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Day 1 | Wednesday, April 30
Join us as we officially kick off SPARK HR 2025!
Interactive Workshops—Choose Your Session
Interactive Workshop
Speaker: Joan Peterson
Vice President, Master Facilitator & Leadership Coach, Bluepoint Leadership
The future of your organization depends on the strength and adaptability of its leaders—and expanding access to coaching is one of the most effective ways to equip them for success. However, coaching isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach and choosing the right engagement type is key to maximizing its impact.
During this engaging and interactive workshop, we'll explore the advantages and disadvantages of four types of coaching to ensure you select the best fit for your leaders.
We’ll also guide you through a comprehensive 3-part process to effectively scale your coaching efforts.
From identifying the ideal candidates to capturing and sharing success stories, you’ll gain practical strategies and tools to transform your coaching initiatives and drive lasting, meaningful change across your organization.
In this session you will:
- Gain actionable tools and strategies for upskilling the leaders inside your organization to coach at a more meaningful level.
- Understand the pros and cons of different coaching engagement types and uncover common coaching myths and pitfalls to avoid.
- Learn techniques to effectively capture, measure, and communicate the impact of coaching at both individual and organizational levels, demonstrating its value and inspiring continued growth.
Interactive Workshop
Speaker: Karen Guzicki
Vice President, Advisory Services, Human Capital Institute (HCI)
Dive into the art of designing an employee experience that resonates! In this interactive session, HR professionals will work together to map the employee journey from the first day to the last, discovering ways to enhance every step. Through persona-based breakout groups, you’ll explore unique touchpoints that impact employees at every stage of their journey. Walk away with a clearer vision and actionable insights to elevate your organization’s employee experience.
In this workshop, you will:
- Identify key employee journey touchpoints to make a lasting impact.
- Create journey maps for diverse employee personas, revealing unique experience needs.
- Learn best practices for enhancing onboarding, development, and exit experiences.
- Gain actionable strategies to transform each stage into a meaningful moment for employees.
Stretch your legs, chat with some of our sponsors and get a refreshment.
Interactive Workshops—Choose Your Session
Interactive Workshop
Speaker: Joan Peterson
Vice President, Master Facilitator & Leadership Coach, Bluepoint Leadership
What if feedback wasn’t just something to give, but an integral experience within your organization – a gift that fuels growth, strengthens relationships, and builds trust? Too often, feedback is reduced to performance reviews or framed as criticism, limiting its true potential. For HR professionals, the challenge is not only teaching the mechanics of feedback but helping leaders embrace it as a mindset that drives ongoing development, courageous conversations, and cultural alignment. This session will help you transform feedback from solely a performance tool to a cornerstone of organizational success.
During this interactive session, you’ll learn how to:
- Identify and overcome the cultural and organizational barriers that hinder effective feedback.
- Inspire leaders to view feedback as an essential leadership mindset.
- Guide leaders in shifting feedback conversations from outcome-driven to growth-focused.
- Equip teams with tools and strategies to cultivate a sustainable, feedback-rich culture.
Interactive Workshop
Speaker: Karen Guzicki
Vice President, Advisory Services, Human Capital Institute (HCI)
Unlock the potential of a culture that not only aligns but amplifies the employee experience. In this dynamic, interactive session, we’ll dive into the essentials of measuring culture fit and show you how to drive a work environment that’s both aspirational and grounded in real, impactful employee experiences. Through a hands-on culture audit and collaborative solution design, you'll gain practical strategies to close the gap between your current culture and where you want it to be.
In this workshop, you will:
- Culture Audit Skills: Learn how to assess your organization's current cultural alignment and identify areas for improvement.
- Strategic Interventions: Discover strategies to design actionable, high-impact improvements in employee experience.
- Bridging Gaps: Gain practical tools to align aspirational culture with the day-to-day employee journey, ensuring a culture that resonates and retains.
Join us for an evening of fun and fireworks at Epcot. More information coming soon!
Day 2 | Thursday, May 1
Start your morning off right with breakfast and networking opportunities.
Kick off the day two of SPARK HR 2025 with speaker sessions!
General Session
Speaker: Chrissy Roth-Francis, Ph.D.
Director of Talent Development, LinkedIn
New manager onboarding is much more than an email, a workshop, or a check-the-box activity. It's a critical process and development program that sets the stage for the new manager and their team for years to come. In this session, Dr. Chrissy Roth-Francis will draw from her extensive experiences in academia and the tech industry to provide actionable insights and strategies. Attendees will learn how to better prepare new managers to drive impact and results, ensuring a smooth transition and long-term success.
In this session you will:
- Understand established human development theories and current research that support effective onboarding programs.
- Gain inspiration from industry best practices to enhance your company's manager onboarding practices.
- Develop a compelling argument to initiate or improve your new manager onboarding program.
General Session
Speaker: Shari Eaton
Chief People Officer, Chobani
A recent Gallup poll shows that, currently, only about 34% of U.S. full and part-time employees were engaged in their work and workplace while nearly 50% remain disengaged.
While cultivating a positive, cohesive culture is an essential piece of the puzzle, prospective employees are looking for more. As employee needs and expectations rapidly evolve in today’s competitive talent market, bridging the engagement gap will be critical to attract and retain.
For Chobani—a company recognized for its people-first principles—the key to maintaining an engaged workforce is investment in every stage of the employee lifecycle. This is done by ensuring employees feel heard, clear career pathways are created, and continuous learning and advancement opportunities are made available from day one and beyond.
Join a fireside chat for a discussion on how today’s employers can bridge the engagement gap by:
- Packing power into onboarding programs to foster connection and create culture carriers
- Using active listening to surface new ideas, identify skill gaps, and provide continuous learning and development opportunities
- Ensuring employees feel the connection between their work and the success of the business
Move your body, grab a refreshing drink and chat with some of our sponsors.
Panel Discussion
Speaker: Jasmine Park
Vice President of People, Culture & Inclusion, Indianapolis Colts
Speaker: Jarrett Waddy
Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and ERG Development, AAA-The Auto Club Group
Speaker: Danyelle Wright
VP, Chief Diversity & Inclusion and Officer, The E.W. Scripps Company
Innovation Sprint
Speaker: Ben Eubanks
Author of Artificial Intelligence for HR: Use AI to Build a Successful Workforce, Lighthouse Research & Advisory
How many times have you attended an event, taken pages of notes, and returned to work only to struggle with putting ideas into action? This session breaks that cycle by immersing you in an interactive, fast-paced innovation sprint inspired by the tech world’s approach to solving complex problems.
Through this dynamic experience, you’ll:
- Collaborate with peers to tackle real-world HR challenges, such as employee engagement, retention, and workplace culture.
- Use creative destruction to break old patterns of thinking and generate bold, actionable solutions.
This session is for you if:
- You’re an innovative HR leader looking for a creative outlet to experiment and problem-solve.
- You’re seeking hands-on approaches to inspire fresh ideas and drive results.
- You want to take a break from traditional learning and dive into experiential, practical exercises.
Why It Matters:
Organizations can only grow as far as their leaders are willing to innovate. To create engaged and resilient teams, HR professionals must first embrace innovation in their own practices. Led by Ben Eubanks of Lighthouse Research, this session brings the concept of hackathons to life, offering a step-by-step guide to running sprints in the workplace and applying them to your most pressing challenges.
Join us for a hands-on, high-energy session that will leave you with actionable strategies to take back to your organization. It’s time to think differently, act boldly, and spark innovation in your workplace.
Grab a bite to eat and chat with your fellow attendees.
General Session
Speaker: Tyrese Manigault
Manager of Employee Engagement, NASCAR
As businesses face evolving challenges, the need to cultivate a resilient, engaged workforce that fuels innovation has never been greater. In this keynote session, Tyrese Manigault reveals a fresh approach to employee engagement—one that aligns purpose, recognition, and growth to spark innovation and drive organizational success.
Through real-life examples and actionable strategies, Tyrese will guide attendees on creating an environment where employees feel empowered to contribute meaningfully to organizational goals.
In this session, you will learn:
- Continuous Recognition and Innovation: Techniques for embedding regular recognition and creative input to ensure employees feel valued and motivated to contribute.
- Impactful Communication for Trust: Insights on transparent, inspiring communication to build trust, motivate teams, and align everyone with a shared vision.
- Purpose-Driven Teams: Best practices for assembling teams aligned with the organization’s goals, fostering a sense of purpose for long-term success.
- Balancing Digital Tools with a People-First Approach: Strategies to enhance engagement through digital tools without losing the human touch.
- Measurable Business Results from Engagement: Practical insights on translating engagement efforts into clear business metrics that demonstrate impact.
With insights on engagement, innovation and communication, this session provides actionable tools for building a resilient organization where employee engagement propels innovation and drives success. Join us to transform your workplace into a thriving, purpose-driven environment.
New room, new ideas to SPARK!
General Session
Speaker: Colleen Earl
Corporate Director, Enterprise Performance Management & Culture, Lockheed Martin
As part of our ongoing mission solutions approach in serving our customers, Lockheed Martin is evolving from strong business area cultural frameworks to a unified OneLM Culture to support both our 21st Century Security® (21CS) vision and our business and digital transformation.
OneLM Culture is an enterprise initiative that uses common language to create a unified behavioral framework that describes the mindsets and behaviors of how we want employees to think and act and the expectations we have for working better together moving forward. We believe OneLM Culture, combined with our Lockheed Martin Values, and our Full Spectrum Leadership model will drive further enterprise collaboration, speed, innovation, employee experience, and ensure that those we serve always stay Ahead of Ready.
In this presentation, LM Corporate HR Director Colleen Earl will walk you through some of the lessons learned on this multi-year journey to create a unified culture framework across multiple business areas and how the corporation will measure success moving forward.
In this session, you will learn:
- Lessons from real world example of large-scale cultural change management effort
- How to create buy-in across different groups and utilize executive champions/sponsors
- How to create consistent experiences for your employees with culture by weaving into the flow of work through learning and development, recruiting, performance management, surveys, and more
- Effective ways to communicate to different stakeholders and personas
- How to baseline progress using employee engagement surveys and measure success moving forward
Take a few minutes to stretch, refresh, and network.
More information coming soon.
More information coming soon!
Day 3 | Friday, May 2
Start our last day together with breakfast and networking opportunities.
Kick off the final day of SPARK HR 2025!
General Session
Speaker: Reggie Willis
Chief Diversity Officer, Ally Financial Inc.
More information coming soon.
Move your body, grab a refreshing drink and chat with some of our sponsors.
General Session
Speaker: Mick Clancy, SPHRi
Global Head of People Product, Kraft Heinz
In today’s rapidly evolving digital HR landscape, traditional project-centric approaches often fall short of delivering the speed, agility, and measurable outcomes organizations require. This session explores the benefits of shifting to a product management model to unlock the full potential of digital HR transformation initiatives and improve employee experiences. By emphasizing cross-functional collaboration, employee-centric innovation, and continuous value delivery, the product management model reshapes how organizations prioritize and execute digital investments.
In this session, you will learn:
- The core principles of the product management approach and how it contrasts with project-based frameworks.
- Step-by-process for developing the framework
- Practical steps for aligning HR teams, processes, and technology around product-driven strategies focused on employee experience.
- How to accelerate time-to-value and achieving sustained digital HR transformation impact and business objectives (e.g., retention).
Stretch and grab a little snack before the next session.
General Session
Speaker: Angela Cheng-Cimini
Senior Vice President, Talent and Chief Human Resources Officer, Harvard Business Publishing
In response to employee demands for improved career and professional development, HBP has designed a comprehensive Career Pathing system that gives employees visibility to the skills needed for internal mobility and helps organizations identify the capabilities required to execute business strategy.
In this presentation, Angela Cheng-Cimini will share her organization's journey to building this framework as well as a take-home blueprint to devising a full career pathing model of your own.
In this session, you will learn:
- How to gain executive support for the work
- Step-by-process for developing the framework
- Learnings from implementation
- How this framework supports and amplifies talent acquisition, learning and development, and succession planning.
New room, new ideas to SPARK!
General Session
Speaker: Jeremy Browder
Director of Employee & Workplace Experience, Coinbase
More information coming soon.
Join us as we close out SPARK HR 2025.
Agenda subject to change
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