UNLEASH America 2025 Summits: Top takeaways from Toshiba, Atlassian, Mercer and Royal Bank of Canada

We’re back in Las Vegas for UNLEASH America 2025!

The event is kicking off with a series of exclusive summits, which feature speakers from some of the world’s most prestigious brands.

CHROs and HR leaders from Toshiba, Aptiv, Atlassian and Royal Bank of Canada, as well as the leading HR analysts and academics, took to the stages across the two summits to share their expertise on two of HR’s biggest topics: AI and talent.

The UNLEASH Editorial team were on-site listening in – here are our highlights.

Talent Summit: ‘HR and IT are the most strategic functions in the organization right now’

“If finance is the custodian of the money in the organization, then HR is the custodian of people and culture” - that’s how David Green, Managing Partner, Insights222, kicked off the Talent Summit.

He was joined on stage by incredible HR leaders from Toshiba, Aptiv and Atlassian to discuss the challenges they are facing in 2025 and heading into next year.

Jason Desentz, CHRO of Toshiba, shared that having four generations in the workforce, particularly in the car manufacturing space, is a challenge – how do you incentivize talent, Gen Z in particular, to work in that environment?

Another challenge is figuring out the value of AI, and avoiding not just FOMO, but FOBO aka “the fear of being obsolete”.

AI is also high on the agenda for Atlassian’s CPO Avani Prabhakar.

In this era of AI, Prabhakar noted that “HR and IT are the most strategic functions in the organization right now”.

Aptiv’s Chief Talent & Inclusion Officer Ronda Bazley Moore agreed.

She called on HR leaders to build relationships with the C-Suite to become a trusted adviser. By doing that, HR can bring insights and thought leadership to the table that enables businesses to think differently about their problems.

Agentic AI was, of course, a major topic of conversation at the summit.

Prabhakar advised that people start interacting with AI as a “buddy”, while Toshiba’s Desentz spoke about the need to treat agents like employees.

At Atlassian, Prabhakar’s HR team are building their own agents to solve the problems they are facing at work – this co-creation approach drives higher adoption as it focuses on using AI in the moments that matter.

Later on, during the Talent summit, Brian Delle Donne, Co-Founder and President at Talent Tech Labs, delivered a keynote on AI and the new era of talent leadership.

He believes that the “AI is most certainly a transformative opportunity for HR”; there’s no need to panic because “you’re not behind yet”.

A recent UNLEASH survey, in partnership with Talent Tech Labs, found that 73% of HR leaders are still navigating their AI strategy, and just a third are using AI agents for HR service delivery.

Every vendor is talking about their AI agent capabilities, but Delle Donne warned the audience that the explosion of agents could be a “disaster” when it comes to governance.

Be diligent, HR leaders, but seize the opportunity. “Now is the time to lead” in the era of AI.

AI summit: The future of work is now and it's AI, so get learning or be left behind

After lunch, Mercer’s dynamic duo Jason Averbook and Jess von Bank hosted the AI Summit, in partnership with UKG, focusing on how AI is shaping not just the future of work but the world around us right now.

A packed room of HR delegates were treated to an immersive workshop that challenged the status quo, explored the past and defined the future of AI and the workplace.

Gauging the level of AI confidence in the room, plenty of delegates are using AI tools in their day-to-day workflow, but when asked if they consider either themselves or their organizations as ‘AI expert’s’, only a few were brave enough to raise their hands.

“I've made a vow in 2025 to learn a new [AI] tool every day," Averbook said. “If you're not learning a new tool every day, you're falling behind in this space.”

Averbook also highlighted how the rapid evolution of AI is impacting the world of work on a macro level, pointing out that entry-level jobs are becoming obsolete, as roles that were previously held by recent graduates are now being handled by AI instead.

This is having a significant impact on skills and necessitates an approach of “education, not training” he stated, meaning simply using training programs for employees is not enough.

A big concept of this is to understand the digital world we live in today shouldn't be called technology. And the reason we do this in this session is to help you understand that this isn't an IT job. It's every HR function in the world’s job to be digital. Being digital means you’re AI first.”A big concept of this is to understand the digital world we live in today shouldn't be called technology. And the reason we do this in this session is to help you understand that this isn't an IT job. It's every HR function in the world’s job to be digital. Being digital means you’re AI first.”

Talent Summit II: Wellbeing, talent and skills - tackling today and beyond

Closing out a day of inspiring, insightful UNLEASH America summits, our HR community was treated to an expert panel sharing insights on tackling talent today, tomorrow, and beyond.

Shona Waters, Co-Founder and CEO, Fractional Insights, shared that it’s important to not just retrofit AI into existing ways of working.

Instead, now organizations have an opportunity to ask fundamental questions about work and actually make the experience of work better.

She shared the need to think about the ergonomics work, and to design the workplace for the four human needs:

“If you don’t design for those needs, it’ll get in the way of your goals” as a business.

Gary Bolles, Global Fellow for Transformation, Singularity University, agreed.

He shared on the panel that there’s been a “tendency to bungy chord back to old practices” on wellbeing, but focusing on business case is the best way to get around that.

Bolles also talked about skills, and how skills-first organizations are starting to catch on. He reminded HR leaders “journey not a destination”.

While AI can be a “catalyst” for these initiatives, the governance piece is super important.

Skills is also an important topic for Travis Windling, Senior Director, TA Strategy, Operations & Contingent Workforce Management, Royal Bank of Canada.

He shared the challenge of a skills ontology and creating a framework around that.

The beauty of UNLEASH, for Windling, is it provides lots of time for figuring that out with peers grappling with the same issues.

Stay tuned for more exclusive insights from UNLEASH America 2025 all this week! The event has only just begun.