About Kathy Ross:
Kathy Ross is a transformational executive with deep expertise in HR technology, business transformation, and revenue growth. Throughout her career, she has held leadership roles at ARAMARK, ADP, Abbott, Paylocity, and Sequoia, driving growth across sales, operations, product management, client experience, and P&L leadership. She has led large-scale business transformations, helped launch innovative products, and guided organizations through significant periods of growth and change. Kathy is also a passionate advocate for leadership development, mentoring future executives, and advancing women into senior leadership roles.

In this episode, you'll learn:


• Why HR must stop speaking "HR" and start speaking business


• How to earn a seat at the executive table


• Why business acumen is the missing skill for many HR leaders


• How AI can eliminate administrative work while elevating strategic HR


• What CEOs really expect from their HR business partners


• How to connect people metrics to financial outcomes executives care about

Visit https://www.donttalktohr.com/ and purchase the #1 Best Selling book, Don't Talk to HR, and the companion, The CPO Toolbox.

Connect with Kathy:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathyrossga/

If you want a longer career in HR, get close to your CFO. That's the advice Amy gives every HR leader she mentors, and in this episode she sits down with a CFO who helped shape how she thinks about the relationship.

Amy is joined by Tom Beaudoin, former CFO of Nuance Communications and a finance leader with more than 50 years of experience scaling global teams across tech. Tom calls the HR-finance dynamic a sibling relationship, two functions competing for attention from the CEO when they should be partnering for influence.

Together they cover:
Why HR's tunnel vision on the CEO quietly costs the function credibility with every other leader at the table.
How to walk into a board meeting with a budget ask and actually get it approved, including the $500K HCM proposal Amy fumbled early in her career because she didn't speak finance.
The dashboard metrics every CHRO should be presenting quarterly, and why hiding your own HR numbers destroys trust faster than any bad result would.
Why companies eliminating HR entirely are about to learn an expensive lesson, and where the real opportunity sits in the HR-IT partnership for AI rollout.
The one habit that separates HR leaders who get promoted from those who plateau.

Tom also shares a story from early in his career, when a senior executive complained that the young auditors asked stupid questions. The corporate controller's response shaped how Tom mentored people for the next four decades.

Connect with Tom: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-beaudoin

New episodes dropping weekly. Like, subscribe, and leave a comment with topics you want us to tackle.

Connect with Tom at https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-beaudoin-146569ab/

Visit https://www.donttalktohr.com/ and purchase the #1 Best Selling book and the companion, The CPO Toolbox.

#HR #HumanResources #Leadership #DontTalkToHR #CFO #BusinessAcumen #FutureOfWork #AI #PeopleOperations

AI isn't coming for HR. It's already here. And the gap between HR teams that are leading this shift and those still figuring out where to start is growing fast.

In this episode, Amy and Neeru are joined by Sergio Fasce, former SVP of HR at Nokia, where he supported 80,000+ employees across 120 countries. He was also the former CEO of Alcatel-Lucent Italy, and current AI startup advisor. Together, they dig into what AI actually changes for HR teams, why tools alone aren't the answer, and how the profession either steps up as the orchestrator of enterprise transformation or risks becoming irrelevant.

They cover why the first one to two layers of HR roles could be replaced by AI, how a company that didn't exist six months ago is already competing with enterprise giants, why 40,000 roles have already been renamed at Accenture, what "learning in the flow of work" actually means when the S-curves are shrinking to weeks, and why HR leaders who don't master AI will be replaced by those who do.

They also get into the dark side: surveillance, psychological safety, hallucinations, bias in candidate screening, and why AI being a probabilistic machine changes how every leader needs to think about risk.

New episodes dropping weekly. Like, subscribe, and leave a comment with topics you want us to tackle.

Sergio Fasce is a senior global executive with experience across HR, business leadership and enterprise transformation. Most recently he served at Nokia as Global SVP HR, with responsibility for approximately 84,000 employees across more than 120 countries. Earlier in his career he also held CEO and operational leadership roles with direct P&L responsibility.

His work focuses on the intersection of business strategy, operating model, leadership and workforce strategy. He is particularly interested in how AI, especially Agentic AI, is reshaping enterprise execution, decision-making and organizational design beyond traditional productivity use cases.

Sergio regularly advises and speaks on AI-driven transformation, leadership, workforce evolution and the future operating model of organizations.

Connect with Sergio: LinkedIn:
linkedin.com/in/sergiofasce

Visit https://www.donttalktohr.com/ and purchase the #1 Best Selling book and the companion, The CPO Toolbox.

When executives were surveyed for the #1 bestselling book Don't Talk to HR, many said HR's purpose is "to protect the company." Some asked whether HR should exist at all. So Amy brought in someone who has run four companies to settle it.

In this episode, Amy is joined by Elizabeth Stephenson, CEO of Systm Foods, former President of FIJI Water and The Wonderful Company, former Chief Strategy Officer at AlixPartners, and bestselling author. Her take: HR is fundamental, and when it fails, that's a reflection on management, not just HR.

Together they cover:

The three strategic levers that define HR's value proposition: company size, stage of evolution, and the maturity of the HR function itself.

 Why moving investigations to legal only works above roughly $2 billion in revenue.

The "B and C player" trap, where companies park weak performers in HR and then wonder why the function underdelivers.

 Why the most exceptional HR leader Elizabeth ever worked with started as a CPA.

What AI can automate in the first one to three layers of HR, and what it never will.

Why HR matters most when companies are in distress, paying 15 to 25% interest on debt while the AI bubble makes everything look fine from the top.

Elizabeth also shares the leadership philosophy she gives every team: if a headhunter calls with a life-changing offer, come talk to me early. I'll be your reference.

New episodes dropping weekly. Like, subscribe, and leave a comment with topics you want us to tackle.

Connect with Elizabeth at linkedin.com/in/elizabethannestephenson

Visit https://www.donttalktohr.com/ and purchase the #1 Best Selling book and the companion, The CPO Toolbox.

HR is supposed to advocate for employees. Employees think HR only protects the company. Executives agree. Both sides see it, and neither side trusts the other because of it. So how do you fix a reputation problem that's baked into the job description?

In this episode, Amy and Neeru get into the tension between the corporate police role and the employee advocacy role, why those two functions are fundamentally at odds, and what happens when HR tries to play both at the same time. 

They break down the "flipping the pyramid" framework they built at GlobalLogic, where employee and management advisory councils engaged employees on solving big problems and helped drive engagement scores up 23 points during a pandemic.

They also share what trust through transparency actually looks like in practice, why they believe investigations should be pulled out of HR entirely, and how layoffs destroy trust when handled without empathy.

New episodes dropping weekly. Like, subscribe, and leave a comment with topics you want us to tackle.

Visit https://www.donttalktohr.com/ and purchase the #1 Best Selling book and the companion, The CPO Toolbox.

#HR #HumanResources #EmployeeTrust #Leadership #DontTalkToHR #WorkplaceCulture #PeopleOperations #EmployeeEngagement

64% of employees say they've had a bad experience with HR. When two career HR leaders surveyed their combined 20,000 LinkedIn followers and interviewed CEOs, board members, investors, and executives, the results came back at a 3.1 out of 5. That's a C-minus for an entire profession.

In this episode, Amy and Neeru break down the five themes that kept coming up: 

1. A lack of trust, empathy, and confidentiality. 
2. Too much focus on paperwork and policies. 
3. A gap in business acumen that's costing HR its credibility. 
4. A system that doesn't set HR professionals up to succeed. 
5. No clear value proposition, which is leading some executives to ask whether HR should exist at all.

They also share the story of a company that hired consultants to run "anonymous" employee feedback sessions, recorded every word, and played the highlights for management. People were disciplined for speaking up. Nobody talked again. These are HR nightmares that should NOT be happening and this show is here to change the HR landscape in favor of the people.

New episodes dropping weekly. Like, subscribe, and leave a comment with topics you want us to tackle.

Visit https://www.donttalktohr.com/ and purchase the #1 Best Selling book and the companion, The CPO Toolbox.

Your workplace is being reshaped by four forces at once, and ignoring even one of them is already costing you people. In this kickoff episode we explore generational expectations that don't align, the post-COVID workforce that never went back to "normal," AI moving faster than your org chart, and global instability that's draining your employees before they even open their laptops.

You'll also hear why two career HR leaders with 55 combined years almost called their #1 bestselling book "HR Sucks," what real feedback from executives, board members, and employees revealed about the profession's reputation, and why they believe HR needs a full revolution, not a refresh.

Amy Hanlon-Rodemich spent 30 years as a Chief People Officer at companies like Nokia, GlobalLogic and Milestone Technologies. Neeru Mehta spent 25 years scaling organizations across tech, SaaS, and global markets with Chief People Officer positions at Neurealm and yellow.ai. Together, they built a patented AI career app, wrote the book, and launched this podcast to take the conversation public.

New episodes dropping weekly. Like, subscribe, and leave a comment with topics you want us to tackle.

Visit https://www.donttalktohr.com/ and purchase the #1 Best Selling book as well as the companion, The CPO Toolbox.

donttalktohr.com