Explore the Agenda
Pre-Conference Day
Monday, October 5
Day One
Tuesday, October 6
Day Two
Wednesday, October 7
Beyond the Brief: Redefining What Senior HR Leadership Looks Like
10:00 am Discover: Designing for Moments, Not Functions
- Your HR org chart has never once matched how your employees experience work – they don’t live inside your COEs, they live inside moments: getting hired, onboarded, growing, leaving, yet most organizations still design people processes around functions, not humans
- Drawing on Sanofi’s global transformation, this talk makes the case for a fundamentally different model, one where COEs and Global Business Services stop operating as parallel tracks and start designing together around the employee lifecycle
- The honest truth: breaking silos isn’t a technology problem, it's a governance, data, and ways-of-working problem – ownership is your biggest unlock, learn what it actually takes to get there, and what must change first
- If your HR model is still organized around how HR thinks, rather than how people work, this talk is for you
10:20 am Discover: Strengthening HR–Finance Partnerships to Drive Strategic Impact & Cost Savings
- How can HR elevate its role from support function to strategic business partner by building a high-trust, insight-driven relationship with Finance?
- Learn how Sarah Cannon Research Institute improved business acumen across HR, enabling teams to better navigate financial decisions, support people leaders, and manage tough moments like reorganizations with clarity and confidence
- See how this partnership delivered tangible ROI, including redesigning time-off policies to maintain employee benefits while reducing expenses by $4M
10:40 am Develop: Building an HR Function That Is Designed for People & Trusted by the Business
This Q&A session explores the two sides of what it takes to build a truly effective HR function, one that is designed around how people actually experience work, and one that has the financial credibility to influence commercial decisions at the highest level. Drawing on both the lifecycle-centered operating model and the HR–Finance partnership approaches explored in the Discover sessions, participants will examine the structural and relational changes that most reliably move HR from functional support to strategic partner.
- What are the biggest structural barriers to designing HR around the employee lifecycle, and how do you begin to dismantle them?
- How do you build financial fluency across an HR team without losing the human-centered culture that defines it?
- What governance changes most reliably break down the silos between COEs, shared services, and HRBPs?
- How do you make the business case for people-centered HR design in the language that CFOs and CEOs find credible?
11:00 am Action: Redesigning HR From the Outside In, & Proving Its Value From the Inside Out
Building on the Q&A, this roundtable creates a practical space to examine what it would take to redesign HR around the employee lifecycle in participants’ own organizations, and to build the financial credibility needed to sustain that investment. This is a peer-driven session focused on the concrete moves that make the biggest difference.
- What is the single biggest obstacle to designing your HR function around how people actually experience work?
- Where does the gap between HR strategy and financial decision-making create the most friction in your organization?
- What one structural or governance change would most improve the way your COEs, shared services, and HRBPs work together?
- How do you build the financial credibility to sustain investment in people-centered HR design during periods of cost pressure?
Leave with a clearer view of the design and commercial credibility moves that will most strengthen your HR function, and peer-tested approaches to making the case for them
11:20 am Networking Break
11:50 am Panel: The CPO/CHRO Roundtable: Leading the People Function in a Period of Unprecedented Change
The role of the CHRO and CPO has never been more complex or more consequential. As life sciences organizations navigate simultaneous pressures, from AI-driven restructuring and geopolitical volatility to talent scarcity and shifting employee expectations, the people function is being asked to do more, with less, faster than ever before.
In this candid, peer-to-peer discussion, a group of the most senior HR leaders in life sciences come together to share what is actually working, what isn’t, and what they wish they’d done differently. Expect frank conversation on how to maintain culture through relentless change, how to position HR as a true strategic partner to the C-suite, and how to build a people function that is genuinely fit for the future.
1:00 pm Networking Lunch
2:00 pm Discover: Beyond the Brief, Redefining What Senior HR Leadership Looks Like in the Future of Life Sciences Businesses
- How the CHRO and CPO role is evolving, and why there is no longer one definition of what senior HR leadership looks like
- The different pathways into the C-suite: what they demand, what they develop, and what they leave behind
- What the CPO+ operating model looks like in practice, expanded remit, enterprise influence, and board-level presence
- How to build the credibility, relationships, and commercial language needed to lead beyond the people function
2:20 pm Panel: The CPO+ Role in Practice, Expanding Influence, Holding Complexity, Leading at the Top
What does it look like when a people leader operates beyond the traditional HR remit, and how do you build the enterprise relationships and commercial credibility to do it with authority? Explore how CHROs and CPOs in life sciences organizations of different sizes and stages are expanding their scope, taking on board engagement, commercial strategy, ESG, and enterprise accountability, while continuing to lead a high-performing people function. Learn what the CPO+ role demands in terms of personal resilience, stakeholder management, and leadership identity, and what organizations must do to create the conditions that allow people leaders to operate at their full potential.
- What expanding the people remit beyond HR actually requires, in terms of capability, credibility, and personal leadership
- How CPO+ leaders are navigating board relationships, commercial decisions, and enterprise accountability alongside their core people responsibilities
- What life sciences organizations of different sizes and stages need from their most senior people leaders right now
- How to build the conditions that allow a CHRO or CPO to operate at the full extent of their potential
3:00 pm Action: Making the Right Trade-Offs: Prioritizing What Really Drives Impact in a Resource-Constrained HR Function
Building on the Q&A, this roundtable creates a practical space for senior HR leaders to step back and examine how they are allocating time, budget, and attention across an increasingly complex set of priorities. As expectations of the people function expand, but resources remain constrained, the ability to make clear, conscious trade-offs becomes a defining leadership capability.
This is a candid, peer-driven discussion focused on what to stop, what to double down on, and how to ensure HR effort is aligned to what truly moves the business forward.
- Where is your HR function currently over-investing relative to the impact it delivers, and why is it hard to pull back?
- What critical people priorities are being under-served today due to capacity constraints or competing demands?
- How do you create the discipline, governance, and leadership alignment needed to say “no” to lower-value activity?
- What does a genuinely focused, high-impact HR agenda look like in your organization over the next 12–18 months?
3:20 pm Networking & Refreshments
3:40 pm Discover: Elevating Leadership Effectiveness Across a Multi‑State Life Sciences Organization
- How can HR leaders strengthen leadership capability and decision‑making across highly distributed, multi‑state teams without adding unnecessary complexity or headcount?
- Discover how LabCorp has embedded a pragmatic, data‑informed approach to leadership effectiveness, focusing on courageous decision‑making, talent pipelines, cultural curiosity, and using people data to surface hidden risks and opportunities across geographically dispersed operations
- Learn how this approach is being applied at scale across 23–24 U.S. states, helping leaders move faster on talent decisions, improve team effectiveness, and maximize the return on every leadership role by treating headcount as a strategic investment rather than a given
4:00 pm CHRO Roundtable: The 3 Decisions Defining the Next Era of HR Leadership
This closed-door, peer-led roundtable is designed for CHROs and CPOs navigating increasing complexity, expectation and pressure. Focused on the real decisions defining top-of-house leadership, this session creates space to step back, pressure-test priorities, and leave with clarity on what matters most.
- Where you must expand beyond HR to operate as a true enterprise leader – and what it takes to earn that mandate
- The operating model or governance friction most limiting impact – and the structural shift that unlocks it
- How to build the commercial narrative that protects and prioritizes people investment in a cost-constrained environment
Facilitated by the Track Chair