Kevin McManus
Chief People Officer Syndax Pharmaceuticals
Kevin Mcmaus is a Senior Global Human Resources Executive with over 30 years in HR and more than 15 years leading global teams. Senior Leadership roles have been held in Fortune 500 multinationals (GTE, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Mylan and Bayer), and the CHRO/CPO role in both a privately held and public companies. (ConvaTec, TheLadders, Acceleron Pharma and Omega Therapeutics).
Seminars
End the conference with a high-energy Speed Learning session designed to maximize the value of your time in the room. Through a series of rapid-fire, facilitated discussions, you’ll tackle a curated set of the most pressing challenges facing HR, TA, and L&D leaders today – gaining diverse perspectives, sharing practical solutions, and leaving with a final set of actionable ideas to take back to your organization.
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
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
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?
