In this episode of the Future Proof HR podcast, Jim Kanichirayil, our co-host and executive producer, sits down with Katie Fionova, Head of Human Resources at Four Inc., to talk about what it takes to lead through uncertainty when multiple major changes are happening at once. Katie shares how her organization has been navigating public sector volatility, a PE-backed transformation, enterprise systems work, new leadership hires, and broader scale-up efforts, all while supporting a distributed workforce.

Together, they unpack what HR leadership looks like when the pace of change is high and employee uncertainty is even higher. Katie explains why trust has to be built through listening, relationships, and credibility, not just top-down communication, and how proactive communication, manager enablement, and practical use of AI can help HR teams respond more effectively to growing demand and complexity.

The conversation also covers how to prioritize in fast-moving environments, how to balance strategic initiatives with day-to-day HR execution, and how to create space for employees to engage honestly during change. From culture committees and communication repositories to automation, risk-based prioritization, and leadership alignment, this episode offers a practical look at how HR can guide organizations through uncertainty without losing the human side of the work.

Topics Discussed

• How HR can lead through uncertainty during PE change, scaling, and enterprise transformation
• Why employees need information, transparency, and context during periods of rapid change
• How to use AI to anticipate employee questions and support proactive communication
• Why trust is built through relationships, credibility, and listening, not just formal presentations
• How project management, RACI planning, and communication systems support change in distributed organizations
• How automation creates bandwidth for strategic HR work
• Why risk and enterprise dependencies should shape prioritization decisions
• How culture committees can create a two-way communication channel during change
• Why listening without action can damage trust, and how leaders can set honest expectations
• What HR leaders should avoid when entering a new organization during a period of change

Additional Resources

• Cleary’s AI-powered HR Chatbot
• Future Proof HR Community
• Connect with Katie Fionova on LinkedIn

Note: This episode was recorded in 2025.

In this episode of the Future Proof HR podcast, Thomas Kunjappu sits down with Terilyn Monroe, Chief People Officer at Guardant Health, to talk about what it takes for HR to operate like a business while still keeping people at the center. Terilyn shares how her team thinks about the employee experience end to end, from recruiting and leadership development to support, strategy, and workforce planning.

Together, they unpack how the role of HR has been evolving, not because its purpose is entirely new, but because the way the work gets done is changing fast. Terilyn explains why modern people teams need to think like enterprise leaders, build with design thinking in mind, and use AI to improve workflows rather than simply layering tools onto broken processes.

The conversation also reflects on lessons from the COVID era, especially the link between employee-centered decisions and strong business outcomes. From there, they turn to AI, discussing how leaders can move employees from fear to curiosity, why capability building matters at every level of the organization, and how senior leadership bootcamps, AI champions, and cross-functional learning communities can help companies adopt AI more responsibly and effectively.

This episode offers a practical look at how HR can help lead transformation by translating business strategy into talent strategy, building readiness for change, and making sure technology serves people, not the other way around.

Topics Discussed:

• Why HR should operate like a business while staying centered on employee experience
• How design thinking helps people teams solve real employee pain points
• What the COVID era taught HR leaders about balancing employee care and business continuity
• How to shift the AI conversation from fear to capability building
• Why senior leaders need baseline AI fluency before broader organizational change can happen
• The role of AI champion communities, workshops, and learning programs in adoption
• Why broken processes need to be re-engineered before AI can add real value
• How HR can future-proof the business through workforce planning, prioritization, and internal talent development

Additional Resources:

• Cleary’s AI-powered HR Chatbot
• Future Proof HR Community
• Connect with Terilyn Monroe on LinkedIn

Note: This episode was recorded in 2025.

In this special live episode of the Future Proof HR podcast, recorded on the floor at Transform 2026 in Las Vegas, Thomas Kunjappu caught up with Jenn Congdon, a 30-plus year HR veteran and HR leader at M Financial Group, for a candid conversation about where AI is already delivering value for HR teams and where the function is headed next.

M Financial Group is an insurance, reinsurance, and wealth management organization built around a community of member firms, with a mission centered on helping those firms succeed, thrive, and realize their full potential.

They got into how Jenn is using AI to prepare for board and committee meetings by stress-testing presentations through the lens of each stakeholder, why she sees AI as a thought partner rather than a replacement for people, and what she would wave away if she had a magic wand: the fragmented, multi-source data problem that keeps HR from making truly business-driven decisions.

Topics Discussed:

• Using Microsoft Copilot to pressure-test board presentations and anticipate hard questions
• Why HR's AI progress often lags behind product and technology teams, and how to close the gap
• The vision for AI-powered self-service that handles repetitive HR questions at scale
• Why AI should eliminate non-value-add work, not the human judgment behind it
• The data consolidation challenge: pulling insights from 15 different sources into one place
• What it means for AI to be a responsible thought partner for HR leaders

Additional Resources:

• Cleary's AI-powered HR Chatbot
• Future Proof HR Community
• Connect with Jenn Congdon on LinkedIn

In this special live episode of the Future Proof HR podcast, recorded on the floor at Transform 2026 in Las Vegas, Thomas Kunjappu sat down with Laura Brittingham, SVP of People at Prove, for a candid conversation about what AI actually looks like in practice for a scaling HR team and what it means for the function's strategic future.

Prove is a leading provider of identity verification and authentication solutions, trusted by 19 of the top 20 US banks and 1,500 top brands globally. Laura joined less than a year ago with no background in identity, and she's been using that fresh perspective to rethink how HR can drive clarity, speed, and scale across the business.

They got into how Laura is using AI to compress a months-long org design effort into seconds, why her mission this year is to make every employee an expert on Prove's products and industry, and why HR leaders who lean into building with agentic tools will define what the function looks like next.

Topics Discussed:

• Using AI to build a company-wide remit directory and bring clarity to 200 unique job titles
• Why faster processing opens up space for strategic thinking, not just task completion
• The case for AI-powered L&D content to make every employee a product and industry expert
• Why the answer to "replace headcount with AI" is to 10x impact instead
• HR is a strategic arm of the business, not just a compliance and payroll function
• What it means to turn HR teams into builders using agentic tools

Additional Resources:

• Cleary's AI-powered HR Chatbot
• Future Proof HR Community
• Connect with Laura Brittingham on LinkedIn

In this special live episode of the Future Proof HR podcast, recorded on the floor at Transform 2026 in Las Vegas, Thomas Kunjappu sat down with Jennifer Erfurth, Chief People Officer at OPSWAT, for a fast-moving conversation about what it actually looks like to lead AI adoption across a global, highly technical workforce.

OPSWAT is a $200 million cybersecurity company with 1,200 employees across the globe, protecting critical infrastructure like nuclear plants and water treatment facilities. With over 500 engineers on staff, Jennifer was tapped directly by her CEO to drive the company's AI adoption initiative, starting with the engineering organization.

They got into why AI adoption is fundamentally a change management problem, how Jennifer rallied her globally distributed HR leadership team around a challenge they initially found intimidating, and why the ERP rollout is the right mental model for thinking about AI transformation. Jennifer also made the case that HR is uniquely positioned to lead this work, and shared what it looks like to embed AI into every employee touchpoint, from talent acquisition to org design to performance.

Topics Discussed:

• Why AI adoption is a change management effort, not a technical one
• How Jennifer brought her global HR leadership team from nervous to bought-in
• Comparing AI transformation to an ERP rollout, and why that framing holds up
• Measuring adoption beyond lines of code, including acceptance rates and sprint velocity
• The emerging model of embedding engineers directly into business functions to build AI-powered tools in-house
• Why HR needs to take a seat at the table on AI strategy, not just support it

Additional Resources:

• Cleary's AI-powered HR Chatbot
• Future Proof HR Community
• Connect with Jennifer Erfurth on LinkedIn

In this special live episode of the Future Proof HR podcast, recorded on the floor at Transform 2026 in Las Vegas, Thomas Kunjappu sits down with Shawn McIntire, General Counsel at Pebl, for a quick but packed conversation about what AI governance actually looks like in practice at a global EOR company.

Pebl provides employment outsourcing solutions that allow companies to hire talent internationally without a legal entity in-country, giving businesses a faster path to global expansion. As General Counsel, Shawn has had to think carefully about how AI fits into the company's existing risk framework and how to build a culture where employees feel comfortable experimenting without flying blind.

They get into why GDPR is the right lens for thinking about AI governance, why keeping your policy short and jargon-free matters more than covering every edge case, and where HR teams are most exposed to AI-related liability today. Shawn also makes the case that the answer to "should AI be used for this?" is almost never no, and explains why every employee should be thinking about how to work themselves out of their current job.

A candid, grounded conversation straight from one of HR's biggest stages.

Topics Discussed:

• Why GDPR is a useful framework for thinking through AI governance
• Fitting AI risk into your company's existing risk profile, not the other way around
• Keeping AI policy short, simple, and actually usable
• Where HR teams face the most AI liability risk today (hint: hiring)
• How bias gets amplified when AI is making decisions at scale
• The case for always iterating and never putting a lid on AI exploration

Additional Resources:

• Cleary's AI-powered HR Chatbot
• Future Proof HR Community
• Connect with Shawn McIntire on LinkedIn

In this special live episode of the Future Proof HR podcast, recorded on the floor at Transform 2026 in Las Vegas, Thomas Kunjappu sits down with Conor Sweeney, VP of People at Form Health, for a quick but packed conversation about what AI in HR actually looks like in practice at a fast-growing telehealth company.

Form Health is the national leader in science-backed obesity care management and cardiometabolic health, operating across 30+ states in the United States, and is a company scaling fast with two distinct employee populations: clinical and corporate. Conor and his team have had to think creatively about how to make it easier for people to do their jobs every day.

They get into what it really looks like to implement agentic AI for knowledge management, the unglamorous work of keeping that content accurate enough to actually be useful, and what's next for AI in talent acquisition. Conor also shares what he's taking away from Transform: HR leaders aren't just adopting AI anymore, they're owning it.

A candid, grounded conversation straight from one of HR's biggest stages.

Topics Discussed:

• Using agentic AI for knowledge management and why Guru has worked for Form Health
• The real challenge of content accuracy when feeding an AI system
• How AI can help TA teams spend less time screening and more time advising
• HR's growing ownership of AI strategy across industries
• Moving from reactive to proactive in compliance and HR ops

Additional Resources:

• Cleary's AI-powered HR Chatbot
• Future Proof HR Community
• Connect with Conor Sweeney on LinkedIn

In this episode of the Future Proof HR podcast, Jim Kanichirayil sits down with Katee Van Horn, Chief People Officer at Web Pros, to explore what it actually looks like to lead a people-first transformation inside a fast-moving, globally distributed organization and what happens when you layer AI on top of it.

With team members across more than 51 countries and a growth strategy built heavily on acquisitions, Web Pros has had to solve some of the hardest problems in modern HR: aligning cultures, integrating teams, building consistent onboarding at scale, and maintaining a shared identity across vastly different ways of working. Katee brings a grounded, operational perspective on how to navigate all of that without losing sight of the people in the middle of it.

Together, they dig into what it really means to shift the narrative around AI from fear to curiosity, why reskilling existing talent almost always beats hiring from outside, and how the SDET and QA role at Web Pros became a real-time case study in workforce evolution. Katee also makes a compelling case for why listening, not just as a practice, but as a discipline that drives action, is the foundation of any successful transformation effort.

This episode is a candid, practical look at what it takes to lead transformation the right way, where people aren't an afterthought to the strategy. They are the strategy.

Topics Discussed:

• Aligning culture and ways of working across acquisitions and global teams
• Building scalable onboarding and just-in-time learning in a remote-first environment
• How AI is reshaping the SDET and QA function in real time
• Reskilling over replacing: why developing existing talent is the smarter long-term play
• Human in the loop vs. human in the lead and when each applies
• Why listening exercises only work when they drive action
• Applying agile thinking to transformation: iterating instead of overhauling
• The five principles for executing a people-first AI transformation

Additional Resources:

• Cleary's AI-powered HR Chatbot
• Future Proof HR Community
• Connect with Katee Van Horn on LinkedIn