The HRO Today CHRO of the Year Award
If people are a company’s greatest asset, then chief HR officers (CHROs) have a lot riding on their shoulders. They are stewards and strategists who are responsible for a company’s talent and performance blueprint – all of which drive the business forward. The 2018 Awards Gala will take place on April 30, 2018 at the MGM Resort.
Submissions for the 2018 North America awards have closed. Click here to submit for the 2018 EMEA awards.
2018 CHRO of the Year Awards Finalists Include:
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David M. Dart, SVP & CHRO, Veritas Technologies, LLC
David Dart is Chief Human Resources Officer at Veritas. He leads the global human resources organization and is responsible for all aspects of the organization including performance management, talent development, talent acquisition, and compensation and benefits. |
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Julie Fletcher, Chief Talent Officer, AMN Healthcare
Julie Fletcher is the Chief Talent Officer for AMN Healthcare and in that role she provides leadership for attracting, developing and optimizing team member talent for corporate roles and across the AMN diverse family of workforce solutions and staffing companies. She is also responsible for Credentialing Operations, which encompasses the critical process of validating required credentialing documents for our healthcare providers. |
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Nikki Harland, SVP, HR, Paradies Lagardere
As the senior HR leader for Paradies Lagardère, Nikki provides strategic leadership and direction on all aspects related to talent management, team engagement, organizational effectiveness, and learning and development. With over twenty years of HR and leadership experience, Harland has contributed to various change initiatives in her career that have propelled turnarounds and growth efforts within businesses. Her previous work experience includes HR responsibility in the retail, entertainment, and sports industries. Prior to her role with Paradies Lagardère, Nikki was the Senior Director of Field Human Resources for Gap, Inc.’s Old Navy Stores. In this role, she provided people leadership for the Brand’s 1,000+ stores and 45,000 employees in North America. Additional leadership experiences also included Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. and Toys “R” Us. |
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Liz McAuliffe, EVP, HR, T-Mobile US, Inc.
Liz McAuliffe serves as T-Mobile’s EVP of Human Resources, leading the function that supports all 50,000+ T-Mobile employees. Prior to this role, Liz served as SVP of Total Rewards and Operations, leading all compensation, rewards and recognition, benefits, payroll, HR systems, and HR operations teams. Before joining T-Mobile in 2008, Liz held leadership positions at Starbucks Coffee Company, in both the Law & Corporate Affairs department and the Human Resources department. She earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and a Juris Doctor from Northeastern University School of Law. |
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Matthew Owenby, SVP & CHRO, Aflac
Matthew Owenby has more than 15 years of experience in financial services and human resources and is senior vice president and chief human resources officer at Aflac, a company with more than 9,500 employees. At Aflac, he is responsible for providing strategic direction for the human resources function and executing on global initiatives for the corporation. Owenby joined Aflac in 2012 as vice president of HR business partners, bringing with him more than a decade of HR experience at Bank of America and General Electric. In 2016, he was ranked No. 1 in the Top Corporate Leader Award – Over 35 category, a gold winner in the HR Executive of the Year category and a Silver Stevie honoree in the HR Executive of the Year category. |
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Kevin Silva, EVP & CHRO, Voya Financial, Inc.
Kevin D. Silva is executive vice president and chief human resources officer for Voya Financial®, responsible for Human Resources, Corporate Responsibility and Voya Foundation. In this role, Silva directs a strategy aimed at building the organization’s human capital by attracting, retaining and developing world-class employees and incenting them to deliver superior performance. Silva also serves on Voya Financial’s Executive Committee. |
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Patrick R. Spine, Vice President, HR, PRA Health Sciences
In his 5 years with PRA Health Sciences, Patrick has completely transformed the HR function through his strategic and innovative leadership. Through leading by example, his efforts have directly and positively impacted the operations and bottom line of the organization. When Patrick joined in 2012, PRA was an organization of approximately 4,000 employees. Since that time PRA has grown to become one of the leading Contract Research Organizations (CROs) in the industry, employing over 15,000 people in more than 60 countries. |
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Lisa Sterling, EVP & Chief People and Culture Officer, Ceridian
As Executive Vice President, Chief People and Culture Officer for Ceridian, Lisa’s focus is executing the global people strategy combined with leading the vision on the Dayforce Talent Management offering. She joined Ceridian in June 2015 as Vice President of Dayforce Talent Management, responsible for global product strategy for talent technologies; managing relationships with industry experts and alliance partners; leading product management and positioning go-to-market strategies, and executing on current and future product offerings. |
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Lorraine Booth, CHRO, MemorialCare
Lorraine Booth, Chief Human Resources Officer, leads MemorialCare’s People and Culture efforts for more than 11,000 employees. Ms. Booth has over 25 years of experience leading Human Resources initiatives including attraction and retention, HR analytics, Merger and Acquisitions and total rewards. She has been instrumental in re-imagining leadership performance, system integration, succession planning and benefits design. During her tenure, MemorialCare was awarded the Gallup Great Workplace four years in a row and other Best Workplace awards such as OC METRO and the Orange County Register. Ms. Booth is passionate about Leadership transformation and creating a highly-engaged culture that is service focused, agile and innovative. |
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Rudy Campoya, CHRO, Socorro Independent School District
Rudy Campoya has served the Socorro Independent School District since 1990, where he began his career in the Department of Human Resources of the Socorro Independent School District. Since then, Campoya has served in Payroll, Information Services and Human Resources. Rudy holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Information Systems and a Master’s Degree in Management/Leadership. Campoya brings over 24 years of experience HR management and leadership to the role, including Chief of Human Resources, Director of Human Resources/Personnel Administration, Director of Human Resources/Support Personnel, Manager of Information Services, and Payroll Supervisor. |
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Paula Just, CHRO, Health First
Paula Just has 27 years of experience in healthcare human resources. She previously served as Network Vice President of Human Resource Effectiveness at SSM Health Care Corporation in St. Louis. Paula began her career at St. John’s Mercy Medical Center as a Compensation and Benefits Analyst in 1986. Since that time, she has held the position of Manager of Compensation & Benefits, Human Resource Director and Regional Recruitment Director. In addition to St. John’s Mercy Medical Center, she also worked for established health systems such as Tenet Healthcare and Missouri Baptist Medical Center, and as an adjunct professor for Webster University. |
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Maria Smedley, VP, HR & Strategy, Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corp
Maria Smedley serves as Vice President of Human Resources and Corporate Strategy for both Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corporation (AECC) and Arkansas Electric Cooperatives, Inc. (AECI) She is responsible for human resource policy, organizational design and development, talent management, employee relations and total rewards strategies and programs. She is also responsible for leading enterprise-wide strategy development for both a utility services cooperative as well as a generation and transmission cooperative. |
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Karen Anderson, SVP, CHRO, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals
Karen Anderson joined Alnylam in 2014 as the Chief Human Resources Officer with the mission to lead the organization through rapid growth to global product commercialization. Prior to Alnylam Karen was the Vice President, Human Resources for R&D and Corporate Development at Biogen based in Boston. Prior to Biogen Karen spent almost 10 years at Pfizer where she led Human Resources for the Worldwide Research Group and then took on the responsibility as the Vice President, Human Resources for the Commercial groups in both Developed Markets and Emerging Markets. |
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Brian Boylan, EVP & CHRO, JDA Software, Inc.
As Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer, Brian Boylan is responsible for leading JDA’s global human resources organization, supporting teams worldwide with strategies for talent acquisition, business partnership, engagement, performance excellence and total rewards. His vision for continuous learning and development has led to a world-class leadership development program developing leaders at each level of JDA’s leadership supply chain, and his own example of leadership has led to a top-tier HR partnership model with JDA’s business leaders globally. |
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Karen Crone, CHRO, Paycor
Karen Crone, Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO), joined Paycor in June 2010. She is responsible for scaling Paycor’s people practices in support of its rapid growth and for reinforcing its strong culture across an evolving geographic footprint. Prior to joining Paycor, Ms. Crone held a variety of HR and operations executive leadership roles at American Modern Insurance Group, Kendle International, and Convergys Corporation. |
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Christine Esckilsen, Chief Human Capital Officer, Piper Jaffray
Christine Esckilsen is the chief human capital officer at Piper Jaffray. She sits on the firm’s leadership team and oversees human capital, marketing and communications, meetings and events, community relations, travel and real estate. She focuses on strategic issues and works with chairman and CEO Andrew Duff and other members of the leadership team to further organizational effectiveness, employee development and the firm’s overall culture. Christine also serves as the inhouse employment lawyer. Prior to joining Piper Jaffray in 2002, Christine was in private practice at Littler Mendelson in California, where she was a management-side employment litigator for national corporations. |
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Kate Etinger, EVP & CHRO, Bank Leumi
Kate Etinger is the Chief Human Resources Officer at Leumi. Ms. Etinger joined Leumi in 2014 and is responsible for the overall human resources strategy and implementation including talent management, talent acquisition, compensation and benefits, professional development and employee engagement. Prior to joining Leumi, Ms. Etinger was Vice President of Human Resources for the Card Services Division with Fiserv. Prior to that, Kate spent eight years working in various human resources management positions with Citigroup supporting their commercial banking business, global transactional services and global compensation functions. Previously, Kate held various human resources roles within the financial services industry. |
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Jim Hazboun, SVP Corporate Services, Hyundai Capital America
Jim Hazboun is the SVP Corporate Services at Hyundai Capital America (HCA), a $30 billion, top-10 auto-finance company. At HCA, Jim is the head of the corporate services division, which includes human resources, corporate culture, information technology, project management office, procurement, and administration and services. He is responsible for leading a broad organization transformation to drive overall performance, efficiency, and engagement. He also served as the key advisor and valued business partner to the CEO during a period of significant growth and organizational change. His advice to leadership and proven skill in identifying financial obstacles to success helped Hyundai Capital to keep engagement high—and raise it further—while controlling labor costs. |
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Chad Holman, CHRO, Varex Imaging Corp
Chad Holman is the vice president and chief human resources officer for Varex Imaging Corporation. Chad joined Varian Medical Systems in 2009 and was the vice president of human resources for Varian’s Imaging Components business before the spin-off of Varex. |
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Max Langenkamp, Vice President of Human Resources, Cintas
In his current role, Max oversees the uniform rental division of Cintas, in addition to talent acquisition strategy, hiring and on-boarding process, orientation, and labor compliance. In this role, he also manages union strategy and relations, in addition to leading a CoE of employment practice directors that address the most challenging HR issues and policies. His background as a labor and compliance lawyer has enabled him to quickly and effortlessly transition from practicing law into the HR function. He brings with him a breadth and depth of tangible knowledge that has allowed him to rise through the ranks quickly within Cintas’ HR department. |
Click here for a list of all previous CHRO of the Year Award winners.