Following a brief welcome and icebreaker, Working Group participants will share their top People & Culture challenges. These topics will be prioritized and used to shape breakout sessions on Day Two.

Guest Speaker: Lauryn Sargeant, Stories, Incorporated

Our industry faces a growing talent challenge, particularly in attracting early-career and next-generation professionals who hold their own perceptions of the work we do. Culture storytelling, when used strategically, can be a powerful lever to reshape those perceptions and position organizations as dynamic, purpose-driven, and opportunity-rich.

This session will explore how HR leaders can move beyond traditional employer branding to intentionally uncover, craft, and deploy authentic employee, leader, and culture stories that resonate with today’s workforce. Participants will learn how to identify the stories that shift perception, build scalable approaches to capturing them across the organization, and activate them across the talent lifecycle—from awareness to retention.

Through real-world examples and practical frameworks, this session will equip leaders with actionable strategies to elevate their organization’s narrative and better compete for the next generation of talent.

Join Elizabeth McDaid, EVP of the Foundation, for an update on the apprenticeship program and its evolving role in building sustainable talent pipelines. This session will highlight recent progress, share outcomes and lessons learned, and outline what’s ahead as the program continues to grow.

Designed with member firms in mind, the discussion will focus on how apprenticeships can help address workforce gaps, expand access to skilled talent, and support long-term workforce planning strategies. Elizabeth will also walk through what participation looks like in practice and how organizations can get involved.

Each attendee will prepare a slide and have three minutes to share their department’s most impactful People & Culture initiative from 2025 or 2026 (e.g., compensation redesign, diversity and inclusion programming, performance management changes, talent development, workforce planning). Initiative shared should include tangible outcomes, what problem was being solved, what worked (or didn’t), and what attendees would do differently next time. Including metrics, adoption challenges, or change-management lessons.

Attendees – please complete the PowerPoint slide in advance sent to you with this agenda. Send the completely version to [email protected] prior to the meeting.

As AI continues to reshape how work gets done, HR leaders face new questions about workforce planning, skills, and talent strategy. This session will provide a brief framing of key trends and uncertainties around AI’s impact on the workforce over the next few years, including shifts in roles, capabilities, and organizational design. From there, we’ll move into a facilitated discussion focused on areas such as how we rethink workforce planning, what capabilities will matter most, and how do we build them.

This will be a peer-led, facilitated discussion rather than a formal presentation, with an emphasis on shared perspectives, practical experiences, and collective problem-solving. Participants should expect an interactive conversation with peers, grounded in real challenges and aimed at surfacing insights, perspectives, and actionable ideas.

Ken Haltenhof, SVP Membership will share updates on 2026 membership benefits and a new partnership in training and development.  

Attendees will break into small groups to discuss shared challenges identified on Day One and collaborate on practical solutions. Each group will report key takeaways back to the full group.