This session equips people leaders with a practical framework to influence without authority, a critical skill for driving alignment and change in today's matrixed organizations. Attendees walk away with concrete strategies to navigate power dynamics, build trust, and create shared vision rather than pushing their own agenda. The interactive format helps leaders immediately apply the Frame It, Pitch It, Guide It, Close It model to real influence situations they're facing right now.

HR leaders are expected to have answers, but the real advantage comes from asking better questions. In this HR Superstars Summit podcast, Karina Young is joined by Dana Calder, SVP of People at Spreedly, and Dr. Dieter Veldsman, Chief HR Scientist at AIHR, to unpack five questions that help HR leaders cut through noise, use data more effectively, and focus on what actually drives outcomes.

HR leaders know that people drive performance. The challenge is making that value unmistakable in executive and board-level conversations where budgets, risk, and return are constantly weighed. In this session, Anthony Onesto is joined by Laura Queen and Bart Houlahan, two leaders who work at the intersection of human capital and financial decision-making. Their work brings them into close partnership with boards, investors, and executive teams, giving them a clear view into how people investments are evaluated when they compete with every other business priority. Together, they will unpack why workforce investment is still instinctively viewed as an expense, why that framing is increasingly outdated, and how leading organizations are quantifying employee experience as a real driver of performance and long-term value. The conversation will explore new data showing the link between human capital and business outcomes, what top-performing companies consistently do differently, and which people practices truly drive results beyond surface-level perks.