Opening Keynote - Jess Von Bank

We will welcome one of HR Tech’s “Top 100 Influencers” as our opening keynote for what will prove to be a day filled with a million reasons why tech is welcome, and meeting face-to-face is still the most valuable thing we can do.

Her talk…
We didn't need AI to tell us something was broken in how we work. We needed AI to stop letting us pretend it wasn't.

Jess Von Bank has spent 23 years inside the machinery of talent and HR technology, watching systems built for one century try to survive another. She's not anti-AI. She's anti-amnesia. And she's been standing at this fault line a lot longer than the conversation has been paying attention.

In this keynote, Jess makes the case that the fastest-changing technology in human history is quietly making the oldest human act more valuable than ever: getting in a room together. As AI absorbs the mechanical, the repetitive, the transactional, what's left is the part only humans can do — the read of a room, the trust built over a handshake, the meaning made when bodies show up in the same physical space at the same time. That's not nostalgia. That's the future of work, hiding in plain sight inside the industry you already lead.

Drawing from her new book, Work Like a Mother, and two decades on the frontlines of workplace transformation, Jess will challenge this room to see itself differently — not as logistics professionals adjacent to the AI conversation, but as architects of the one thing AI cannot manufacture: real human connection, on purpose, at scale.

Interactive Keynote - Club Ichi Think Tank

Following lunch, we will all gather together again in Vesper for the opportunity to do a quick version of the most fun interaction with your fellow participants.

Spontaneous Think Tank™ Sponsored by Club Ichi

Co-Founder of Club Ichi and inventor of the Spontaneous Think Tank, Liz Lathan, CMP will join us for a session with all participants! We’ve had small breakout versions of this the last two years, and this year will be rapid-fire problem-solving Spontaneous Think Tanks.

We appreciate learning from experts and we often get the most take-aways when we learn from each other. This is the think-tank way – share what keeps you up at night, that strategic thing you just can’t bring to life, or what YOU can help others with.

We believe everyone has a story to tell and that includes you!