Maris Krieger is the  Senior Director, Talent Programs at the Hearst Corporation.

Shaunda Zilich is the Senior Director, Employer Brand and Talent Attraction at Marriott.

Ken Oliver is the Vice President of Checkr.org, the Social Impact division of Checkr, Inc., and also serves as the Executive Director  of the Checkr Foundation. Checkr.org is dedicated to the mission of Building a Fairer Future of Work: one job at a time, by reshaping the narrative and providing pathways to sustainable employment for the 80M Americans who suffer from an arrest and conviction record. Ken's professional expertise spans the landscape of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice (DEIJ), record clearance, talent development, talent sourcing strategy, change management, and public policy. His proximate leadership is informed by lived experience after having been sentenced to life in prison for joyriding. During his close to 24 years of incarceration, he served nine years in solitary confinement for reading a book by former Black Panther Party member, George Jackson. With the support of Stanford University and corporate law firm Mayer Brown, Mr. Oliver successfully filed a civil rights lawsuit against the state, which led to his release in 2019. Upon reentering society, Mr. Oliver quickly established himself in the legal field, first as a paralegal at a public interest law firm and later as a state policy director. In 2020, he co-founded and became the Executive Director of a nonprofit organization focused on providing justice-impacted individuals with career pathways in tech and the knowledge-based economy. Under his leadership, the organization secured a $28.5 million investment from the State of California to establish a unique residential tech training campus for justice-impacted individuals.

Ken's insights and contributions to the field have been recognized and featured in publications such as Newsweek, Fast Company, Forbes, Inc., the New York Times, and others. He also played a role in shaping California Governor Newsom’s 2021 Future of Work Report.

In addition to his primary roles, Mr. Oliver holds board positions with several organizations, including The Last Mile, the San Mateo County of Community Colleges Foundation (SMCCCF), Turning Basin Labs (TBL), ClimbHire, Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice (CURYJ), the Justice Reform Foundation (JRF), and the National Reentry Workforce Collaborative (NRWC).

Jane Curran is the Global Head of Talent Acquisition at JLL. In her more than 20 years at JLL, she has served in a variety of HR roles and demonstrated a solid track record of delivering proactive and creative human capital solutions for ever-changing business needs. As head of Talent Acquisition, she has led a significant shift toward a more tech-enabled and marketing-focused function to better source and attract diverse talent pools to fill approximately 30,000 roles a year. She is a passionate champion of diversity and inclusion, wellbeing, and a people first approach.

Jane and her husband Mike reside in Chicago, IL with their two children. Quality time for the Curran family includes trips to the ski slopes of Utah, spending time on Torch Lake in Northern Michigan, football games at the University of Wisconsin, and countless weekends cheering on her kids at basketball, baseball, volleyball and softball games.

Cheryl Petersen is the Associate Principal, Region Talent Resourcing Leader, Americas Region at Arup.

Giselle Battley is the  Director, Head of Global Emerging Talent / Talent Acquisition at Yahoo.

Rebecca Smith is the Vice President of Talent Acquisition at MGM Resorts International. 

Lydia Dishman is Fast Company’s senior editor for growth and engagement. She has also written for CBS Moneywatch, Fortune, The Guardian, Popular Science, and the New York Times, among others.

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the BBC, The Washington Post, Quartz at Work, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.

Naomi is the Senior Director of Design at Employ, where she leads product design for Employ’s talent acquisition and recruitment marketing solutions — JazzHR, Lever, and Jobvite — to create great people-first experiences for the candidates and hiring teams who rely on Employ every day.

Naomi began her adventures in tech over 20 years ago — a journey that's spanned work for startups, scale-ups, and enterprise companies. She's passionate about creating seamless, empowering experiences in the digital products that people use on the job, and has seen first-hand how these are key to helping whole organizations collaborate effortlessly on hiring. Naomi grew up in Toronto, Canada, and loves giving back to the design and tech community through mentorship and teaching. When Naomi isn't in front of a computer, you can usually find her gardening, riding her bicycle, or exploring new cities.

Paul Phillips is Global Head of Talent Acquisition and Onboarding at Avanade and leads a team across 26 countries. He brings the Avanade brand to life for its candidates and new hires, and provides an engaging, high-touch and consistent pre-board and onboarding experience. This reaffirms the new hire decision to stay and integrates our people into Avanade’s culture, core values, processes, and policies.

Over the past 10 years, Paul has held several roles at Avanade including Global Head of Total Rewards and Global Head of HR Strategy and Operations. Prior to joining Avanade, he worked in senior HR strategy and consulting positions at CGI, PwC, and KPMG. Paul is based in New York, U.S.A.