MELISSA DREUTH
Chief of Staff and Chief People Officer
Planful
Melissa Dreuth, chief of staff and chief people officer for Planful, has been an advocate for holistic employee care and worked to establish a people team function that redefined how the company supports its employees. The initiatives that stemmed from this include work travel support that provided employees with an annual stipend to cover supplemental child care and family meals when traveling for work; mental health resources that gave workers free memberships for online therapy and wellness services; and tailored DEI benefits that gave LGBTQIA+ employees access to specialized clinicians, gender-affirming services, mail order prescriptions, and more. This resulted in 99% of people feeling welcomed and cared for.
Gianna Driver
Chief Human Resources Officer
Exabeam
Chief Human Resources Officer Gianna Driver leads Exabeam’s culture-creating, diversity-enhancing initiatives and under her stewardship, the company increased representation of underrepresented minorities across the organization, including within leadership positions. Her advocacy also led to the creation of six employee resource groups that facilitate global awareness-building and culture-creating programs. Driver has championed unconscious bias training, leadership development, and high-potential programs, which led to the company recently being recognized as one of Newsweek’s "Most Loved Workplaces."
Betzy Estrada
Urovant Sciences, Inc.
Through Betzy Estrada’s leadership as chief human resources officer for Urovant Sciences, Inc., her team implemented a global, five-pronged HR plan to align with long-term strategic business goals. One of its pillars is delivering an amazing employee experience to foster engagement. As part of this commitment, Estrada hired an executive to focus solely on employee engagement, as well as an executive director to oversee learning and development. A huge step for a small company, it contributed significantly to retention and recruitment, ultimately allowing the company’s attrition to be lower than the industry average. The organization has also more than doubled its revenue.
Sarah Fass
Bridgewater Associates
Sarah Fass leads the world’s biggest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, and as the chief human resources officer, one of her biggest jobs was reimaging the employee experience. Some of these changes included redesigning the on-campus experience and launching programs that focused on flexibility and employee wellness. She partnered with company leaders to implement both unlimited paid time off and a minimum of 15 days PTO to reduce employee burnout, in addition to six new company-wide holidays. Fass then designed and launched Bridgewater’s workplace flexibility program and “Work Away” benefit, which has most employees working remotely two to three days per week.
Annette Favorite
Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer
West Pharmaceutical Services
Under Annette Favorite’s guidance as senior vice president and chief human resources officer, West Pharmaceutical Services increased employee diversity by creating a more inclusive supply chain by partnering with minority-owned and managed businesses. And in collaboration with the company CEO, Favorite and her team formed the “Inclusion Council” to support West’s transformative diversity strategy. From this, the company saw upgraded skills, experiences, and strategic capabilities from the executive team thanks to 42% of the new talent being women or U.S. minorities.
Kathleen Federico
Senior Vice President, Chief People, Brand, and Communications Officer
The MITRE Company
As the Senior Vice President and Chief People, Brand, and Communications Officer for the MITRE Company, Kathleen Federico ensures the organization is building an environment of trust, belonging, and awareness for current and future talent. Most recently, Federico and her team formalized and funded 10 business resource groups representing staff across ethnic, veteran, age, and disability demographics; hosted an inaugural “Week of Belonging” event; and actively changed talent acquisition and people processes to remove exclusion and bias. Last year, 79% of external hiring consisted of underrepresented candidates, including 38% people of color, and 63% of employee promotions were from underrepresented populations.
Dale Fisher
Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources
Deerfield Public Schools District 109
The overhaul of the recruitment systems and structures that Dale Fisher, assistant superintendent for human resources, spearheaded at Deerfield Public Schools District 109 enabled his organization to continually acquire and retain top talent. Through the implementation of the “Human Resources Hiring Workflow,” his district is regarded as a leader in talent management and employee job satisfaction. These initiatives have resulted in District 109 being named a "Great Place to Work" during the 2019-2020 school year, a "Best Workplace in Chicago" in 2020, and a "Top Workplace" by the Chicago Tribune.
Jennifer Foreman
Charter Schools USA
Under Chief Human Resources Officer Jennifer Foreman's leadership, Charter Schools USA greatly benefited from the restructuring of its HR department to address talent gaps. Foreman started by creating a talent development team and a people analytics team to deliver key people manager trainings and to support center onboarding. She then implemented an HR dashboard to easily access business data like headcount, turnover, span of control, time-to-fill rates, and three-month and 12-month retention rates to see what improvements needed to be made. From this, her team achieved a perfect performance evaluation bell curve.
Margie M. Harris
Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer
Tellurian, Inc.
Margie M. Harris was responsible for many groundbreaking initiatives as the executive vice president and chief human resources officer at Tellurian, Inc. Some of the most recent changes include the implementation of the company’s enterprise resource planning, system analysis program, and a smooth transition to an all-new HR system. This spurred seamless collaboration between human capital management, financial accounting and reporting, and procurement. She also led the talent acquisition team in a fierce labor market, doubling the company’s headcount and increasing base payroll by 50%.
Nancy Hauge
Chief People Experience Officer
Automation Anywhere
Nancy Hauge, chief people experience officer at Automation Anywhere, completely innovated the company’s recruitment efforts. She signed on digital, automated “workers” that offered physical employees more time for strategic, creative projects instead of mundane, repetitive HR tasks. With 50 HR automation bots running at any given time, and more than 150 in the queue, HR activities including talent assessment, employee engagement, hiring and onboarding, and compliance are now streamlined. The company was recently ranked number 16 in Newsweek’s 2022 "Top 100 Most Loved Workplaces," which recognizes companies that put respect, caring, and appreciation for their employees at the center of their business models.