Beth Perrone
Senior Vice President, Global Talent Management & Chief Talent Strategy Officer Merck & Co
Beth Perrone is the Senior Vice President and Chief Talent & Strategy Officer at Merck, where she leads the company’s global talent strategy, including leadership development, succession planning, performance management, analytics, and global talent acquisition. A longtime Merck HR leader with prior experience at Schering‑Plough, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Macy’s, Beth brings more than two decades of expertise in shaping large‑scale, high‑impact people strategies. She holds an MA in Industrial Psychology from Fairleigh Dickinson University.
Seminars
- How can large, complex life sciences organizations move from fragmented, decentralized learning models to a single, enterprise‑wide L&D function without losing relevance for diverse roles and therapy areas?
- Discover Merck’s journey to fully centralize learning and development, standardize methodologies, and re‑engineer delivery through technology enablement, including AI‑powered learning intake, rapid content recommendation tools, and emerging AI coaching capabilities
- See the tangible ROI of Merck’s L&D transformation, delivering tens of millions of dollars in cost savings, enabling faster, more consistent learning at scale, and establishing one enterprise-wide set of leadership standards, strengthening capability, alignment, and readiness for future AI enablement across the business
This interactive Q&A examines the tension at the heart of enterprise L&D design: how to achieve scale and consistency without losing the local relevance that makes learning land. Drawing on both the centralization journey and the global-local operating model approaches explored in the Discover sessions, participants will examine how AI, governance, and platform decisions interact to determine whether L&D becomes a genuine enterprise growth engine or a well-intended but underutilized function.
- Where does the balance between central standardization and local autonomy typically break down, and how do you reset it?
- How do you build AI-enabled learning capabilities in a large organization without creating new silos?
- What governance structures enable both enterprise consistency and affiliate responsiveness?
- How do you calculate and communicate the ROI of L&D investment in language that CFOs and business leaders find credible?
