Cultivating Change Leaders, With Red Hat CPO Jennifer Dudeck

Change agility — the ability to effectively manage and adapt to change — is a top leadership priority for organizations in 2025. As disruption becomes the norm, leaders must adapt and equip their teams to do the same. Red Hat CPO Jennifer Dudeck joins the Talent Angle Podcast to share her insights on how to lead through change and build a strong bench of future change-ready leaders.

Jennifer Dudeck is Senior Vice President and Chief People Officer at Red Hat. In this role, she leads the team responsible for managing global human resources, administering payroll, and creating inspiring work environments supporting Red Hat’s award-winning culture. She has more than 25 years of human resources experience across all functions with a focus on helping the teams she led maximize alignment with, and impact on, the enterprise

Jennifer is passionate about improving the experience of being a Red Hatter. Throughout her time at Red Hat, she has driven increased focus on manager excellence, performance and development, and career mobility. Jennifer is also a thought leader on the opportunities and challenges created by the convergence of AI and human resources.

Jennifer has been a change leader across the enterprise, playing an active role in multiple major transformational initiatives in previous roles. Before joining Red Hat, Jennifer worked with Cisco Systems most recently as Vice President of the Transformation Office focused on enabling ongoing employee engagement, growth, and business impact. During her time with the company, she also held various leadership roles across the human resources function. Prior to that, Jennifer held several business-aligned human resources roles at Honeywell Corp.’s Aerospace and Performance Materials business units.

Peter Aykens is the chief of research for Gartner’s HR practice. Aykens is responsible for building and leading research teams within the practice to address clients’ key initiatives. Before his current role, he spent over 25 years at Gartner leading research teams focused on banking and financial services strategy, producing numerous studies that addressed business strategy, channels, marketing, customer experience and product challenges. He holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from St. Olaf College, a master’s degree in international politics from Aberystwyth University (formerly known as the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth), and a master’s degree and a doctorate in political science from Brown University.