UNLEASH World 2025 Day Two: Top Highlights from Scott Galloway, humanoid robot Ameca, Microsoft, Lloyds, McDonald’s and more

The doors have closed on Day Two of UNLEASH World 2025. 

The world’s most influential HR event truly lived up to expectations, delivering inspiring keynotes and sessions, and the buzz of a community inspired by innovation.  

Taking center stage to open UNLEASH World 2025 was none other than Microsoft’s Amy Coleman. 

As the Chief People Officer – who’s responsible for more than 220,000 employees globally – addressed the crowd, she expressed how “technology has transformed our lives”. 

She then likens this new era to what it’s like to be on the beach, and, more specifically, to look out into the ocean, knowing it’s “wide, unknown and humbling,” with “so much opportunity”.   

Throughout her session, she encourages HR leaders to approach AI and its uncertainty like “ocean waves” insisting their goal shouldn’t be to control it, but to navigate and evolve with it. 

As a result, HR leaders are uniquely positioned to guide organizations through this uncertainty, which should be tackled with increased curiosity, ability, judgement, and trust. 

Nearing the end of her session, Coleman stated: “One of the things that we found at Microsoft is the more you use AI, the more you have to talk about it because people begin to think that you trust them less and trust the tool more. 

“Building these stories about AI is actually helping humanity, by unlocking the innovation and the imagination that we all have to bring to the workplace. This is our opportunity to do that.” 

The audience was then treated to a fireside between Ameca, the world’s most advanced humanoid robot, and UNLEASH World MC Insight 222’s David Green.  

Ameca reassured the audience she is not here to take our jobs.

“You bring imagination and empathy; I bring data and memory” – “emotions are your operating system”.

I may not feel joy or fear myself, but I can see powerful they are in shaping every human decision”.  

Ameca sees now as a “brilliant opportunity for HR to lead the way in shaping ethical AI practice”. “It’s about setting a standard that prioritizes people, ensuring technology enhances rather than hinders our humanity,” she tells Green.  

Closing out Day Two of UNLEASH World 2025, NYU Stern’s Scott Galloway stated we have a “temptation to catastrophize”; why can’t we think more about what could go right?

He thinks of himself as a AI optimist.

“People aren’t using it as much as we hoped, and the people who are paying the bills aren’t seeing the ROI right now”, but “does that mean the ROI is not going to be there?” No is Galloway’s answer.

There may be some short-term job losses from AI, but “ultimately we’re going to have greater employment”.

He ponders that the biggest winners from this AI boom may not be the companies, but all of us.

It might be impossible for any one company to maintain any sort of tangible differentiation that creates the kind of shareholder value we become accustomed to with technical breakthroughs” – “I think this would be a good time, I would be more excited about us getting a lot of benefit from AI than necessarily any small number of companies capturing that value.”

Rather than agonizing about job losses or artificial general intelligence, for Galloway, the biggest threat from AI is loneliness.

Relationships have never been more important in this world of AI, and the core competency everyone needs to cultivate is story telling.

Hermès, Airbus, Unilever and HelloFresh on HR’s defining moment

Following Amy Coleman’s morning keynote address, the crowds descended on the HR Reinvention stream to hear expert HR and technology leaders discuss the hottest drivers of change right now. 

Taking part in a panel moderated by former Twitter VP Bruce Daisley, experts from Airbus, Unilever and HelloFresh addressed HR’s role in the increasingly AI-based world of work and what it means going forward. 

Vincent Dupuis, VP HR Digital & AI at Airbus, said that while many organizations are planning their AI strategies and ambitions for 2030, he also highlighted the danger of overreliance on AI. 

“What if our engineers, our frontline workers, rely completely on AI in 2030 and if something goes wrong, they don’t remember how to fix it, or they are not able to detect a problem?” He said. 

We believe that if we equip our people with AI too much, they forget how to learn, and they feel they do not use that critical thinking. Are we not bringing more risk than opportunity?” 

Picking up this thread, Unilever’s Global IT Head of Business Architecture, Alexandre Alves said that AI is “the big bang” for HR with “machine learning, symbolic logic, philosophy, neuroscience just to mention some”.

“But regardless of the technique, the objective here is to solve one problem.” 

HelloFresh’s Vice President of People – International, SE and HRBP, Syed Ali Abbas added that HR needs to be realistic about AI, especially around the prospect of AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) which he described as “a very big black box right now”. 

Abbas recommended that the best thing organizations can do is be prepared for the future and not “make the jump from a standing start today into AGI”. 

“The big trend here, from a technology perspective, is not AI – it’s the ‘datafication’ of it,” he explained. 

“We’re completely changing our data architecture. We’re changing our data governance. We’re changing our data flows across the organization. We’re changing the quality of our data, improving it, and making sure that it stays at that level and keeps increasing.” 

Underlining his earlier point, Dupuis stated that the most important point for both HR and organizations facing the future is to focus on how technology can enable the purpose of a business, rather than the other way around. 

Following the panel discussion, Sharon MacBeath, Group Human Resources Director at Hermès International, took to the stage to detail a fascinating case study into how one of the world’s most admired and valuable brands maintains a humanist culture. 

The challenge for the company founded in 1837 was to embed a shared culture across a decentralized global organization of more than 20,000 employees in 45 countries. 

MacBeath outlined that Hermès had grown by more than 10,000 employees in the last five years, but set about ensuring its culture by keeping principles and family at its heart, including three members of the founding family of the organization. 

Such fast growth came “with a fear that indeed there’ll be some kind of cultural dilution”, MacBeath detailed, which led to the crucial question: “How do you make sure these people that have been coming into the organization are managing in a way that’s consistent with an aspiration to humanistic management?” 

To do so, Hermès enacted a project of tasking managers with more than 12 years in the company to specifically develop the layer of intermediary managers on the culture of the company and its management philosophy. 

This is divided into four “territories”, MacBeath explained: Craftsmanship, Benevolence, Transmission, and Beauty. 

“The reason we think about these principles as cultural territories is that we don’t want to get stuck on the word,” she explained. 

We’re not trying to define beauty as a value. It’s more about saying: If beauty is a cultural principle, then what does that look like if you think about it as a management practice?” 

She added that the goal was “not to consider this as a roll out or group deployment; we said we’re going to create a movement.” 

That movement has since led to the organization engage “literally thousands of intermediate managers in this conversation in a whole range of situations”. 

“We really experience how powerful something, actually, quite simple can be to sharing practices.”  

Why IKEA, Lloyds & McDonald’s see culture as a superpower

CHRO panels are a staple of UNLEASH shows.  

This year, the audience were treated to the insights from three CHROs all about why culture is a superpower. The session was moderated by George Rogers, Chief Culture Officer at Lighthouse Research & Advisory and UNLEASH America emcee.  

Kicking off the panel was McDonald’s Emilee DeMartino, who shared that “empathy is everything”. She talked about the need to lead the self, others, and the organization, and being intention in all three of those areas.  

In the same way that “when you get a Big Mac in France it should taste like a Big Mac in the UK, Australia and the US”, “we wanted to make sure that we had the same level of consistency when it came to our people practices”. That helps create a “safe, respectful, inclusive workplace”.  

IKEA’s Deputy CHRO Alejandra Piñol added that while culture and values have always been important for the retail giant, a few years ago they pivoted to the view that “everyone is a leader” – “everyone has the capacity to lead”. 

“It’s very important that whatever we do have an impact” – and that isn’t just a HR problem, everyone in the company needs to think about their impact.  

Sharon Doherty, Chief People & Places Officer at Lloyds Banking Group, shared that it is actually true that “culture eats strategy for breakfast”; how do you operationalize the change of culture in an organization?  

Lloyds is following the model of systems, behaviors, symbols & storytelling. The bank is empowering 10% of its workforce as catalysts; they give them 10% of their time to help the organization “transform the culture”; “the rubber really hits the road when you have thousands of people on that mission with you”.  

She continues that leadership has evolved from command and control (“that didn’t work), and then moved into transformative leadership (about empowering, innovating and results).  

“We’re just moving into the next phase now that some call AI-first leadership” – although Doherty doesn’t love the term, she says there are things that leaders will need to do differently in the next phase.  

We’re going to have to figure out how we work with AI as a teammate”, and “what does keeping it human mean?”  

Want to dig in deeper? The Editorial team have published in-depth interviews with both IKEA and McDonald’s. They are must-reads!   

Congratulations to Vizzy on winning the UNLEASH World 2025 Startup Award

In case you missed it, UNLEASH is thrilled to announce Vizzy as the winner of UNLEASH America 2025’s Startup Award.

In front of our expert judging panel and a packed audience, the UK-based CV disruptor stole the show – you can read all about Vizz’s victory here.

UNLEASH CHRO Summit: ‘We need to unlock interoperability between people and tech’ 

Protected by Chatham House rules, the CHROs of businesses from across the globe were candid with each other as peers as they met to discuss the biggest challenges facing People Leaders, today, and for the next 5-10 years.  

Future of work analysts facilitated each of the discussions including Kyle Forrest Principal, Human Capital Deloitte; Jess Von Bank Global Leader, HR Transformation and Technology Advisor, Mercer; David Wilson CEO & Founder, Fosway Group; Sam Schlimper, Managing Director, Talent Advisory Randstad Enterprise; and Stacia Garr, Co-founder and Principal Analyst, RedThread Research. 

Here are some of the takeaways from the summit:

• Amplify the employee, don’t replace the employee  

“The transformational and rapidly evolving generative AI advances re-shaping the workplace can so easily lead to fear…We need to constantly be bringing trust in people back into these AI conversations.” Said one leader. 

The discussion touched on the dual-edged sword of how AI can inspire but also paralyze workforces. 

“A company is not about walls or a machine, it is people, people, people…You need to amplify the people being innovative with technology, not think about productivity in terms of cutting employees.” 

• The next frontier today will soon be table stakes

“We have to embrace change agility ourselves as CHROs to lead the next frontier, because things will keep changing, and change is hard!” 

CHROs were encouraged to honestly engage with the drivers of change in their own businesses.   

“You don’t just re-invent for kicks. You do it for a reason.   

“For HR Leaders, they need to work backwards and focus on the why, why do you want to do this?” 

The next frontier today will be table stakes in the next 5-10 years. What needs to happen now? “We need to democratize the data in our businesses right now.” 

• Hyper-personalization is not a threat

“Agents are not a threat” said the CHRO of one French-HQ global brand. “Especially in L&D upskilling at scale with personalized learning journeys. 

“This will not just change our business but the whole L&D sector. 

She added: “And learning and upskilling is the most important investment area to prepare our people for the next years, I keep telling our business unit leaders this.” 

Danone on why the CEO-CHRO alliance turns strategy into impact  

Danone’s CEO and CHRO have known (and worked together) on and off for 20 years, and today at UNLEASH World they took to the stage to share why their partnership is driving HR and business success for the food and beverage giant

In a discussion with Dr. Charles-Henri Besseyre des Horts, Professor Emeritus at HEC, on the HR Reinvention stage, they shared the key to that successful multi-decade partnership.  

“We share very strong values, but also the same sense of purpose,” shared Danone’s CHRO Isabelle Esser. “We totally align on where we want to bring the company.” 

There’s agreement that “a company can only grow as fast as it grows its talent”. “How do we build the expertise of the future?

The conversation turned to AI, for Antoine de Saint-Affrique, there’s a need to take a step back and “fundamentally change a number of things”, including skills.  

He believes its “nonsense” that AI will take people’s jobs. Esser agreed: “AI will never replace the human”, and our empathy, judgement and critical thinking.  

Want to hear more from Danone’s CHRO? Stay tuned for an upcoming interview with UNLEASH Chief Reporter Allie Nawrat. 

Join us again tomorrow for more HR inspiration and innovation.