Henry G. (Hank) Jackson is the president and CEO of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the world's largest HR professional Society. He previously served as the Society’s interim president and CEO, and as chief global finance and business affairs officer.

Under Jackson’s leadership, the Society has grown to a record 290,000 members and hosted its largest-ever Annual Conference and Exposition. To better serve a diverse and more complex HR profession, the Society expanded its global reach and impact, formed partnerships with the Council for Global Immigration and SHRM’s Executive Network, HR People and Strategy, and opened its first state office in California, home to the largest concentration of HR professionals in the U.S.

During Jackson’s tenure, the Society developed and launched its competency-based certification—the accredited SHRM-Senior Certified Professional and SHRM-Certified Professional—to further advance the HR profession. Within two years, the number of SHRM-certified professionals grew to more than 100,000 worldwide.      

At the helm of SHRM during the economic downturn, Jackson spearheaded the Society’s initiatives on pressing HR and employment issues such as workforce readiness, veterans’ employment, and long-term unemployment. The Society has also strengthened its position as a highly sought-after voice on workplace public policy, as HR and workplace issues have increasingly been part of national discussions and public policy debates.

Jackson believes that the HR profession is at an exciting and pivotal moment, calling it the “Decade of Human Capital.” Businesses are beginning to better understand and embrace human resource management as the most critical contributor to the strategic direction of their organizations, and the HR profession is being propelled into a key business leadership position.

A long-tenured SHRM employee, Jackson has ensured as CEO that the organization remains an employer of choice and invests in a world-class workplace and work environment. In 2013, Washingtonian magazine recognized SHRM as a Great Place to Work in the Washington, D.C. area. 

Jackson came to SHRM from Howard University in Washington, D.C., where he was senior vice president/chief financial officer and treasurer of the university. In this role, he oversaw the financial well-being of the university’s 11 schools and colleges, hospital, public television station, and commercial radio station. He served in several previous positions at Howard University, including comptroller, deputy comptroller, and systems accountant, before becoming senior vice president.

Prior to joining Howard University, Jackson worked in public accounting with Hurdman Main and KMPG as senior auditor and a computer audit specialist. For several years, he was a consultant for the Southern Association of College and University Business Officers.

Jackson earned his Bachelor of Science degree in accounting from Stonehill College in Massachusetts. He is a certified public accountant.

Lisa Ling is currently executive producer and host of This is Life on CNN. For the show, Lisa has explored the scourge of prescription pill addiction in Utah, the recent influx of women in North Dakota’s boomtown and a town in the rural Midwest where young men aspire to be priests.  

For five seasons prior, Ling executive produced and hosted Our America on OWN: the Oprah Winfrey Network.  Lisa embedded in a Midwest town ravaged by an onslaught of heroin, got exclusive access inside an anti-gay religious movement, witnessed the manifestation of PTSD in returning veterans of war and went undercover to investigate the under-age sex trafficking of minors in the nation’s capitol. She has also profiled Americans living beneath the poverty line for the first time and people serving unimaginably lengthy prison sentences for crimes they did not commit.

As the former field correspondent for The Oprah Winfrey Show, contributor to ABC News' Nightline and National Geographic's Explorer, Lisa Ling has reported from dozens of countries, covering stories about gang rape in the Congo, bride burning in India, the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda, and the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang in Central America among other issues that are too often ignored.

Lisa got her start in journalism as a correspondent for Channel One News where she covered the civil war in Afghanistan at 21 years of age as well as stories in dozens of countries around the world.  She later went on to become a co-host of ABC Daytime's hit show The View, which won its first daytime Emmy during her time at the show.

Lisa is the co-author of Mother, Daughter, Sister, Bride: Rituals of Womanhood and Somewhere Inside: One Sister's Captivity in North Korea and the Other's Fight to Bring Her Home, which she penned with her sister, Laura.  

John A. Rubino, SHRM-SCP, CCP, CBP, GRP, WLCP, is founder and president of Rubino Consulting Services, a global human resources consulting company based in Pound Ridge, New York. His areas of expertise cover all areas of Human Resources program design. An internationally acclaimed speaker for SHRM and WorldatWork, John is the author of numerous human resources articles, and is frequently quoted in professional publications. He holds BA and MBA degrees, as well as a lifetime Achievement Award from WorldatWork. John works with a wide variety of organizations and his consulting practice takes him all around the world; in fact, he has visited one hundred and nine countries!

Edie Goldberg, Ph.D., is the president of E.L. Goldberg & Associates in Menlo Park, Calif. She is a nationally recognized expert in HR and talent management strategy and organizational effectiveness. She is the co-author of The Inside Gig: How Sharing Untapped Talent Across Boundaries Unleashes Organizational Capacity. Edie earned her Ph.D. in industrial/organizational psychology from the University of Albany, SUNY, and she earned a B.S. and M.S. in psychology from San Diego State University. She serves on the board of the SHRM Foundation, is past chair of HR People + Strategy (HRPS), and is  a fellow of the Society for Industrial-Organizational Psychology. She is the recipient of the HRPS Lifetime Achievement Award for contributions made to the HR profession.

Rosie is an accomplished speaker, writer and consultant. She has spent more than 20 years in worksite health promotion and organizational development. In addition to her bachelor’s degrees in Kinesiology and Public Health, and a doctorate in Organization and Management, Rosie is also a Certified Intrinsic Coach® Mentor, Certified Judgment Index Consultant, a Certified Valuations Specialist, and a Board Certified Coach. Rosie uses this unique combination to work with executive and leadership teams to create comprehensive development strategies centered on shifting thinking patterns. She is a contributing author to the book, “Organization Development in Healthcare — High Impact Practices for a Complex and Changing Environment.” She leverages these principles to help organizations develop and implement strategies to create a thriving workplace culture that values and supports wellbeing and the unique, intrinsic needs of employees.

Karl Ahlrichs specializes in helping professionals make order from chaos. He is a national speaker, author, and consultant, presenting on the people issues in all industries, and is often quoted in the local and national media. 

Karl’s experience is ideally suited to times of organizational change as he pulls on risk management and organizational development theories to replace “best practices” with “next practices”. He owes much of his communications mastery to working as a writer and editor in daily media, to on-the-job writing experience and to the process of becoming a published author.

He joined Gregory & Appel in 2010 after serving as a founding partner of ExactHire, bringing his HR, operations, diversity & belonging, and learning & development skills with him. Karl’s affinity for design, composition and learning started at a very young age, by taking and examining thousands of boring pictures with the goal of improving his craft. He loves deploying that practice-to-improve approach with all manner of hobbies including writing haiku, mastering cutting-edge technology and learning Spanish.

In 2003, he was named the SHRM Human Resource Professional of the Year for the State of Indiana. He is on the Boards of several organizations, including the Maryland CPA Society.  He has lived in Scotland and Spain and lives to explore new experiences with his wife and family.

Dr. Shonna Waters is the Vice President of HR Innovations and Insights (formerly known as “Research”) at the Society for Human Resource Management, where she leads the team that provides evidence-based insights, recommendations, and innovations at the intersection of people and work to improve the employee experience and business performance. Prior to joining SHRM, Dr. Waters spent over 15 years helping organizations make evidence-based decisions as an external and internal consultant. Most recently, she was the Technical Director of Human Resources Strategy and Program Design at the National Security Agency where she led the transformation of NSA’s promotion, performance management, and awards and recognition systems, the design and validation of the Agency’s analyst hiring assessments, and a variety of other evaluation and organizational performance projects. Dr. Waters holds a PhD in Industrial-Organizational (I-O) Psychology and Statistics, a certificate in Leadership Coaching from Georgetown University's Leadership Coaching Program in the Institute for Transformational Leadership, and is an Associate Certified Coach (ACC) through the International Coach Federation (ICF). Her work has been published in a variety of peer-reviewed journals, the Handbook of Employee Selection, and she has published over 50 technical reports and presented at over 25 professional conferences.