PEOPLE STRATEGY IN THE AI ERA
Sponsored by
ONE DAY ONLY | BY HR. FOR HR.
How do you build a leaner, smarter organization that stays deeply human? Join us to explore how HR leaders are combining AI with human-centered strategy to redefine the future of work, culture, and leadership.
Wednesday August 12, 2026
Location: Midtown Manhattan, NYC
*Must be an HR Advisory member to attend. Submitting this form does not guarantee registration. If your request is accepted, you will receive an email confirming registration.
By registering for this event, you agree that your contact information may be shared with event sponsors.
5 SHRM & HRCI credits
Packed with insightful discussions surrounding talent, benefits strategy, human-centric AI, and more.
Breakfast, lunch, snacks, and happy hour! Plus, come find out what fun swag we have at the event.
Danika Davis
CEO/Managing Partner, Merit HR
Danika is an HR evangelist with a long history as an HR executive, with expertise in all areas of HR including organizational effectiveness and design, talent acquisition/management, total rewards and recognition, leadership development, labor negotiations, and strategic alignment. She currently leads Merit HR, an HR exclusive search, staffing, and consulting firm. Prior to Merit HR, Danika served as CEO of one of the largest HR professional societies in the country.
Joe Bast
SVP of People Operations at Crisp
Joe Bast is an industrial-organizational psychologist who has spent 25+ years doing something deceptively simple: figuring out what makes people thrive at work and then building the systems to make it happen.
As SVP of People Operations at Crisp, a retail AI platform named one of Inc. Magazine's 52 fastest-growing companies in 2025, Joe has delivered results most HR leaders only talk about: voluntary attrition from 12% to under 5%, eNPS from +4 to +35, time-to-fill cut in half, all while integrating 150 employees from four acquisitions in a single year. These are the measurable signatures of a culture that actually works.
OPENING KEYNOTE
People Strategy in the AI Era
Every People and HR function is being rewritten by AI, and most of the guidance on offer
collapses into two unhelpful extremes: nothing really changes, or everything you know is
obsolete. Both are wrong, and both are dangerous.
In this opening keynote, Joe Bast makes a sharper, more honest case. The purpose of People Ops has never been more critical, or more stable: ensuring the organization has the right capability, available at the right time, to reach its objectives. What is changing, fast, is nearly every method used to deliver on it. Drawing on a rare dual vantage point, as both an industrial-organizational psychologist and a sitting operations-and-people executive, Joe shows HR leaders how to separate the permanent from the disposable, and how to move from doing the work to governing how AI-enabled work gets done across the business.
It is a session designed to be productively uncomfortable: clear-eyed about what is at risk, honest about the fear in the room, and practical about the path forward. No tool tour. No doom. Just a durable frame, real stories from inside a scaling company, and a mandate for the people function in the AI era.
WHAT ATTENDEES WILL LEAVE WITH
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A durable way to separate what is permanent in People strategy from what is quietly
decaying, and the nerve to act on the difference. -
The A-player versus C-player distinction in an AI world, and why moving people between
those columns is a talent problem, not an IT project. -
A look at how AI is already redrawing org charts, with real examples of collapsed roles and full-stack teams, and what it means for how you design work.
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A frame for the real risk facing HR, not replacement, but being routed around, and how to claim the AI and agent question before another function does.
SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNITIES
Get Your Brand in Front of HR Leaders
Partner with us to connect directly with a highly engaged HR audience through various sponsorship opportunities. We offer multiple ways to showcase your brand and drive targeted engagement with top HR professionals.
Sponsors
Platinum Sponsor
Betterment’s low-cost, tech-forward 401(k) solution makes administering a plan easy for business owners. And makes saving for retirement easy for their employees.
Other Sponsors
Our benefits platform and brokerage services help employers, employees, and their dependents thrive through a range of modern solutions.
Rippling is a workforce management system that eliminates friction from running a business. It has every application you need—from applicant tracking and payroll to IT and expenses—in one place. But unlike other systems, Rippling sits on top of a unified platform.
Deel is the all-in-one Global People Platform that simplifies and streamlines every aspect of managing an international workforce—from culture and onboarding, to local payroll and compliance.
Beyond Med is a membership-based discount program that provides individuals and families with exclusive savings on a wide variety of elective, cosmetic, and holistic health services from a curated network of trusted providers.