Power Hour
PeopleFirst, Done Right

Intro by Matt Manners

Marissa Andrada
Board Director, BizBox Group
& Former CHRO Chipotle

What One of One Million Frontline Employees Taught Me About Leadership

After spending three decades supporting more than one million frontline employees, Marissa Andrada shares the unexpected leadership lesson that forever changed how she thinks about culture, employee experience, and business performance. Through one unforgettable story, you’ll discover why true people-first organizations begin by understanding how their own people experience the company.

Josh Levine
Culture & Change Architect
Great Mondays

Listening *is* Leadership

Improve the trust and confidence of your team leadership by raising their awareness of how to develop a foundation of trust and show up in ways that inspire employees to connect and believe in a shared purpose.
In this session participants will:

• Learn why trust, relationships, and rituals improve engagement, productivity, and innovation
• Design and commit to practices that foster trust and increase connection across teams

Katy Esser
Director of Talent Management
Selerix

“Take Space, Make Space”

We’ve all left a meeting thinking one of two things: I talked too much, or I should’ve spoken up. For a long time, I thought that came down to personality. Some people naturally have the floor. Others naturally hang back.

I don’t think that’s what we’re seeing.

I think it’s default.

And one of the most important jobs of a PeopleFirst leader is recognizing those defaults, in ourselves and in others. Because building a culture where people contribute isn’t about encouraging everyone to speak more. It’s about knowing when to take space, when to make space, and helping others do the same.

In this session, I’ll share how this simple shift changed the way I think about PeopleFirst leadership and why the leaders who build the strongest teams aren’t the loudest or the quietest. They’re the ones who know what the moment needs.

Tara Furiani
Executive Coach | Keynote Speaker | Host of Not the HR Lady | People, CoS & DEI Consultant
Not the HR Lady

When Values Get Expensive
What Your Hardest Decisions Reveal About Your Culture

Every organization has values. The more revealing question is what happens when those values collide with revenue, speed, convenience, hierarchy, performance, or a difficult business decision.

In When Values Get Expensive, Tara Furiani looks beyond perks, policies, benefits, and carefully written culture statements to examine the decisions employees actually use to determine what an organization believes.

Drawing on more than two decades in executive leadership and 13 years as a Chief People Officer, Tara explores what happens when leaders have to choose between competing priorities: when a high performer behaves badly, when someone needs an exception to policy, when transparency becomes uncomfortable, when the organization misses its numbers, or when doing the right thing suddenly costs something.

This session challenges leaders to stop measuring culture by what organizations provide when things are going well and start examining what they protect when pressure increases.

Because values are remarkably easy to have when they’re free.

Attendees will leave with:

• A practical way to identify the difference between stated values and the values an organization actually rewards.
• A clearer understanding of how employees interpret leadership decisions during moments of pressure, conflict, and uncertainty.
• Four useful tests for examining culture: how the organization handles exceptions, difficult behavior, bad news, and the distribution of organizational pain.
• A stronger framework for balancing humanity with accountability, performance, consistency, and business realities.
• Questions leaders can use immediately to examine whether their day-to-day decisions reinforce or contradict the culture they say they want.

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