Teddy Tien

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.

• 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

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?