Alana Karen is a veteran 17-year leader at Google and is long-recognized leader in the tech industry. She’s committed to growing people-focused leaders at Google and beyond, most recently with her series “Still Learning: 17 Years of Lessons Learned at Google” published on LinkedIn and Women 2.0 to hundreds of thousands of readers. Joining Google in 2001, Alana worked on the original Google AdWords product and eventually founded and grew a global team responsible for creating, implementing and maintaining product policies for AdWords and other products. As part of her responsibilities, she ran Google Grants as well, a program to give free ads to non-profits. Alana then joined Google Fiber, where she built the customer service and installs teams, ultimately earning a “Gold Stevie Award” for Customer Service Department of the Year in Telecommunications. She then designed, proposed and launched an internal job placement program, the first of its kind, for 800+ employees.

In her current role, Alana’s scaling program management for the Google Search infrastructure engineering, tackling growth and culture issues, and developing internal developer relations programs.  Alana also is a mom to 3 children and a dog in Palo Alto with her husband, Mike, a former Googler and start-up leader. Alana’s route into Technology was non-traditional from the beginning of her professional career: she holds a B.A. in History from the University of Virginia.

For over 12 years, Alex has helped coach and train our clients’ managers and internal trainers/facilitators on how to use simple skills and habits combined with our software to increase results, improve engagement and build leadership skills.

Alex has a passion for helping individuals and teams make work easier, reduce stress and increase collaboration while reaching company goals. As an experienced trainer, she demonstrates flexibility to address the group’s top priorities and concerns while using energy and humor to keep them focused and productive. Alex is always excited to work with client trainers and facilitators, enabling them to feel confident and prepared to sustain the desired culture from within. She is skilled at providing managers with proven best practices that work for varied leadership styles, helping them create the environment for a more engaged workforce.

Last, but not least, she is proud of how these same techniques work to support the smart, dedicated team at Reward Gateway.

Allison Akers Davis serves as the VP Organization Development for Beth Israel Lahey Health, the second-largest healthcare system located in Greater Boston. Allison has responsibility for the Lahey Health Organization Development Strategy including coaching, leadership development, and engagement.

Formally the VP and Coaching Market Leader for Right Management’s Northeast Division, Allison was responsible for leading consulting projects, selecting and developing coaches and establishing coaching cultures within her client groups. She has also worked as a senior leader for Stanley Works, Carvel, CIGNA, Aetna and Travelers. Roles include VP HR, AVP Leadership Development, Manager Global Organization Development and Educator across the U.S., Canada and Europe. In partnership with executive leaders, she helped drive business and organization performance and provided leadership coaching to build high-performing teams and develop senior-level and high-potential talent. She presented at the University of Pennsylvania on “Measuring Coaching for Business Success” and is published in the International Journal of Coaching in Organizations, Coaching: Navigating the Emerging Trends in Financial Services, Issue 4, 2009, Volume 7.

She has provided coaching services for PepsiCo, Chubb, Gilt Groupe, Diageo, HSBC, Covidien, John Hancock, Thomson Reuters, HAI Group, United Healthcare, United Nations and others. She was a coach for Yale University’s Extraordinary Leader Program. Allison has also co-run a women’s leadership program, Woman’s Leadership Accelerator, to provide leadership development and one-on-one coaching to address the unique needs of women in the workplace.

Allison is a former guest educator for the Graduate School of Business at the University of New Haven teaching leadership mastery and organization effectiveness. She served as the Program Chairperson for the Human Resources Leadership Forum and currently serves on the board. She is a volunteer leader for Dress for Success of Hartford’s coaching program. She earned her Master’s Degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from the University of New Haven and holds an Executive Coaching Certification from Penn State University’s Smeal College of Business. She is also certified in DiSC, Hogan, Leadership Effectiveness 360 and Clark Wilson assessments and received her certification in Positive Psychology from the Whole Being Institute.

Amanda Reszkowski serves as Clinical Director of Executive Optimization at R3 Continuum, bringing nearly 15 years’ experience in the field of behavioral health.

As the Clinical Director for Executive Optimization, Amanda oversees both the clinical and non-clinical solution suite designed to discretely support high-level executives both personally and professionally.  She has consulted with Fortune 500 companies on issues related to disruptive event management and behavioral health literacy and awareness in the workplace.

Amanda is known as an adept strategic partner to her clients; understanding their unique cultural needs, and collaborating to implement behavioral health solutions that integrate resilience and optimize executives.

She holds a Masters in Social Work from the University of Pittsburgh, where her focus was direct practice in mental health.  She is a Certified Employee Assistance Professional and an Internationally Certified Gambling Counselor.

Andrew Saidy is a Human Resources executive with more than 15 years of experience with public and private Multinationals and International Organizations. Specialized in leading Digital HR Transformations & Disruptions, Andrew has also held various roles in Talent Acquisition & Management, Executive Coaching, HR Business Partnering and Learning & Development. Andrew currently leads Schneider Electric’s ambitious Talent Digitization agenda, bringing digitization, AI and Machine Learning to Schneider’s HR ecosystem.

Ben Eubanks is the Principal Analyst at Lighthouse Research & Advisory and the author of Artificial Intelligence for HR: Use AI to Build a Successful Workforce.

Ben is an expert in the future of work as it relates to talent, technology, and innovation. His book on artificial intelligence debuted at the #1 spot on the New and Noteworthy list on Amazon upon its release and is currently being translated into Chinese.

Previously an HR executive for a global technology startup, he currently heads up research and operations at Lighthouse Research & Advisory, a human capital advisory services firm. He works with HR, talent, and learning leaders across the globe to solve their most pressing business challenges with a research-based perspective tempered by practical, hands-on experience.

He has developed hundreds of reports, case studies, and other resources to support his life’s mission: making HR better, one HR pro at a time. Ben is the founder of upstartHR, a blog that has touched the lives of more than one million business leaders since its inception, and he also hosts “We’re Only Human,” a podcast that examines the intersection of people and technology in the workplace.

Most importantly, he has four children, a wonderful wife of ten-plus years, and a preference for running in a variety of outlandish races for fun.

Carina is passionate about designing systems that enable empathy and impact at scale. In a previous life, she did this work in the theater, where she has experience as a performer, director, playwright, and producer. Today, she works alongside visionary leaders who seek to create positive impact across industries and issues with purpose, creativity, and humanity.

Since joining SYPartners almost a decade ago, Carina has led large-scale transformation work at IBM, AARP, Gannett, UnitedHealthcare, American Express, and IDEO, among others. She also spent several years leading the firm’s New York Strategy practice.

Carina’s perspective on human-led transformation stems from her experience at the intersection of the arts and business. Through these experiences she’s learned—and continues to learn—that the fusion and balance of seemingly opposing forces is often where the magic happens: logic and empathy, creativity and systems-thinking, immediacy and sustainability.

Carina has lived and worked in Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East. She holds a dual B.A. in Philosophy and Dramatic Arts from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and an M.A. in Arts Administration from Columbia University. Outside of the office, she can be found hosting Jeffersonian-style dinners and singing the high notes in a small vocal group.

Charlie Knuth leads strategic research initiatives at Scoop, the largest carpooling solution in the United States. As Head of Market Research, Charlie investigates the short- and long-term impact the commute is having on us as individuals, the organizations we work for, and the communities we live in.

Prior to joining Scoop in 2018, Charles spent over a decade in a progression of roles within CEB/The Corporate Executive Board’s Human Resources Practice, which was subsequently acquired by Gartner in 2017. While there, he consulted F100 CHROs and their teams on designing and measuring employee programs to support key business initiatives such as revenue growth, performance improvement, cost optimization. Notable projects include the redesign of partner-level succession management for a large consulting firm, evaluating the effectiveness of global talent acquisition processes and teams for an e-commerce company, and change management for HR M&A of multinational manufacturers.

He received his Bachelor of Science in Business Administration (Accounting & Finance) from the University of New Hampshire.

Mr. Bartley’s career has been effectively characterized as a subject matter expert for Diversity, Inclusion and Talent Acquisition. As a speaker and facilitator, DK Bartley has been very effective inspiring global audiences related to “Best-in-Class” Talent Acquisition and Diversity & Inclusion practices for both big and small corporations.

He is currently Global Head & Managing Director of Diversity & Inclusion at Moody’s, the global credit rating and financial services company. He is keenly responsible for Moody’s acceleration of D&I as a business imperative and the international Diversity and Inclusion strategy for its internal and external framework.

DK was previously Senior Vice President & Head of Diversity and Inclusion for Dentsu Aegis, where he advanced D&I through multicultural partnerships with some of Dentsu’s largest clients and partners, such as Microsoft, American Express, Facebook, and LVMH. He successfully managed and reengineered the Dentsu Americas talent acquisition team and created a Center of Excellence that transformed the employee value proposition, leading Dentsu Aegis to become an employer of choice.

He has also functioned as Chief Talent Officer for the global consulting firm Diversity Talent International (DTI), with a roster of clients that included some of the world’s most influential brands, Polo Ralph Lauren, Mercedes-Benz, Colgate-Palmolive, Huawei Technologies, and WPP. Prior to DTI, Mr. Bartley held senior level roles as Director of Human Resources at News corporations, HarperCollins Publishers, and also for Gust, the global startup funding platform.

He is a Board Member of the AAF, The American Advertising Federation and ACT-SO the Afro-Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics of mind competition. Mr. Bartley is Certified in Diversity & Inclusion Management from Cornell University ILR, holds a master’s degree in communications from the New York Institute of Technology, and Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from SUNY Stony Brook.

Daniel Macklin is the co-founder of SoFi and CEO of Salary Finance Inc., an award-winning organization that partners with employers to offer financial wellness solutions that help employees improve their lives by improving their finances. His goal is to help 10 million Americans out of debt and start them on a path to saving for their future. In 2017, Inc. included him on its list of “25 Inspiring Entrepreneurs to Watch in 2017.” Macklin’s insights have been featured in the media, including Bloomberg, CNBC, Forbes, Reuters and the Wall Street Journal. He is also a guest lecturer at Stanford University.

Daniel Guetta is Senior Lecturer in Discipline at the Columbia Business School, and the Director of the Business Analytics Initiative at the Columbia Business School and Columbia Engineering. His research focuses on the ways companies can harness the power of data and analytics to drive value. He teaches classes in business analytics, including data science, pricing, supply chain management, and technical tools such as python and cloud computing. He has authored award-winning case studies in the area with a number of companies, and co-authored “Python for MBAs”, due Fall 2020. Prior to joining the faculty at Columbia, he was a data scientist and engagement manager at Palantir Technologies, where he worked with clients around the world in fields ranging from finance to pharmaceuticals to help them solve their hardest problems using data. He completed his undergraduate studies in physics and mathematics at Cambridge and MIT, and holds a PhD in Operations Research from the Columbia Business School.

Darren is president of Engage2Excel’s Recruitment Solutions division. He is responsible for the recruitment business strategy and in his three year tenure, grown the division from a mid-market provider to an Enterprise RPO driving force. During his 30+ years in recruitment he has led global high volume RPO programs with Fortune 100 companies and helped organizations grow from 100’s of employees to hundreds of thousands. He is a believer in and passionate about helping organizations find and keep talent. He works with CHRO’s and senior talent acquisition leaders to move them toward a transformational recruitment maturity model that positions them to compete for the best talent in their markets, utilize technology and adopt best practices to become more efficient on their journey to support their organizational goals.