HRFEST AGENDA
10:00am - 10:10am
Welcome to HRFest Canada 2026!
10:10am - 10:45am
Canada’s HR Reset – The Decisions Defining 2026
Transformation & the Changing Landscape
Three of Canada's leading CHROs open HRFest 2026 with a candid take on where HR really sits right now - what's getting funded, what's been quietly killed, and the calls being made behind closed doors. Leave with a clear view of what's on the table for 2027, and how HR can shape the business case instead of reacting to it.
Casey Woods
Head of HR Toronto, Lyft
10:50am - 11:30am
Is Hybrid Still the Hill HR Should Die On?
Transformation & the Changing Landscape
Two teams. One question that refuses to go away. Is hybrid still worth fighting for, given new regulations, OHS obligations for telework and shifting business priorities, or is it time to reset the model? Hear the strongest arguments on both sides, vote live, and leave with the exact language you can use the next time this debate lands at your executive table.
Paulette Haynes
Founder & Managing Officer, Haynes Law Firm
Tiffany Smye
Leadership Coach & Talent Strategist, TCS Talent Consulting
Joanna Kmiec
CPO, Loopio
11:35am - 12:15pm
The Trust Gap: Why Your Team Isn't Using AI
AI & HR Tech
Adoption stats look great on paper. The reality on the ground is a workforce quietly working around the tools you invested in. Two people leaders compare notes on what that gap really signals: why skepticism runs deeper than the technology, why forcing adoption backfires, and what shifts when people feel some ownership over how AI shows up in their work.
Loren Blandon
Culture & People Lead, Google Deepmind
Shawn Gibson
CHRO, Info-tech
1:05pm - 1:45pm
The Wellbeing Receipts: Where Investment Actually Moves the Numbers
Total Rewards & Benefits
Burnout, childcare gaps and mental health challenges are no longer side stories; they’re central to workforce performance. This session connects wellbeing to the hard numbers: retention, productivity, absenteeism and safety. You’ll hear how everyday leadership behaviors, flexibility and benefits design show up in the P&L, and leave with the exact language to link wellbeing investment to business outcomes.
Tammy Sergie
Chief HR & Privacy Officer, EHN Canada
Deborah Arsenault
CHRO, Region of Peel
1:50pm - 2:50pm
Success Isn’t the Same as Fulfillment: How to Build The Career You Crave
You built a successful career. So why do you still feel unfulfilled? In this keynote, Irina Posan introduces Identity Lag—the gap that forms when you outgrow the version of success you once worked so hard to build—and shares a practical path to creating a more fulfilling career and life without starting over.
You will learn how to:
- Get clear on what you truly want from your career and life now.
- Redefine success around who you have become and what matters most to you.
- Make meaningful change without starting over by building on the experience and success you already have.
Irina Posan
Career & Leadership Coach
2:55pm - 3:35pm
Risk Radar 2026–27 - The Calls Keeping Canadian HR Up at Night
Legal, Risk & Compliance
Termination clauses, severance and non-competes. Pay transparency and AI disclosure. Restructurings and reputational risk. This is where every "what if?" question lives. Employment lawyers and senior HR leaders compare notes on the biggest risks on their radar and invite the room to vote on which ones keep you up at night. Leave with sharper messaging for your executive team and board, plus a prioritized wish list of the guardrails and decisions you need next.
Erin Kuzz
Employment Lawyer, Sherrard Kuzz LLP
Simone Ostrowski
Partner, Whitten & Lublin
Barbara Green
Partner, Robins Appleby LLP
3:40pm - 4:15pm
View From the Top - A North American CPO on What Canada Gets Right
Transformation & the Changing Landscape
For our final session of the day, a leading North American CPO joins us for a candid fireside on what they see from the top and what they think Canadian HR is getting right, getting wrong, and missing entirely. Expect a frank conversation on the differences between leading people in Canada vs. the US, where Canadian HR has a genuine advantage, and the bets they're personally making for 2027. The honest closing conversation that sends you into drinks with something real to talk about.
Katya Laviolette
Chief People Officer & Board Director, 1Password
Krista Skalde
Operating Partner and Chief Talent Officer, Inovia Capital
4:30pm - 6:00pm
Thank you for joining The Hangar on Day 1!
10:10am - 10:55am
Coming for HR: What AI Is Actually Doing to the Function
AI & HR Tech
Three leading voices in AI sit down to talk honestly about how the function itself is being reshaped — which HR roles are already changing, which ones are quietly disappearing, which new skills are becoming the new minimum, and what the HR team of 2028 actually looks like. 30 minutes of candid conversation, 15 minutes of your questions. The session HR teams need but most conferences won't put on the agenda.
11:00am - 11:30am
Legal Hot Seat: Live HR “Ask Me Anything”
Legal, Risk & Compliance
The session where you get to ask the questions you usually pay for. A live, no-holds-barred Q&A with one of Canada's sharpest employment lawyers, covering whatever's actually on your mind: AI in hiring and Ontario's disclosure rules, posting pay ranges, the latest on termination and severance enforceability (bonuses and LTIPs included), non-competes, non-solicits, telework, harassment obligation. Bring your real scenarios. Hypothetical questions welcome too, but the real ones make better answers.
11:35am - 12:00pm
Psychological Safety, the Real Version: Stories From the Other Side of Restructure
Wellbeing & Culture
Three HR leaders take the mic and tell the truth about rebuilding trust after restructures, layoffs and the kind of weeks no one warns you about. Each tells one real story; what broke, what they tried, what actually worked, and what they'd never do again, across hybrid teams, frontline workforces and everything in between. Expect specifics, not slogans, and a few moves you can quietly steal for your own team.
12:50pm - 1:10pm
No Spin EVP: What to Promise When You Can't Promise Much
Total Rewards & Benefits
The honest conversation about what employers are still over-promising and what candidates and employees have stopped believing. How do you actually align EVP with the real employee experience when hiring is slower, budgets are tighter and the gap between the brochure and the desk has rarely been wider? You'll hear how the best Canadian employers are positioning what they genuinely offer, using employee voice credibly, and avoiding the platitudes that quietly torch credibility. Leave with phrases and guardrails you can use in your next job ad, interview, or town hall.
Rima Toor
Head of HR, KGHM
Nicola Meyer
Canada Market Leader, Employee Experience, WTW
1:15pm - 1:40pm
The Caregiving Crunch: The Quiet Workforce Crisis Hitting Canadian Employers
Wellbeing & Culture
Childcare costs are biting. Eldercare is rising. And caregiving is now showing up in your attendance data, your performance reviews and your exit interviews whether you're tracking it or not. This session looks at what Canadian employers are actually trying, from subsidies and backup care to scheduling flexibility, and what's measurably moving retention, productivity and loyalty in their numbers. Leave with the real options on the table and a clear view of where the early movers are pulling ahead.
Krista Skalde
Operating Partner and Chief Talent Officer, Inovia Capital
1:45pm - 2:10pm
Skills Over Titles: Hiring and Mobility When Headcount Freezes
Talent & Workforce Planning
Three short talks on the talent strategy everyone says they want and most organizations are still botching. You'll hear how Canadian employers are running skills-based hiring in a market that's simultaneously talent-short and demand-cooled, why internal mobility has become the talent pipeline that actually matters, and what it takes to upskill front-line managers in Ontario's shifting regulatory landscape. Three speakers, three angles, one clear picture of where this is heading.
Simon Trevarthen
CEO, TRIEC ( The Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council)
2:15pm - 2:40pm
Trauma‑Sensitive HR: Leading When People Are Not OK
Wellbeing & Culture
The process may be routine to HR. It’s rarely routine to the employee. HR doesn’t choose whether people bring trauma into the workplace, but it does choose how its processes are experienced. In this practical, thought-provoking session, Lola Obomighie introduces her SAFE HR Framework, a practical, human-centred framework for leading performance management, investigations and restructuring discussions with clarity, fairness and compassion. Participants will leave with practical language, boundaries and behaviours they can apply immediately to protect psychological safety while maintaining accountability, procedural fairness and service excellence. Because trauma-sensitive HR isn’t softer HR, it’s more disciplined, more intentional and more human.
Lola Obomighie
VP People, Culture & Organizational Effectiveness, Northumberland Hills Hospital
2:45pm - 3:05pm
Deals and People: The M&A Landmines That Take HR Down
Transformation & the Changing Landscape
Most HR teams discover what they don't know about M&A on the day the deal closes. This 20-minute session covers the share-vs-asset-deal basics every HR leader needs in their back pocket, plus the human issues that quietly derail deal value: holding onto the key talent who actually make integration work, handling employees on leave when ownership changes, and communicating through a process where you can't say half of what you know. Compact, candid, and the session you'll wish you'd attended next time the rumour mill starts up.
Karin Adams
VP, Talent & Total Rewards, TMX Group
Margot Lackenbauer
CHRO, BDO Canada
Moderator
3:10pm - 3:35pm
L&D on a Diet: Building Learning Cultures When the Budget Disappears
Learning & Development
The first thing to get cut is almost always learning and development and the long-term cost of that decision is bigger than most CFOs realize. This 25-minute setup session looks at how the best Canadian HR teams are protecting learning cultures with shrinking resources: blending AI-enabled learning tools with real human mentorship, making development sharper instead of bigger, and proving the ROI in time for the next budget conversation. Stick around afterwards for the crowd-solving session that turns this into your own problems, solved by the room.
Jackie Dacanay
Regional Director of Learning & Development, Fairmont Hotles and Resorts
3:40pm - 4:00pm
L&D Live: Bring Your Budget Problem, Solve It With the Room
Learning & Development
Real L&D challenges from the audience. The whole room solving them in real time. Following on from L&D on a Diet, this open-mic session hands the floor to you - bring the specific budget problem you're wrestling with right now (the program you can't afford to lose, the case you can't make to finance, the team you're trying to keep developing on a shoestring) and let the room work it through with you. Live polling, peer exchange, and the most useful 20 minutes you'll spend if L&D is in your remit. Sign up to share your challenge or come to listen and steal good ideas. Either way, you'll leave with more than you came with.
Nura Askar
Director of Learning & Development, Intact
10:05am - 10:50am
Comp 201: Diagnosing a Pay Structure That’s Quietly Broken
Total Rewards & Benefits
Most pay structures look fine on a slide and fall apart on closer inspection. In this hands-on diagnostic workshop, you'll learn how to spot the cracks in existing structures using a real-world case; misaligned ranges, compressed levels, grades that no longer reflect the work. You'll walk through the techniques for adjusting ranges and levels to improve transparency, internal equity and market alignment, and leave with a diagnostic checklist you can run against your own structure on Monday.
Kim Oliver
Managing Director, WTW
Glenda Oldenburg
WTW
10:55am - 11:40am
From Surveys to Storytelling: Making People Analytics Land with the C‑Suite
AI & HR Tech
The dashboard isn't the deliverable, the decision is. Join this session as Dr Kalifa Oliver walks through how to turn engagement and EX data into clear narratives that drive business decisions, not just slides that get nodded at. You'll practice framing insights, choosing the visuals that actually land, and linking people data to financial and operational outcomes. Leave with a narrative framework you can use the next time you walk into the boardroom with a survey result.
Dr Kalifa Oliver
Executive Advisor, Author, & Sr. Director of Technology, Lowes
11:45am - 12:30pm
After the Deal: M&A Workforce Integration for Canadian HR
Transformation & the Changing Landscape
Deals get signed in the boardroom. They get won or lost in HR. In this case-based workshop, you'll work through HR's real role in Canadian M&A, mapping workforce and severance exposure pre-deal, structuring offers in asset deals, retaining the key talent that makes the deal work, and communicating through the process without over-promising. Leave with an M&A workforce integration checklist and a clear view of the calls you'd need to make in your first 90 days post-close
Audrey Bainbridge
Senior Consultant, M&A, Mercer
12:35pm - 1:20pm
Proving It: How L&D Earns Its Budget When Every Line Is Under Review
Learning & Development
L&D is often the first budget cut and the last to get credit, usually because the impact never made it into language finance respects. In this hands-on lab, you'll work through how to connect learning investment to the outcomes leaders actually track: retention, productivity, internal mobility, time-to-competence and revenue protection. You'll leave with a practical framework for building the business case for your programs, the metrics worth measuring (and the vanity ones to drop), and the language to defend L&D spend in the room where the decisions get made.
2:10pm - 2:55pm
Leading Without the Mask: Recognizing the Adaptive Strategies That Drive Leadership Under Pressure
Leadership & HR Careers
Behind every leadership gap is a pattern that once kept someone safe. In this fast-paced, interactive session, HR leaders and people managers will get a hands-on introduction to the Mask Mapping™ framework — exploring the unconscious adaptive strategies that drive leadership behaviour under pressure. In just 30 minutes, you’ll identify your dominant pattern, see how it shows up in your team, and leave with one concrete insight you can apply immediately in your organization. Consider this your first look at a methodology that goes deeper than any personality profile you’ve encountered before.
Kristina Holle
Executive Coach, Holle Consulting
3:00pm - 3:55pm
Feedback Lab for Teams: The Golden Rule That Changes the Conversation
Learning & Development
An interactive workshop where participants reflect on real feedback conversations that went badly, both as giver and receiver, and rebuild them using one Universal Truth that makes every feedback conversation more successful. Join Katie Duarte, Feedback Specialist, for research-backed insights that will transform the way you approach feedback conversations and leave with a roadmap of actions that make tough conversations more connected and more effective.
Katie Duarte
Founder and Principal, Action Potential Solutions
10:05am - 10:50am
How They Actually Got the Job: Three HR Leaders on the Moves That Worked
Leadership & HR Careers
Join us for this opening session with a Director, VP and CHRO talking honestly about how they got to where they are today. The lateral moves that opened doors, the promotions they nearly turned down, the bets that didn't pay off but mattered anyway. Not generic career advice. Real Canadian HR career paths from the people ahead of the game.
10:55am - 11:35am
Owning the Benefits Conversation: The Skill That Gets HR Generalists Taken Seriously
Total Rewards & Benefits
Benefits is where a lot of ambitious HR generalists quietly feel exposed and that gap gets noticed. This session helps you close it. Learn how to speak confidently about benefits strategy without being an actuary: what really drives plan costs, the questions to ask your broker, when a plan no longer fits your workforce, and how to bring a credible benefits view to the leadership table. Because owning it gets you taken seriously.
11:40am - 12:10pm
Promoted, or Replaced? What AI Means for the Mid-Career HR Move
Leadership & HR Careers
Join this session as we delve into which HR careers are quietly getting reshaped by AI. Which roles are growing? Which are being absorbed? Which new skills have become table stakes for a Director-level move that didn't require them three years ago? A candid conversation with senior HR leaders and a workforce strategist on what the next promotion actually looks like in an AI-shaped function and how to position yourself for it.
12:10pm - 12:40pm
Mindfulness session
1:05pm - 1:45pm
Internal Comms Without a Comms Team: HR's Quiet Second Job
Leadership & HR Careers
Most HR leaders have a second job they were never hired for: internal comms. The restructure announcement. The AI rollout email. The benefits change FAQ. The manager messaging when something blows up. This session is the practical toolkit for the comms moments HR ends up owning whether you have a comms team or not, the principles that actually land with employees, the templates you can adapt, and the language that holds up when the news isn't good.
1:50pm - 2:30pm
The Promotion Conversation: How to Ask for the Job You Actually Want
Leadership & HR Careers
Most HR people coach others through career conversations and quietly avoid their own. This session walks through the conversation that gets you the Head of or Director role: how to build the case before you have it, when to time the ask, how to read the politics, and what to do when the answer is "not yet." Practical, slightly uncomfortable, and the session you'll wish you'd attended before your last performance review.
2:35pm - 3:15pm
The CFO Conversation: How HR Leaders Win the Budget Fight
Leadership & HR Careers
The skill that quietly decides whether your projects get funded, your team grows, and you get promoted. In this session, you'll learn how to translate people priorities into the language CFOs actually respond to — numbers, risk, returns and trade-offs — and rehearse the specific conversation you're going to walk into next quarter. Bring a real ask from your current organization. Leave with the script.
10:05am - 10:40am
Keynote: When 100% Staffed Isn't 100% Capacity : The Missing Measure of Team Performance
Wellbeing & Culture
A full headcount does not guarantee operational bandwidth - and assuming it does creates a dangerous blind spot during high-demand stretches. To open Day Two, Françoise Mathieu introduces Functional Capacity: a proven approach to measuring what your teams can realistically handle. Learn how to map out grounded expectations and leave with a clear framework to support both leader well-being and team performance.
Françoise Mathieu
Executive Director, TEND Academy
10:45am - 11:25am
Hiring in 2027 - Legal, Transparent and Actually Human
Talent & Workforce Planning
Pay transparency, AI disclosure, telework protections and immigration changes have reshaped the hiring rulebook. This conversation breaks down what’s new in Ontario and beyond - from job‑posting salary ranges to AI in recruitment and cross‑border risk - and shows how to balance compliance with a genuinely human candidate experience. You’ll leave with a clearer, defensible hiring process and practical language to use when resetting expectations with leaders and candidates.
Linda Krebs
Global Head of Talent Acquisition, Nokia
Nancy Tavares
VP Head of People & Culture, Paladin Security
11:30am - 12:10pm
The Generational Reckoning – What Younger Workers Actually Want in a Brittle World
Wellbeing & Culture
In a more polarized environment, younger employees are asking for more and a lot of organizations are guessing wrong about what that actually means. This cross-generational panel digs into what they really expect around inclusion, accessibility, psychological safety and purpose, and how leaders are responding without burning out their existing teams. You'll hear how everyday behavior shapes culture more than any policy, and how three or four different generations end up experiencing the same workplace in completely different ways.
Rainu Singh
VP, HR, Crown Property Management
12:15pm - 12:55pm
If You Were Building HR From Scratch Today, What Would You Keep?
Transformation & the Changing Landscape
If you were designing the HR function from scratch today, would it look anything like what you have now? In this interactive session, you'll redraw your own HR operating model, deciding where AI, EX, compliance, wellbeing and data should really sit, and test it against real constraints. We'll look at where people analytics and listening platforms belong, which skills your team can't afford to be without, and which roles are quietly ready to evolve.
Erin Gordon
VP of HR, Lindt
Mary-Jo Hewat
Senior Vice President, Human Resources & Facilities, Sagen
Kate Railton
Chief People Officer, Mejuri
1:40pm - 2:20pm
Total Rewards as a Transformation Lever: Turning Change into Workforce Momentum
Total Rewards & Benefits
AI is reshaping work, skills and employee expectations at an unprecedented pace. In this session, discover how Total Rewards can move beyond compensation programs to become a strategic lever that builds trust, fuels agility and helps organizations navigate transformation with confidence. Through a fresh perspective on the evolving employment deal, attendees will gain practical insights on aligning rewards, employee experience and leadership behaviours to strengthen engagement, accelerate reskilling and empower people to thrive through change.
Daniel Imbeault, M.Sc.
Senior Principal, Compensation, Talent & Culture, Normandin Beaudry
2:25pm - 3:05pm
Who Looks After HR? A Candid Conversation on Leading the People Function in 2026
Leadership & HR Careers
This conversation is built for the people doing one of the hardest, most important jobs in business right now. A leading CHRO joins us off-script for an honest conversation on what it really takes to lead the people function in 2026; the calls they're proud of, the ones that taught them the most, and what they've learned about leading well without burning out. Expect hard-won wisdom, a few laughs, and the kind of frank conversation you only get in a room like this one.
Manuelita Cherizard
Chief Human Resources Officer, Royal Ontario Museum
Katrina Stevens
VP, HR, Pinchin
3:10pm - 3:30pm
Closing Keynote
Transformation & the Changing Landscape
Stay tuned - coming soon!
10:05am - 10:30am
The Squeeze Is On: Navigating Financial Stress in Today's Workforce
Total Rewards & Benefits
Minimum wage is climbing across Canada. Internal equity is cracking. And financial stress is now showing up in every engagement survey from the front line to the C-suite. This session breaks down what's actually changing, where the pressure is biting hardest, and what employers can do without blowing the compensation budget. You'll leave with a clearer read on where minimum wage shifts intersect with your pay structure, and how financial stress is quietly costing you in performance, engagement and retention.
Jessica Rodrigues
National Director, Client Services, IA Financial
10:35am - 10:55am
Money Talks: Coaching Managers for Honest Pay Conversations
Total Rewards & Benefits
Even the best pay framework can fall apart in a one-on-one. Most managers are quietly fumbling the pay conversation, over-promising, getting defensive, or shutting it down entirely, and the trust damage takes months to undo. This session gives you the simple framing, the exact phrases, and the do's-and-don'ts you can cascade to leaders so financial conversations build trust instead of eroding it. Short, sharp, and stuff your managers can use on Monday.
Kim Morris
Lead HR Consultant, Citation Canada
Julie Miles
Manager, Advisory Services, Citation Canada
11:00am - 11:25am
Termination & Restructure Clinic: Getting the Law and Optics Right
Legal, Risk & Compliance
Expert-led, no-nonsense, and built for the calls you're already making. We'll cover 2026's termination and restructuring risk profile in Ontario, the latest on enforceability of termination and severance clauses (including the treatment of bonuses and long-term incentives), non-competes and non-solicits, EI and severance optics, and what repeated cuts do to your numbers and your reputation. We'll also unpack anticipated Court of Appeal guidance and how HR can shape messaging and fairness perceptions when the news lands.
11:30am - 11:50am
When Cuts Keep Coming: HR’s Playbook for Rolling Restructures
Transformation & the Changing Landscape
The third or fourth round of cuts is a different conversation than the first. People are exhausted, managers are wary, and your credibility is on the line every time you say "this is the last one." This session is about how to keep faith with employees and leaders through rolling restructures, framing what's actually happening for different audiences, managing expectations without lying, and presenting a credible path to stability that doesn't fall apart at the next earnings call. The session for the HR team that's been here before, and is here again.
Hilai Shefa
Founder, Changely
12:40pm - 1:05pm
Talent on the Move: Why Canada Is Suddenly the Destination and How to Capitalize
Talent & Workforce Planning
Canada is having a moment. As political and policy turmoil reshapes other markets, disillusioned talent is looking north and the employers who get this right will pull ahead of the ones who don't even notice. This session shares real examples of cross-border talent flows, plus the compliance and immigration considerations when employees live and work across borders. You'll leave with a practical lens for managing the risk and a clearer view of how to position Canada and Toronto as the safe, inclusive destination they genuinely are right now.
Stacey Zita
Director of Settlement, International Employment Retention, ThriveON
Lara Dyer
Chief Solutions Officer, Talent Beyond Boundaries
1:10pm - 1:30pm
Inclusion in a Polarized World: Holding Space Without Breaking Apart
Wellbeing & Culture
The conversation HR has been quietly dreading. As the world gets more polarized, leaders are increasingly stuck between two bad options — turning the workplace into a battleground, or pretending nothing's happening. This session focuses on the everyday practices rather than the slogans: concrete examples of setting guardrails for respectful disagreement, responding when global events spill into the office, and protecting psychological safety for people who fundamentally disagree on what's happening in the world. Honest, practical, and built for the room that knows this is harder than it looks.
1:35pm - 2:15pm
Beyond the People Manager: Redesigning management for the AI Era
Leadership & HR Careers
AI isn't just changing how managers work. It's challenging why we organize people management the way we do. As technology takes on tasks like coordination and coaching, HR leaders have an opportunity to redesign how organizations deliver support, development and accountability. This session explores the future of people management, the signals already emerging in today's workforce, and the questions every HR leader should be asking before the next wave of change arrives.
Katherine Gibbard, Ph.D.
Senior Research Scientist, Future of Work Research Lab, SAP SuccessFactors
2:20pm - 2:50pm
The Skills Half-Life Problem: Building Capability Faster Than the Work Changes
Learning & Development
Skills are expiring faster than any training calendar can keep up with and AI is accelerating the clock. The old model of annual programs and set curricula can't move at the speed the business now needs. This session looks at how L&D leaders are shifting from scheduled training to continuous, in-the-flow capability building: identifying the skills that actually matter, closing gaps in weeks rather than quarters, and building a learning culture that adapts as fast as the roles do. Leave with a sharper view of how to keep your workforce's skills ahead of the curve instead of forever catching up.
Susan Stanimirovic Rowley
Head of Learning & Capability CPG, Metrolinx
Moderator
2:55pm - 3:30pm
AI Ate the Training Department: What L&D Becomes Next
Learning & Development
AI can now generate the content, personalize the pathway, and coach the learner, so what's left for the humans in L&D? This candid session tackles the question quietly worrying the profession: which parts of the L&D role AI is absorbing, which parts become more valuable, and what the L&D team of 2028 actually does. Hear how forward-thinking L&D leaders are redeploying their time from building courses to building capability, curating instead of creating, and becoming the strategic skills advisors their organizations badly need. The honest conversation about L&D's own reinvention because the function isn't disappearing, but it is changing shape fast.
Mary Prioriello
Director Leadership Learning and Development-Global, DECIEM
10:05am - 10:50am
Leading Under Pressure: A Personal Audit on Sustainable Performance
Wellbeing & Culture
The session about you, not your team. Most senior leaders are running closer to empty than they'd admit. In this hands-on lab, you'll take a personal audit of where you're depleted and where you're holding steady across the things that drive your performance: energy, attention, recovery, boundaries and purpose. Identify the patterns quietly costing you, design 2–3 experiments to test this month, and leave with a personal sustainability plan you can put to work this week.
Janine Pajot
Fearless Leadership & Culture Expert
10:55am - 11:40am
AI Sandbox for HR: Safe Experiments, Real Use Cases
AI & HR Tech
The Day 2 follow-up to AI in HR Lab - this time, less roadmap, more sandbox. In this guided session, you'll work through concrete AI experiments for EX and HR efficiency, then move into the practical implementation steps that turn pilots into adoption. We'll cover the guardrails that matter (human review, employee communications, transparency) and leave you with an experiment plan and a comms template you can use to launch your first (or next) AI rollout safely.
11:45am - 12:30pm
The New Manager Toolkit: Difficult Conversations, Real Rapport, and Leading a Team Well
Leadership & HR Careers
Most people are promoted into management because they were good at their old job, not because anyone taught them how to lead. This hands-on workshop tackles the skills that actually make or break a new manager: how to have the difficult conversations everyone avoids, how to build genuine rapport and trust with a team, and the everyday communication habits that turn a capable individual into a leader people want to follow. Practical, interactive, and built for doing. You'll leave with techniques you can use in your very next one-on-one.
Ric Phillips
President & Head Communication Coach, 3V Communications
1:35pm - 2:20pm
AI in HR Lab: Build Your First Three Real Use Cases
AI & HR Tech
Are you doing AI by accident; a tool here, a pilot there, no real plan? In this hands-on lab, you'll map your team's actual pain points against the AI opportunities that exist now across EX, efficiency and analytics, and walk out with 2–3 use cases you've actually drafted and a starter AI roadmap for your HR function. We'll cover the governance essentials too, bias, monitoring, data privacy, transparency, so the use cases you take home are ones you can actually defend.
2:25pm - 3:10pm
EX Roadmap Lab: Designing Your Next 12 Months of Employee Experience
Wellbeing & Culture
The EX program for the next 12 months, built in 45 minutes. You'll work through a guided process to design your own EX roadmap covering listening strategy, the moments that genuinely matter, and lifecycle design, with employee listening data and basic people analytics as your inputs. The focus is the balance most EX leaders are wrestling with in 2026 - keeping the function credible and stable while pushing for the growth and authenticity the business needs. Leave with a 12-month EX roadmap drafted in your own hand, ready to refine with your team next week.
10:05am - 10:50am
How HR Becomes Strategic: The Quiet Moves That Change How You're Seen
Leadership & HR Careers
Most mid-career HR leaders hit the same wall: respected as a function expert, not consulted as a business leader. This session is about how to cross that line. The cross-functional bets that build credibility. The projects worth saying yes to. The small shifts in how you show up that change how the business sees you. You'll hear from HR leaders who've made that transition, what they did differently, what they wish they'd done sooner, and the 90-day plan you can put into action when you get back to your desk.
Lee-Ann Reid
VP of Operations, Vistek
10:55am - 11:35am
Designing the Career and Life You Crave: Turning Career Clarity into Action
Leadership & HR Careers
How do you create a career you love—one that supports a life you love living?
In this interactive session, get practical strategies to build your personal brand, increase your visibility, create new opportunities, and navigate what comes next. Bring your questions about career growth, leadership, confidence, and designing your next chapter.
Irina Posan
Career & Leadership Coach
11:40am - 12:20pm
You're the First HR Hire: Now What?
Leadership & HR Careers
The session for HR leaders at growth-stage Canadian businesses where the policies are mostly post-its and someone needs to figure out comp philosophy by Tuesday. Senior HR leaders who've built functions from scratch on what to do first, what to do later, and what to never do at all. The order matters far more than most people realize, get it wrong and you spend the next two years undoing your own work. Get it right and you're the person they didn't know they needed to hire next.
Celine Maasland
Head of People and Culture, Rvezy
1:05pm - 1:45pm
Beyond the Day Job: How HR Leaders Build External Profiles Without Burning Out
Leadership & HR Careers
Writing. Speaking. Advisory work. Podcasts. Board roles. The HR leaders building external profiles aren't doing it for fun, they're doing it for influence, optionality, and the career insurance of being known beyond your current employer. Three practitioners talk honestly about what they've built, what it's opened up, what it's cost them, and what they'd tell someone earlier in their career thinking about it now. Useful whether you're ready to start tomorrow or just curious about what's possible.
1:50pm - 2:30pm
Who's in Your Corner: Mentors, Sponsors and the Promotion You Don't See Coming
Leadership & HR Careers
Almost every promotion has an invisible third party, a sponsor who advocated for you in a room you weren't in, a mentor who told you to apply, a peer who put your name forward. This session breaks down the difference between mentors, sponsors and peer networks, how to build each one without it feeling transactional, and what to do if your current organization doesn't offer the relationships you need. From HR leaders who've done it well, and a couple who learned the hard way.
2:35pm - 3:15pm
Closing Keynote – One HR Leader’s Story: The Career That Got Me Here
Transformation & the Changing Landscape
We close The Loft with the honest version of a career. A senior HR leader walks through the path that got them here — the bets that paid off, the ones that didn't, the moments they nearly walked away, and what they'd do differently if they were starting over. Inspirational without being preachy. The closing conversation that sends you out of HRFest with a clearer view of your own next chapter.