Rob is the former Chief Ethics Officer at Airbnb. A role he took on after nearly 4 years as Airbnb’s General Counsel. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School. Rob worked for 14 years with the U.S. Justice Department, including 10 years as an Assistant United States Attorney. He is the recipient of the Justice Department’s John Marshall Award for litigation, and the CIA’s Outstanding Service Medallion. In 1999, Rob moved to California to become eBay’s third attorney and was later promoted to Vice President of a newly created Trust and Safety department. He worked at several other companies in Silicon Valley before joining Airbnb in 2016. During his time at Airbnb he developed a popular interactive employee program, Integrity Belongs Here, to help drive ethics throughout the culture at the company. His highly relevant new book “Intentional Integrity: How Smart Companies Can Lead an Ethical Revolution” is available for purchase! In this episode of Leading Transformational Change, Rob shares how a conversation with Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, about the risks of ethical scandals, led to them to devise a strategy to build integrity into the culture of the company. Rob takes us through a six-part strategy for any organization, that wants to be intentional about integrity, and gives us lots of helpful examples along the way. He challenges every leader to put integrity on the agenda and decide what kind of company they want to become.

Mary Gentile is the Professor of Practice at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, and senior adviser at the Aspen Institute Business & Society Program. She is the creator and director of Giving Voice to Values, a pioneering business curriculum for values-driven leadership, which has been featured in publications such as, Financial Times, Harvard Business Review, Stanford Social Innovation Review, and piloted in over 1200 business schools and organizations globally. Mary is the author of the award-winning Giving Voice To Values: How To Speak Your Mind When You Know What's Right. In her ten-year tenure at Harvard Business School, Mary was one of the principal architects of the school’s Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Responsibility curriculum. In this episode of Leading Transformational Change, Mary shares how the Enron scandal and a self-defense course made her rethink the way ethics was taught in business school and led to the Giving Voice to Values experiment. She realized that we do not merely need ways of theoretically discerning the ethical course of action based on philosophical models, but knowing what is the right thing to do, how would we actually go about doing it? Mary shares the main reasons why we do not voice our values in the business world and how we can build a framework for doing it in a thoughtful and strategic way. She shares practical examples of how the Giving Voice to Values framework has been implemented in companies like McKinsey and Unilever and why it needs to be a part of the leadership development strategy and not merely an HR issue. 

Joan Lurie discusses using a systems thinking lens for organizational change. She emphasizes the importance of leaders seeing themselves as part of the system. Exploring challenges in a software company like internal conflict and lack of innovation. Highlighting the need for innovative ecosystems and effective innovation systems for lasting change.

Sesil Pir is an industrial/organizational psychologist who has worked in Global HR Management roles on four continents in multinational corporations like Novartis and Microsoft.  Sesil is currently acting as an HR functional thought leader, founder of SESIL PIR Consulting, a boutique management consultancy, focusing on changing the status quo of work; and of Whirling Chief, a global digital collaboration and learning platform, championing humanity into the workplace. She is a frequent Forbes contributor and has contributed to a number of HR management books. In this episode of Leading Transformational Change, Sesil shares insights from a study she has developed together with Standford University Center for Compassion and Altruism, on the keys to flourishing organizations. Based on her extensive experience within Human Resources, Sesil paints a picture of organizations that develop resilience and adaptability, are driven by an authentic purpose, invest in their culture, and put humans at the center of the equation. 

Terentia Browne has spent many years, first as an engineer and then in management positions, at multinational corporations like Unilever and Johnson & Johnson. She holds a bachelor of science and has been awarded a Rising Star Award from the Health Care Businesswomen’s Associations. She was chosen to be a part of the Ascend Accelerated Women’s Leadership Program within Johnson & Johnson. She is the founder of Greenleaf Leaders where she supports introvert emerging leaders to enhance their leadership potential. In this episode of Leading Transformational Change, Terentia shares her experience coming from South Africa, as a non-white woman, to lead a team of engineers at a plant in Sweden. Terentia gives examples of how leaders and HR professionals can help create inclusive experiences and environments where diversity can flourish, and why every team member should take co-ownership of Diversity & Inclusion.

Alison Taylor is an Adjunct Professor at NYU Stern School of Business and Executive Director at Ethical Systems. Ethical System's mission is to harness research, from leaders in academia, to transform the ethical practice of business in the corporate world. Prior to joining Ethical Systems, Alison was the Managing Director of BSR Business For Social Responsibilty. Alison is a member of the World Economic Forum Global Future Council on Transparency and Anti-Corruption and writes frequently for Harvard Business Review, Quartz etc.    In this episode of Leading Transformational Change, Alison explains how traditional compliance methods and policies are not enough in order to build a high integrity organization and why leaders and HR professionals need to focus on developing an ethical culture. She also debunks the myth of a few "bad apples" and provides practical suggestions to develop that culture of ethics in your organization.    Listen and subscribe to Leading Transformational Change on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts!

In this episode, Tobias talks about how the current moment is putting the spotlight on racism and injustice. And how leaders' response to the killing of George Floyd serves as an example of a dilemma that every leader and HR professional will be facing at one point or another. Will we, as leaders, be ready to practice courageous humility and deal with the underlying heart issues in our organizations, or will we cover-up, shift blame or just try to move on. 

In this episode, Tobias shares how having a strong culture with high employee engagement shouldn't be the sole focus of our culture efforts. How a too-narrow focus on engagement and strong culture can lead to internal corruption or hinder us from achieving our strategy. Tobias proposes that we need a combination of three different aspects - a healthy culture, a strong culture, and a culture that enables our purpose and strategy - in order to build a flourishing organization.   

Carolyn is the co-founder of Walking the Talk, a global culture consulting firm, and she is globally recognized as the most experienced consultant and speaker on how to change corporate culture, having personally worked with over 100.000 leaders and helped lead over 200 culture change journeys in 35 countries. Carolyn is the author of Walking the Talk, a best selling book on culture change and values-based leadership. Robert Joss, Dean Emeritus, Stanford Graduate School of Business calls it “An indispensable handbook" In this episode of Leading Transformational Change, Carolyn helps us understand what it truly means to be a values-driven leader and organization. How true values require sacrifice and how a crisis can put us in front of some of our most challenging values dilemmas and give insight into our organizational culture. Carolyn highlights why it’s vital for us to distinguish between climate (typical employee engagement questions) and culture when we assess the state of our organizations. Listen and subscribe to Leading Transformational Change on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts!

Siobhan McHale is the author of The Insider's Guide to Culture Change and EGM People, Culture & Change at DuluxGroup. She has worked across four continents, helping thousands of leaders to create more agile and productive workplaces. She led a radical seven-year change initiative at ANZ that transformed it from the lowest-performing bank in Australia into one of the highest-performing and most admired banks in the world. Professor John Kotter used her work with ANZ as a Harvard Business School case study designed to teach MBA students about managing change.  In this episode, Siobhan shares her insight into organizational culture as not merely the sum total of espoused values and individual behaviors, but as hidden agreements, patterns, and roles, where the focus should be on the "dance" itself, not only the individual "dancers",  It will help you understand and develop your culture in the midst of the crisis.   Siobhan also shared some great insight into how HR leaders can encourage senior leadership to take organizational culture change seriously.