumers interact with brands requires companies to focus on constant business transformation, practical experience, and agility. Kimberly’s session will explore these shifting and emerging priorities, discuss their broader implications, and introduce others. She will invite audience members to contribute their own perspectives as well as to brainstorm predictions for other priorities that will emerge along the HR landscape as a result of these paradigm shifts.

Kimberly Samon
CHRO
Weight Watchers International

1:45 pm – Break

2:00 pm – Growing Brands by Growing Talent, Leadership and Inclusive Cultures

Will 2017 be the year of diversity in business? Most leading research firms say yes according to Forbes magazine. McKinsey’s research shows that gender-diverse companies are 15% more likely to outperform their peers; ethnically-diverse companies are 35% more likely to do the same. Catalyst research shows that companies with more women on the board statistically outperform their peers over a long period of time. Marissa’s session will help uncover the talent practices that predict the highest performing companies – all are focused on building an Inclusive Talent System.

Marissa Andrada
SVP, Human Resources
Kate Spade & Company

3:15 pm – Break

3:30 pm – Promote Your Employee Experience, Not Your Job Opportunities, to Hire Today’s Top Talent

Inspiring today’s top talent is harder than ever. Successful companies are finding new and creative ways to inspire passive candidates by promoting their culture and career opportunities without traditional job posting techniques.

Creating fans of your brand allows you to own the relationship between employer and top talent. With this shift, employers are then able to use new culture-based selection tools to help ensure they are hiring the right candidates for their company’s DNA.

Greg’s session will share best practices and recent successes on how to leverage mixed media at a low cost to promote your company and alternative hiring methods such as video applications, auditions, talent contests, team and peer interviews – while still keeping the process connected to your applicant tracking system (ATS).

Greg Hill
SVP & CHRO
Equinox Holdings Inc.

4:45 pm – Program Wrap-Up

5:00 pm – Adjourn

Marissa Andrada, SVP, Human Resources, Kate Spade & Company

Marissa Andrada is a nationally recognized catalyst for start-up, turn around, and high performing, innovative organizations.

Prior to joining Kate Spade and Company, Marissa was the Senior VP of Partner Resources for Starbucks, an Advisory Board Member for Beckett Film Fund, and served on the Board of Directors for Catalyst, a leading nonprofit membership organization expanding opportunities for women and business. With global offices and more than 700 member organizations, Catalyst annually honors exemplary organizational initiatives that promote women’s advancement.

A strategic and operational leader, Marissa specializes in cultivating leadership and organization capabilities designed to achieve objectives through the alignment of HR strategy that supports business models.

Marissa has developed HR Centers of Expertise and is passionate about growing brands through growing talent, leadership and inclusive cultures.

Greg Hill, SVP & CHRO, Equinox Holdings Inc.

Greg has over 25 years of human resources experience primarily within the hospitality industry supporting service and brand centric companies. Greg joined Equinox Holdings Inc. in 2010 to lead human resources and execute the Company’s significant growth strategies in the U.S. and abroad. In addition to leading the Company’s talent and organizational growth plans, he is responsible for benefits, compensation, labor & employee relations, rewards and professional development for 14,000 employees. During his tenure, he has also led all human resources aspects required for the successful growth of Equinox Holding’s Portfolio that includes over 250 locations under Blink Fitness, Equinox, Pure, SoulCycle, and most recently, Equinox Hotels.

Prior to Equinox, Greg joined Frontier Communications, a Fortune 500 Company, to lead the human resources responsibilities for a 10,000-employee acquisition from Verizon. Before Frontier, Greg spent three years with Wyndham Worldwide as Executive Vice President, Global Human Resources where he was responsible for creating a global hospitality division from a newly formed public company that was spun from Cendant Corporation. He opened new offices in Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, Singapore and London during his tenure there.

Prior to Wyndham Worldwide, he spent eight years at Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, where he held several regional and national positions in human resources. Most notably, he served as Vice President, North America Human Resources overseeing the recruiting, compensation, training, labor and employee relation functions for over 55,000 employees across the Country. Before Starwood, Greg worked for Hyatt Hotels Corporation for ten years, where he held various human resources positions in Chicago, Virginia, Washington, D.C., Maryland, New York City, New Orleans and Philadelphia.

He was the founder of the American Hotel and Lodging Association’s Labor Relations Council and served as the Council Chairman in 2005 and 2006. The Council consisted of heads of human resources and labor relations for the major hotel companies to provide support to industry CEO’s, owners and operators on various employee and labor relations matters.

Greg is a certified Six Sigma Black Belt, Youth Basketball Coach and Board Member for two organizations in his home town of Oradell, New Jersey. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Hotel Management with a focus in Human Resources from Niagara University in New York.

Sunita Holzer, EVP & CHRO, Realogy Holdings Corporation

Sunita Holzer was appointed as executive vice president and chief human resources officer (CHRO) for Realogy in March 2015. She is responsible for all aspects of Realogy’s worldwide human resources strategy and implementation for the Company’s 10,700 employees. With more than 30 years of experience in the human resources field and over 10 as a CHRO, she has a wealth of strategic human resources leadership experience, having served in executive HR roles for a number of leading companies in the financial services and technology sectors.

Previously, Holzer served as executive vice president and CHRO for Computer Sciences Corporation from 2012 to 2014, where she had oversight of global human resources for 80,000 employees across 60 countries. Holzer also was executive vice president and CHRO at Chubb Insurance from 2003 to 2012. Prior to her tenure at Chubb Insurance, she held executive HR roles at GE Capital, American Express and American International Group.

Since 2011, Holzer has served as a member of the Board of Directors for South Jersey Industries, an energy services holding company, and as a member of its Compensation and Corporate Responsibility committees. She also serves on the Program Advisory Committee for Re:Gender, a non-profit women’s research organization, and is a past member of the Board for Jersey Battered Women’s Service.

Holzer earned a bachelor’s degree from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and a master’s degree in Human Resource Management from the Labor Relations School at New York Institute of Technology.

Art Langer, Faculty Professor, Columbia University

Dr. Arthur M. Langer is the Chairman and Founder of Workforce Opportunity Services. He is the Director of the Center For Technology Management and the Associate Chair of Faculty Affairs, Support, and Development and Academic Director of the Executive Master of Science in Technology Management at Columbia University.

He serves on the faculty of the Department of Organization and Leadership at the Graduate School of Education (Teachers College). Dr. Langer is also an elected member of the Executive Committee of the Columbia University Faculty Senate.

Dr. Langer is the author of Strategic IT: Best Practices for Managers and Executives (2013 with Lyle Yorks), Guide to Software Development: Designing and Managing the Life Cycle (2012), Information Technology and Organizational Learning (2011), Analysis and Design of Information Systems (2007), Applied Ecommerce (2002), and The Art of Analysis (1997) and has published numerous articles and papers relating to service learning for underserved populations, IT organizational integration, mentoring and staff development. Dr. Langer consults with corporations and universities on information technology, staff development, management transformation, and curriculum development around the globe.

Prior to joining the full-time faculty at Columbia University, Dr. Langer was Executive Director of Computer Support Services at Coopers and Lybrand, General Manager and Partner of Software Plus, and President of Macco Software.

Joanne Rencher, Chief Business and Talent Officer, Girl Scouts of the USA

With 25 years of business leadership experience, Joanne serves as the Chief Business and Talent Officer with responsibilities for the strategies and execution of all talent and culture activities at the Girl Scouts of the USA. Joanne also provides strategic leadership of the Girl Scouts’ Cultural Resources, with a focus on increasing investments and elevating the brand through GSUSA’s unique physical properties, history, and collections. With her passion for developing business leaders across the HR field, Joanne founded Who’s Got Next in HR?, Inc. – a membership based organization challenging conventional wisdom around career paths for HR professionals who dare to ask ‘what’s next?’ She served as the Vice President of Human Capital for The New Teacher Project (TNTP) and as a nonprofit consultant, leading innovations in the education reform and nonprofit sectors, respectively. Before working as a nonprofit consultant, Joanne served as the Chief People Officer for the American Red Cross in Greater New York where she held both human resources and P&L responsibilities as a member of the executive team. In 2001, she was recruited to build a global human resources unit from the ground floor, ultimately leading a matrixed team on 4 continents and in 6 countries for the first public-private partnership to work on advocacy and vaccine research/development for an AIDS vaccine – the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI). She began her career in a bond insurance company, part of the GE/GE Capital conglomerate and as a member of the team that led FGIC through a proactive company ‘reinvention’, winning several leadership awards. Joanne holds a Bachelor of Science in Business, Management and Economics from the State University of New York’s Empire College. She is the author of numerous articles, including her writings, “People Analytics: The “Flywheel Effect” for the field of HR (HR People + Strategy) in 2016, and How Companies Kill Innovation (HR People + Strategy) in 2016.

Kimberly Samon, CHRO, Weight Watchers International

Kimberly is the Chief Human Resources Officer at Weight Watchers International, Inc. where she is responsible for Global Human Resources, Real Estate, Facilities, and is the executive responsible for Weight Watchers Health Solutions, a division of Weight Watchers that brings the Weight Watchers offering and other corporate wellness services to employers of all sizes. Kimberly has over 25 years of broad HR, legal, and business experience in the Retail, Consumer Products, Service, and Consulting industries. She is a dynamic and versatile leader, with a strong combination of business acumen and HR functional excellence. Kimberly has operated in global environments where her outstanding communication skills enabled her to foster collaboration among people and ideas in order to accelerate the rate of transformation in organizations. Kimberly joined Weight Watchers from KSL Advisory Services, a private Corporate Strategy and Human Resources Consulting firm providing expertise to companies on all facets of their business. Before assuming that position, she was Executive Vice President of HR and Corporate Strategy with Simmons Bedding Company where she was responsible for all Human Resources and Strategy initiatives and partnered with the executive team to drive clear alignment between human capital management and strategic planning. Prior to Simmons Bedding, Kimberly held senior leadership positions with Lacerte Technologies and Kinko’s (now FedEx Office), was Chief People Officer and Labor and Employment Counsel for HQ Global Workplaces, as well as HR roles with Frito-Lay and Philip Morris Companies (now Altria). She has also held GM, and interim head of operations and information technology roles as well as practiced law. Kimberly holds a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University, a MBA in Management from Mercer University, and a JD with a focus in Labor and Employment Law from Stetson University. She is originally from the NYC area and recently returned to the area with her family.

Bala Sathyanarayanan, EVP, Business Transformation and Human Resources, Xerox

Bala V. Sathyanarayanan is the Executive Vice President, Business Transformation and Human Resources for Xerox. In this role, Bala provides leadership on the design and execution of transformation and HR plans that help deliver a workforce capable of executing on Xerox’s long-term business strategy.

Bala has a proven record of accomplishment in helping management teams align their Human Capital with the overall business strategy. Prior to joining Xerox, Bala was with Hewlett Packard Inc. as Head of Human Resources for HP’s Americas Region, a $16B business. In this role, Bala provided HR leadership to the business management teams within the region He has also served as senior partner of Talent Acquisition and Services Leadership Program for Avaya Inc.

Bala also has several years of international experience creating business development and human capital systems and strategies. These skills were honed at Coca-Cola Inc., where he served as the regional training manager for the company’s Asia Region, and at United Technologies – Otis Elevator Company, where he began his career as a Management Trainee and held multiple business roles leading up to safety and training officer for its South India Operations.

Bala holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering and an MBA from the University of Madras in India. He also received a Master of Human Resources degree from Rutgers University and graduated from the Advanced Management Program, Harvard Business School. Bala was named on the “Outstanding 50 Asian Americans in Business” list in 2014.

Lisa Shalett, Former Partner, Goldman Sachs; Advisor to Startups

Lisa Shalett is a retired Goldman Sachs Partner, who is now an Advisor to startups, an Angel Investor, and an Independent Board Director. During her 20 year career at Goldman Sachs, she held a number of leadership roles, most recently Global Head of Brand Marketing & Digital Strategy, managing Goldman’s brand during the financial crisis. Then she promptly “failed” retirement, and spent one year at Odyssey, an explosively-growing, millennials-focused media startup, as Chief Marketing Officer and Advisor. She currently serves on two for-profit boards, Brookfield Property Partners (the publicly traded property/real asset arm of Brookfield Asset Management, and one of the largest global commercial real estate owners and operators) and PerformLine (the leading SaaS platform for marketing compliance), a number of non-profit boards, and has angel invested in several startups. She is a respected and accomplished leader, a strategic thinker, innovator, problem solver, and a committed and sought-after coach and
mentor, recognized for motivating people and investing in their development and success.

At Goldman Sachs, Lisa held senior leadership roles in 5 divisions and 2 regions, led revenue-producing and revenue supporting businesses, managed global P&Ls and important client relationships across multiple cultures and geographies, and helped transform the way Goldman communicates with its key stakeholders. She began in 1995 as an Associate in Japanese Equities Sales, leveraging her expertise in Japanese language and business, and spent 11 years in the Equities Division, where she became a Partner and Head of International Equities, and worked in NY and in Tokyo. In January 2006, as the regulatory environment was intensifying, Lisa was tapped to become the Chief Operating Officer of Global Compliance, Legal and Internal Audit, to bring revenue-business leadership experience to control functions that were now the new growth areas of the firm. In March 2010, as the financial crisis loomed, she was then asked by senior leadership to take on the role of Global Head of Brand Marketing & Digital Strategy in the Executive Office. During this unprecedented period in the firm’s history, she served as a change agent, and led the strategic development of Goldman’s first (and award-winning) corporate image advertising campaign, managed proprietary brand and reputation research, and developed and drove digital strategy, including the launch of Goldman’s social media presence, content marketing, thought leadership efforts, and the redesign of the firm’s website, to create greater transparency and improve understanding of the firm. Lisa helped forge strong media industry partnerships and worked closely with entrepreneurs.

Amidst the disruption and innovation within the media industry created by the rise of digital media channels and platforms, Lisa developed a passion for working with startups in media and tech. She left Goldman in 2015 to spend more time advising high-growth companies on business models, strategy, marketing, and talent. She joined the executive team of Odyssey, a millennials-focused social content platform that crowdsources diverse perspectives from millennial influencers in their local communities, and helps brands trying to resonate with this audience, working for its 28-year-old CEO as CMO and then Advisor, from June 2015 through June 2016, which gave her firsthand experience of working in a high-growth startup. Currently Lisa works formally with several startups (Qineqt, Trustify, BetterUp) and informally with many, as a strategic advisor, coach and sounding board, and drives connectivity between the startup world and large organizations around innovation.

Lisa is passionate about mentorship, and committed to initiatives that emphasize leadership development, diversity, innovation, and to using her business background to help entrepreneurs and non-profit organizations succeed. She serves on the Advisory Board of Duke University’s Fuqua/Coach K Center on Leadership & Ethics, the Steering Committee of the Kellogg School’s Center for Executive Women, and the board of W.O.M.E.N. in America, which brings senior women executives together to mentor high potential women leaders. She is an International Selection Panelist for Endeavor, a non-profit that identifies and mentors High-Impact Entrepreneurs in developing markets. She is a frequent speaker and panelist, and has participated in the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit.

Lisa earned her MBA from Harvard Business School, and BA, summa cum laude, in East Asian Studies (Japan) from Harvard University. She lives in New York with her husband and two sons.

Robyn Price Stonehill, EVP, CHRO, Assurant

Robyn Price Stonehill is executive vice president, chief human resource officer of Assurant, Inc., leading the human resources function for the enterprise. Throughout her 17-year career at Assurant, Ms. Price Stonehill has held a variety of leadership roles related to compensation, retirement, health and welfare, and other human resources functions.

In her role, Ms. Price Stonehill advises leaders on organizational transformation and supports Assurant’s talent, leading global human resource activities with a strong focus of diversity and inclusion, learning and development, enterprise talent development and performance management. She is instrumental in the Company’s multi-year transformation to become a more customer-centric and agile organization to enable its long-term business strategy. As part of this process, she led the restructuring of the human resources function at Assurant, streamlining and integrating processes across the enterprise to increase efficiency and drive business results.

As senior vice president, compensation, benefits and shared services from 2011 to 2014, Ms. Price Stonehill set the vision and design of the Total Rewards program and restructured Assurant’s talent acquisition processes, placing greater focus on improving the job candidate experience.

Ms. Price Stonehill reshaped Assurant’s pension and benefits architecture to improve cost efficiency and increase value to employees while maintaining the competitive benefits needed to attract and retain talent. Under her leadership, employees’ 401(k) participation rose from 55 to more than 93 percent.

A former actuary, Ms. Price Stonehill, working with Assurant President and CEO Alan Colberg, strives to increase employee financial literacy, and helped to establish a free Financial Fitness pilot program at the company.

Prior to joining Assurant in 1999, Ms. Price Stonehill advised clients on benefits and retirement issues at Arthur Andersen and KPMG.

During her tenure, Assurant has ranked in Workforce Magazine’s 2014 Workforce 100, a list of the world’s top companies for HR, been recognized with a North American CandE Award for improving the candidate experience and received a Well Workplace Award from WELCOA (Wellness Council of America) for its commitment to workplace wellness . In addition, for the fourth consecutive year, Assurant received a Best Employers for Healthy Lifestyles® Gold Award from the National Business Group on Health.

An advocate for increasing leadership opportunities for women, Ms. Price Stonehill is a board member of the Athena Leadership Council at Barnard College, dedicated to advancing women leaders worldwide. She was recognized for these efforts and her work to increase inclusion at Assurant when she was honored by Profiles in Diversity Journal as a Woman Worth Watching in 2015.

Ms. Price Stonehill is also a member of the board of directors and finance committee of AMIT, which runs more than 70 schools and educates more than 20,000 children in Israel.

She graduated summa cum laude from Queens College of the City University of New York with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Mathematics.

Frank Wander, CEO and Founder, PeopleProductive.com

Frank Wander is a former turnaround CIO, author and CEO of PeopleProductive®, a next generation human capital management company. PeopleProductive’s on-demand software enables companies to methodically improve the productivity of their workforce by increasing the levels of both employee engagement and enablement, and linking these improvements to key business metrics.

Prior to PeopleProductive, Frank was a turnaround CIO at three different companies, most recently Guardian Life Insurance Company of America, as well as the President of GroupIntelligence.com during the .com era. Early on, he developed a knack for transforming organizations and spent many years turning around failing IT divisions across corporations. After his third turnaround, Wander realized failure had a consistent root cause: corporate cultures where the leaders knew everything about products, processes and technology, but very little about the human factors that underpin workforce productivity, innovation and bottom line. As a biology major that was always intensely interested in the human side of business, Wander witnessed how powerful human understanding was when it was methodically applied in the workplace. Frank was deeply moved by this knowledge gap, and founded PeopleProductive in order to create solutions that enable companies, and the people that work for them, to flourish together.

Frank lives in Hillsborough, New Jersey, and is a member of the Rider University HR Curriculum Committee. He lives with his wife Laura, and they have three great boys who have successfully entered the business world.

SUNY Global Center

116 East 55th Street

New York, NY 10022

The SUNY Global Center, is housed in a distinguished landmark building in midtown Manhattan and has a number of uniquely designed spaces that can host a variety of events, including educational & non-profit functions as well as corporate and private events. Our facility features contemporary furnishings, state of the art audio/visual equipment, and an on-site event management team to ensure the success of every event. The Global Center is also home to SUNY System’s New York City headquarters.

Please contact us regarding special tuition pricing for single or multiple attendees.

Amy Jacobson
Director of Institutes, The PEER 150
[email protected]
(503) 885-4924