Concurrent Session

Clayton Lord (Clay, he/him) oversees strategy, planning, program delivery, and program evaluation for the SHRM Foundation, the 501(c)3 nonprofit arm of SHRM, which focuses on widening pathways to work and helping every worker and workplace thrive by empowering HR leaders to be forces for social good. He is a social impact executive who has spent his career driving systemic change in the world of work. Clay is also a writer, painter, and quilter, as well as a travel fanatic, and holds a B.A. in English and Psychology from Georgetown University. He lives with his husband and daughter in Maryland.

Cara Chennault-Reid is Koch Industries’ corporate human resource director, based at the global headquarters in Wichita, Kansas. In her role, Cara leads the human resource capability with over 700 HR professionals supporting 125,000 employees worldwide. She helps advance business vision and strategies through talent management while accelerating the application of Koch’s framework, Principle Based ManagementTM.

Cara and her team focus on helping employees who are contribution motivated achieve their full potential.

In 2006, Cara began her career at INVISTA, a Koch company, leading several global human resource and talent acquisition teams. In 2017, she became the chief operating officer at Koch Global Services, driving a vision for the delivery of shared services within the human resources, facilities, and real estate services.

Prior to joining Koch, Cara spent 12 years with a global consumer products company in various human resource and operations leadership roles.
Cara holds a Bachelor of Science in communications and organizational psychology from the University of Tennessee. She and her husband John live in Wichita, KS and have two daughters.

Tony Buffum is VP of HR Client Strategy at Upwork. As a key member of the senior-level executive client strategy team, Buffum is responsible for accelerating growth of current and prospective Upwork enterprise clients, helping them solve HR challenges related to finance, procurement and talent transformation. Buffum is an accomplished HR professional with more than two decades of experience leading global HR teams as well as driving transformational change in company culture, organizational design, performance management, and employee integration and engagement. He joins Upwork following a series of noteworthy leadership positions including chief human resources officer (CHRO) at FLIR Systems, VP of global human resources at STANLEY Security, VP of human resources at Stanley Black & Decker and others.

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.

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.

Mario Bordogna is a Partner in the Labor and Employment Practice at the law firm of Bowles Rice, LLP working with employers nationwide on the front end to keep them in legal compliance with labor and employment laws and on the back end if they need a strong and experienced litigation advocate.  For 25 years, Mario has represented employers in sectors like health care, education, energy, hospitality, manufacturing, and others in the areas of HR/employment counseling, employment litigation, wage and hour, harassment, trade secret and non-competition matters, labor-management relations, accommodation, policy development and investigations, and much more.

Mario Bordogna is a Partner in the Labor and Employment Practice at the law firm of Bowles Rice, LLP working with employers nationwide on the front end to keep them in legal compliance with labor and employment laws and on the back end if they need a strong and experienced litigation advocate.  For 25 years, Mario has represented employers in sectors like health care, education, energy, hospitality, manufacturing, and others in the areas of HR/employment counseling, employment litigation, wage and hour, harassment, trade secret and non-competition matters, labor-management relations, accommodation, policy development and investigations, and much more.

Anthony an attorney that helps employers with legal issues affecting the workplace, including matters concerning the rapidly evolving subject of employee privacy. In particular, he assists employers with compliance with a variety of privacy laws, including the California Consumer Privacy Act. When providing guidance to clients related to legal issues concerning electronic employment data, Anthony draws on his prior professional experience as a software engineer. Anthony is a member of Fisher Phillips’ Privacy and Cyber Practice Group. He also frequently presents and authors articles on topics related to employment and privacy laws.