Speakers
Ross Sparkman
Ross is an expert and thought leader in the fields of Human Capital Strategy & Talent Analytics. With over 15 years experience in Talent Analytics and Strategic Workforce Planning, he uses his background in statistics, business strategy, HR and HR technology to consult with C-Suite officers and senior leaders on strategic methodologies and frameworks for HR and corporate strategy alignment. The end goal is to provide these senior leaders with improved data and insights to make better 'people' related decisions that ultimately improve organizational performance.
He is currently the Head of Strategic Workforce Planning at Facebook where his key mandate is to create workforce forecasts and to develop optimized talent strategies for Facebook's future growth. Prior to Facebook, Ross functioned as the Head of Strategic Workforce Planning & Analytics at GE Aviation, the Strategic Workforce Planning Leader at Devon Energy and as a Senior Consultant at Deloitte Consulting where he specialized in Human Capital Strategy and Workforce Planning & Analytics.
Ross is a global in-demand speaker who regularly presents on the topics of Human Capital strategy and Workforce Optimization. He was recently awarded Best Practice winner by the Best Practices Institute (BPI) and has received numerous accolades for or his innovative and results driven approach to Strategic Workforce Planning.
Ross Holds an MBA from Temple University’s Fox School of Business, an MA in HR from The University of Oklahoma and a MSc in Predictive Analytics from Northwestern University. In his spare time he enjoys traveling, photography and learning new things.
Julie Anne Philip
Andrew Sandico
Andrew leads the Engineering Workforce Data Insights organization with the charter of enabling data driven HR decisions to be made in the Engineering groups across Microsoft. His team partners directly with senior business and HR leaders to understand and advise on all aspects of the employee life cycle within Microsoft and across the industry. Throughout his 16+ year career, Andrew has led multiple talented teams within HR Analytic areas including: data analysis and insights, reporting, process improvement, technology implementations/integration, data/KPI governance, survey design, and program management. Throughout his career, Andrew has continued to have a passion for people analytics while at Microsoft and during his prior roles at Disney, Nike, Comcast/NBCUniversal, and DirecTV/AT&T.
Alissa Barton
Alissa Barton is currently Director, Human Capital Planning at provincial government agency, Infrastructure Ontario. Everyday Alissa gets to engage her passion to change the workplace for the better. Her role includes managing a team responsible for analytics, HR tools and systems, health and safety and other innovative change practices and programs. Over the last 15 years in the public service, Alissa has worked in many capacities including finance, communications, program management and policy all in the infrastructure field. Alissa has a degree in Economics from Queen’s University, as well as a certificate in Human Resources Management from Ryerson University. She is an alumni of the Governor General’s Canadian Leadership Conference and CivicAction’s Diversity Fellows Program.
Zuri Langhorn Baker
Zuri T.L. Baker is a human capital professional with fifteen years of experience in human resources in a variety of industries including consumer products, aerospace, manufacturing, higher education and technology. She has a unique blend of talent management, operations and systems experience which she leverages as Director of HR Operations at GoDaddy.
She manages the behind the scenes HR functions that supports everything from leaves of absence to the employee experience. Zuri is leading the charge to bring digital transformation to the HR role. She recently steered the global implementation of an HCM system and serves as the liaison between HR and IT.
Prior to GoDaddy, Zuri led a talent management function and supported leaders in a business partner capacity. She earned a Bachelor's degree in Management from Bentley University and a Master’s degree in Organizational Behavior from NYU-Polytechnic. In addition, she holds both PHR and SHRM-CP designations. Zuri is active in her community and is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. and is a past president of the National Association of Black Accountants (NABA) Phoenix Chapter. She is a busy mom to Zavier and wife to BJ.
Nick Necsulescu
Nick Necsulescu is the Director of Analytics at President’s Choice Bank, with focus on Customer, Digital, and Cross-Channel Analytics within the financial and retail verticals.
Nick has 15 years of data analytics experience, creating meaningful analytics solutions, while leading analytics transformations within an agency and client-side setting.
He often speaks at data and marketing conferences & events, and is author of analytics publications, centered on data-driven marketing initiatives.
Alexander Uborcev
Alexander Uborcev, PhD, GEMBA
Senior Manager, Integrated People Management in Strategic Workforce Management team with Royal Bank of Canada
Position and Responsibilities:
A Strategic, financial, risk, and people decision making advisor.
Areas of Specialization:
A highly skilled professional who leverages experience in
•People strategy, benchmarking, predictive modeling and analytics, problem solving, and re-design/optimization policies and processes to achieve sustainability and affordability, providing decision making, and strategy development assistance.
•Economic, financial, and risk analysis, financial, economic, and system dynamic modeling and projections, optimization and decision making assistance, business development and strategic planning to drive strong gains in revenue, profit, cost reduction, and competitive advantage.
Background:
Alexander has worked in a senior capacity of financial management and business development for organizations in both Canada and Europe for 22 years. His achievements span from achieving impressive revenue and profit gains for companies, to maximizing ROI among product lines, to developing effective workforce programs, to providing optimal solutions from economic, operational, and financial modeling of complex, stochastic and dynamic systems.
He is a lecturer and the author of several industry publications.
Education:
Alexander earned his GEMBA from Duke University. In addition, he has achieved a Ph.D. in mathematics and physics, and a B.Sc. in radio-physics and information technology.
Ivona Simic
Since 2017, Ivona Simic has served as the Director of People Analytics within HR in BMO Financial Group. She joined the team from the Analytics Centre of Excellence in Personal and Business Banking of BMO where she led the Customer Contact Optimization group creating strategies through data that would enable the best customer experience and ROI through marketing campaigns. She brings over 10 years of experience in the ever growing field of analytics, technology and marketing, is an active advocate of Women in Analytics, and a leader with experience in driving profitable growth through the strategic use of data.
Ivona is a University of Toronto alumni, where she received an Honours Bachelor of Science degree with a specialization in Mathematics.
Tony Bennett
Tony Bennett leads the HR Analytics & Planning team at Alberta Health Services. This team is an HR centre-of-expertise responsible for building a better understanding of our people and environment today so leaders, Human Resources, and other corporate support functions can make better evidence-based workforce decisions.
Tony is an HR leader with almost 30 years’ experience guiding the development and implementation of strategic and practical applications in human resources strategy, compensation, labour relations, organization design, human resource policy, HRIS, human capital metrics and analytics, and general human resources operations and administration.
Tony is a CPHR and is currently working on his MPA from the University of Victoria.
Tony believes Human Resources provides important value added, innovative services to an organization through the development and management of strategy based services while providing practical value to their clients.
Tanya Pastor
With more than 10 years of experience, Tanya Pastor has led HR Systems and Analytics teams in various industries. Her Finance and Economics background enables her to provide meaningful business insights while utilizing contextual storytelling and powerful visuals.
Prior to joining Greater Toronto Airports Authority, she worked at Walmart Canada and Golder Associates. Her work is focused on HR systems and process oversight, reporting and analytics, using data across multiple HR functions - Talent Acquisition, Total Rewards, Organizational Development, Learning Management, as well as other business functions, such as Finance, Payroll and Operations.
Arun Kochhar
Arun is the Global HR Insights & People Analytics Lead HR Insights lead for Xerox, where he leads a talented team of data ninjas. With 10+ years of experience, he has a proven track record for delivering quantitative business outcomes by leveraging and driving the adoption of analytics. Arun is passionate about fuelling the development of innovative, novel approaches to analytics with a firm rooting in corporate strategy.
Anna Foat
Jake Carpenter
Sukumaran Mariappan
Daneal Charney
Daneal is the director of talent for MaRS Venture Services.
Her fascination with tech began with her first leadership role in 1997 for Intel Corporation, China and strengthened during her last 10 years working for some of Toronto’s most innovative startups.
At MaRS, Daneal heads up the talent team within MaRS Venture Services, with the mandate to serve entrepreneurs across all high-growth sectors to scale their talent. She works with executive teams to develop strategies that advance their competitiveness as both employers and workplaces.
Recently Daneal co-produced the inaugural #MoveTheDial event – on a mission to change the face of tech leadership in Canada. #MoveTheDial brought together one of the largest gatherings of tech startup female leaders in Canada, including 100 founders and 40 venture capitalists.
Daneal is a sought-out expert, entrepreneur, mentor and speaker on leading HR thinking. She’s a recognized Canadian HR Awards Finalist in the Category of Best Employer Branding (2016) and AceTech Ontario Leadership Initiative Award recipient (2107).
Daneal holds a masters in international management and a cross-cultural, advanced program in human resource management from Rotman School of Business and is a Certified Human Resources Leader (CHRL).
Ryan McEleney
As SVP, Director of HR Analytics & Incentives, Ryan McEleney is leading the development of a robust people analytics strategy at Webster. He is a graduate of the University of Connecticut and SHRM Senior Certified Professional.
After five years in sales, Ryan has spent the past twelve years serving in leadership roles of increasing responsibility and spanning nearly every HR discipline. Whether driving engagement strategies that propel top workplace recognition, designing incentive programs that improve productivity by over 20%, or creating a development program featured as international best practice, Ryan’s passion is to make seemingly complex HR concepts simple, executable, and value-added.
Nenzi Cocca
Nenzi Cocca is the Director, HR Systems & Operations at the City of Hamilton. Her background has focused on Labour Relations, Human Rights and Training & Development, both in the private sector (retail) and for the last 14 years, in the municipal public sector. Nenzi has her BA in Political Science and Psychology, a BA in Adult Education, Diplomas in HR Management and Labour Relations and has been trained in Alternative Dispute Resolution.
Jared Valdron
Jared has a strong background in organizational and data sciences, achieved through a combination of both formal education and work experience. He is passionate about making analytic insights accessible in the people space, and enjoys when analyses he’s worked on drive impactful decisions in organizations.
Jared is GitHub’s first people analytics hire, and is currently building out an automated reporting infrastructure, along with acting as a strategic data consultant on a variety of talent projects.
Mark Hickson
Part of Microsoft’s Worldwide Modern Workplace organization, Mark enables business leaders to drive efficiencies, fuel transformation, and inform strategic decisions leveraging unprecedented insight into communication behaviors and collaboration patterns across their organization. Mark brings a breadth of experience across custom software development, technology consulting, and productivity enablement to help CXOs take tangible action and effect measurable change.
Ben Slade
Dr. Benjamin Slade is a research & analysis lead in the Talent Strategy & Engagement Division of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. His responsibilities include business performance measurement, strategic workforce planning, data-driven program analysis, and predictive forecasting, including attrition modeling. He holds an M.S. degree in Applied Psychology and a PhD in Industrial-Organizational Psychology from Clemson University, with a focus on applied judgment and decision-making.
Zachary Nichol
Zac Nichol is a Metric Analyst at the City of Hamilton, where he is responsible for arming the business and HR team with data-driven insights through analytics to identify critical HR priorities and drive optimal decisions about our people. He ensures that relevant, actionable and insightful metrics and trends are identified and reported accordingly, serving as the technical liaison for HR data/information. Also responsible for ensuring that human resources information is presented accurately, consistently and in a clear, concise, and business-relevant manner. Prior to joining the city, Zac held various roles with Arcelor Mittal.
Roxanne M. Laczo
Roxanne has over 15 years of business experience working for multinational organizations in the implementation, development, and measurement of global HR programs, development and validation of assessment and selection programs, and coaching of high-potential and emerging leaders. Prior to her role at AIG, Roxanne built and led People Analytics teams at Indeed and Cargill, where she was a recipient of the 2014 SIOP/SHRM HRM Impact Award. Roxanne holds a Doctorate from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities in Industrial-Organizational psychology with a focus on research methods and psychometrics.
David Lahey
David has been specializing in leadership development, talent acquisition, change management and productivity improvement for over 25 years across a variety of industries. He is an executive coach and consultant to 28% of Canada’s Best Managed Companies.
Employment Background
David’s experience growing people and business units has included dramatic client successes as a Global Manager within Financial Services at Microsoft in Seattle, WA and Toronto, ON. Seven years ago, David left Microsoft as a member of the Microsoft President’s Club and their Circle of Excellence for North America and founded Predictive Success Corporation. In 2013 and 2014, Predictive Success was awarded by Profit Magazine: 500 Fastest Growing Companies for five year growth. David is passionate about community development and giving back. He provides executive coaching to the CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters Canada. David also provides Pro Bono consulting to the HR department of the Canadian Breast Cancer Association.
Experience
David currently coaches, consults and facilitates training sessions focusing on finding and hiring top talent, building high performing teams and more effective leaders, giving and receiving effective feedback, building organizational trust, managing organizational change, influencing productivity, and driving sales performance. His specific programs include Executive Leadership workshops, Customer-Focused Selling workshops, Leadership Transition Coaching Programs, Executive Coaching for Excellence and Executive Coaching for Sales Growth. Clients include: Bell, Bell Mobility, Hudson Bay Company, Holt Renfrew, PCL Constructors, CIBC, RBC, Google, Oxford University Press, Nelson, Thomson Reuters, Colliers, City of Toronto, Domtar, (BDC) Business Development Bank, Queen’s School of Business, Microsoft, John Wiley & Sons Ltd Worldwide, Salesforce.com, Siemens and the University of Toronto Medical School, etc. David’s industry sector experience is vast; he has worked with a range of clients varying in size in agriculture and forestry, mining, utilities, construction, manufacturing, retail, transportation, finance, education, health care, food services, technology, public administration and recreation. The Toronto Globe & Mail, Vancouver Provence, CBC Radio, Calgary Herald, Star Phoenix and Financial Post have featured David’s work and insights, specifically discussing best hiring practices, the “thin resume solution,” and creating entrepreneurial teams. David has delivered many guest lectures for; Ryerson University MBA classes, Queen’s University MBA classes, HRMAM, HRPA, and BCHRA. David is the author of three books. His latest text, published by Wiley, captures the value of human analytics in the workplace, Predicting Success: Evidence-Based Strategies to Hire the Right People and Build the Best Team, and was released globally on Amazon in November 2014. Predicting Success is a 5-star rated text and current bestseller. Dave was a featured speaker for a variety of radio, print, and TV media including CJOB and Winnipeg Free Press in Winnipeg MB, the Sheldon MacLeod in Atlantic Canada and the Sun News Network nationally
Rob Catalano
Rob Catalano is passionate about helping companies succeed – by leveraging technology to make employees successful. With his unique experience in HR Technology as a founding employee at Achievers, Rob co-founded WorkTango – software that helps give employees a voice and companies actionable insight. He has recently been named as a 2018 Top Global Employee Engagement Influencer, and is the Canadian Chairperson for The Enterprise Engagement Alliance, with a mandate to lead and help educate corporate, government and not-for-profit management on a formal process for implementing engagement across the enterprise community. He is an avid hockey and volleyball player, traveller, and in his own terms a ‘pointaholic’ – he collects loyalty points for everything and anything! You can reach him at [email protected] or @RobCatalano on twitter.
Peter Smit
Peter has a long history of gathering diverse multi-cultural groups to achieve objectives and loves how technology now allows these teams to do so while distributed across the world. Analytics and AI have now allowed him to develop and realize his goal of building a platform to help organizations measure their collaborative performance and give them insights to become better. With experience with both large, global multi-nationals as well as early stage ventures, he brings a unique approach.
Raised in Europe and educated in the US, with an MBA from Georgetown University in Washington DC, he speaks four languages and has lived and worked in seven countries.
Deb LaMere
Deb LaMere brings 20 years of HR experience to the Product Management team at Ceridian. Formerly, as Ceridian’s VP, Employee Engagement and Culture, she was responsible for driving Ceridian’s engagement and cultural transformation. In addition to her work at Ceridian, Deb gives back to the community by serving on the board of directors for Twin Cities in Motion (TCM) and is also a board member for the youth activity-based organization, Bolder Options. Deb holds a BA in Human Resources from the University of St. Thomas and an MBA from the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota.
Jennifer Kelley
Jennifer leads the customer value team at Visier that helps organizations implement, use, adopt and get value from analytics and workforce planning solutions. Her team has successfully guided Fortune 1000 companies to connect their workforce strategy to the use of analytics to make an impact on the business. Prior to Visier, Jennifer led a workforce reporting and analytics team at an insurance organization in Vancouver, and she has held organizational change management and project management roles at SAP and Shell. Outside of work, she’s kept busy by two energetic sons and enjoys travelling and the outdoors.
Julie Lin
Julie is currently on the People Analytics and Technology team at Dropbox where she supports recruiting analytics including data analysis and insights, reporting and dashboards, tech vendor and program/project management. Prior to Dropbox, she also had Workforce Planning/HR Analytics/Reporting and HR Merger & Acquisitions experience in Retail, Insurance and Entertainment industry where her primary focus was on bettering HR and recruiting decision making through strategic use of data. With a bachelor degree in Economics and master degree in HR, She is very passionate about revolutionizing Human Resource function through strategic people analytics and cutting-edge technology.
