Thought Leadership Team

Victor Assad works with key decision makers and human resources leaders who are making great beginnings and leading organizations through change. He is an energetic, innovative and broadly experienced global human resources leader, with over 25 years of experience in global businesses of Honeywell and Medtronic. Victor’s human capital planning includes the global application of work first and shared workforce thinking. He believes it is vital for clients to identify the critical work to be performed, the most effective mix of workers, and the necessary flexible work arrangements to assure workers have the space, time, technology and norms for where, when, and how they work.

Victor’s experience spans varied industries including medical devices, aerospace, specialized semiconductors, software and electronics manufacturing. He is recognized for his strategic thinking, business acumen, analysis and implementing successful solutions to complex business issues. Victor has also led H R for “turn-arounds”, new technology start-ups, fast-growth businesses, and mature businesses in need of consolidation and restructuring.

Victor has experience working with companies in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas. He has a Master’s of Arts Degree in industrial relations and human resources from the University of Minnesota and executive certificates from Harvard and Kellogg.

Dr. Stuart Evans is a Distinguished Service Professor at Carnegie Mellon University (Silicon Valley). His research focuses on how enterprises adapt to unexpected technological change. He teaches simultaneous classes to students at Moffett Field and Pittsburgh on Innovation and Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Innovation. His professional career spans research (SRI International, Stanford Graduate School of Business,), teaching (The Judge Business School, Cambridge University), consulting (Bain and Company, Menlo Park, California) and executive management (Shugart Corporation, Sunnyvale, California). He serves on the Board of 4 companies. Dr. Evans has published widely in academic journals on the strategic management of high tech ventures. His book is “Super-Flexibility for Knowledge Enterprises”, (co-authored with Homa Bahrami of the Haas School of Business), was published by Springer in 2010 (second edition).

Terri’s goal is for organizations to find the sweet spot given available people, technology, and organizational practices. Her most repeated quote is, “you can’t change just one thing.” That is, for organizations to succeed, shifts toward our future of work must be a mixture of human, technical, and organizational dimensions. Terri’s research has focused this mix starting with telecommuting in the 80s to today’s focus on-line staffing, global virtual teams, and the role that technology plays in the support of work. The foundations behind this research are outlined in her award-winning book, The Plugged-In Manager: Get in Tune with Your People, Technology, and Organization to Thrive. She is Chair of the Management Department at Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business and one of the 100 honored members of the 2012 Silicon Valley Women of Influence. Her work reaches a broad audience through keynotes, workshops, and writing, including her blog, Technology and Organizations and freelance work (Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review Blog, MIT Sloan Management Review Blog, Women 2.0)

Vlatka Hlupic is a Professor of Business and Management at University of Westminster and a Chief Executive Officer of the Drucker Society London. She received a PhD in Information Systems at the London School of Economics, as well as a BSc in Economics and an MSc in Information Systems from the University of Zagreb. She has published more than 160 academic articles, including an award winning article “To be a Better Leader, Give up Authority” in Harvard Business Review. Vlatka has been acting as a change management consultant for various organizations in the private and public sector as well as an expert adviser for numerous research projects sponsored by several Governments. As a thought leader, she has a substantial media presence in the UK, and her expert commentaries and interviews have appeared in the national press including The Times, Sunday Telegraph, Independent and Guardian. She has led development of four Management 2.0 hacks within Gary Hamel’s Management Innovation Exchange Management 2.0 Hackaton, and as a result of this, she has been invited to give a TEDx talk in Oslo.

Director, Advanced Workplace Associates

Trained, and qualified as an Architect, Chris Hood, has often moved outside his formal training, and certainly outside “the box” in order to seek bold, innovative solutions in the field of Corporate real estate. He has written articles, presented papers at major events, holds a US patent for furniture design and is very active in a number of leading industry thought- leadership and advisory groups. At the present time Chris is a Director of North America Consulting at Advanced Workplace Associates, a boutique workplace consulting team based in the United Kingdom but with team members and client assignments across the globe.

Chris Hood is Managing Director and Platform Lead for Occupancy Services within CBREs Global Corporate Services organization. As a student of Alternate Workplace Strategies for over 34 years he shares his knowledge, experience and thought leadership with his clients, teammates and his industry.

Chris has built a reputation for delivering what others spend time talking about: large-scale workplace transformation; implementing quickly, globally and boldly, with a passionate focus on the employee experience. Previously, Chris directed the design activity of Hewlett Packard’s (HP) Global Workplace Initiative—a company-wide initiative across the world’s largest technology company.

Chris was a past winner of Corenet’s Global Innovation Award, was a founder and leader of their Workplace Community, and has spoken at Industry Conferences across the world winning multiple Luminary Awards in the process.

Andrew Karpie is a Research Analyst at Staffing Industry Analysts. He is responsible for covering the areas of talent acquisition/recruiting and retention as well as overall contingent workforce industry technology and platform trends. He has an extensive background, in large and small companies, as an analyst, manager, and consultant at the intersection of IT and services industries. Andrew holds an MS in Quantitative Policy Analysis from Carnegie Mellon University.

Margaret Keane is a Partner with the firm of DLA Piper LLC. An experienced litigator and counsellor, she represents employers in actions involving wage and hour claims, restrictive covenants, and discrimination claims. She advises clients on employment issues relating to the structure and classification of the workforce, including issues related to the contingent workforce, reductions in force, wage and hour compliance, workplace privacy, restrictive covenants and related workplace issues. She focuses on the intersection of technology and the workplace and works with clients to address the challenges and opportunities of contingent workers, social media, privacy, mobile devices and information governance matters in today’s workplace.

Shahin Khan is CEO of Orion Enterprises which helps accelerate the path from an idea to a successful company, with current projects in cyber-security/compliance, and marketing outsourcing where he is a Partner at Orion Marketing. He serves on the board of directors of Wizmo Inc., Massively Parallel Technologies, and eXLudus Technologies. He spent 8 years at Sun Microsystems as Chief Competitive Officer and VP/GM of the HPC business. Shahin was VP of Corporate Development, Intellectual Property, and Marketing at Silicon Graphics, and CMO of Azul Systems. He lived in the UK to lead European Marketing for FPS Computing before its acquisition by Cray Research. Shahin is a thought leader, specializing in competitive strategy, positioning, M&A, and marketing/sales alignment. He has been quoted or featured in the Wall Street Journal, Wired, BusinessWeek, InformationWeek, The Register, CRN, and Cnet. He is a graduate of Cornell University. He started his career at IBM.

Kate is president of Global Workplace Analytics, a San Diego-based consulting and research firm that helps employers and community leaders understand and communicate the business case for employee flexibility, workplace well-being, and emerging strategies such as mobile work and office hoteling. The firm’s extensive research is regularly cited in publications including the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, and many others. Kate is a frequent speaker at industry events.

HRIP

President/CEO and Founder at Collective HR Solutions, Inc. HR Technology arena for over 35 years. Assisted numerous companies in structuring their HR technology strategy and systems to address and solve their business challenges. Known for thought leadership, understanding of combining and leveraging technology in new ways, and strong knowledge of the vendor community surrounding HR technology. Reputation is “connecting the dots” between technologies to create new solutions and solve business problems.

Susan is a known expert in work and talent optimization. While at the Xerox-founded Institute for Research on Learning, she gained a rich perspective on the way in which work actually gets done. There she pioneered work-centric approaches to organizational learning and knowledge management. Susan founded Strategic Practices Inc., to help its clients develop new and effective ways of working, especially in the context of strategic change. She has led initiatives at IBM Services Research in the domain of Service Science where she first became involved in work-as-a-service, focusing on how to design work for optimal value co-creation.

Susan is pleased to bring these perspectives and practices to the CollabWorks Thought Leadership Team. She is a founder of the Work First initiative.

Susan Stucky holds a Ph. D in Linguistics from the University of Illinois and completed postdoctoral work in Cognitive Science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and Stanford University.

A recognized expert and thought leader on the future of work, Sally founded Forshay in 2011 to connect the Bay Area’s most innovative and progressive companies with exceptional talent. A recent participant in two TEDx talks (Future of Work and How to Hire Like a Rocket Scientist), she is a frequent keynote speaker on work, women in leadership, and work/life balance. Sally works with Stanford's "Redesigning and Redefining Work" project to support efforts to align workplace structures with the lives of today's workforce so companies can better harness talent for their success, and she lectures regularly at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business as well as UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business. She serves on the Advisory Council of Stanford’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research, the educational partner of LeanIn.org.

Jim Ware works with senior executives to design a future of work that leverages people, attracts talent, and saves money. He is a former Harvard Business School professor who has spent his entire career helping clients invent their own futures by exploring and interpreting the changing nature of work, the workforce, and the workplace. He is currently the founder and Executive Director of The Future of Work…unlimited, Global Research Director for Occupiers Journal Ltd., and a Partner with The FutureWork Forum. He is a co-author of four books on the digital economy; he holds PhD, M.A., and B.Sc. degrees from Cornell University and an MBA (With Distinction) from the Harvard Business School. He lives and works in northern California.