Pop Summit Chicago

About Pop Summit Chicago

When Communications, HR, and IT operate in separate lanes, they unwittingly create a fragmented employee experience—at a time of historic disconnect. It creates lack of clarity, unnecessary hurdles, and stifles performance.

As we enter an AI-driven, next-gen workplace, this is the cost of misalignment:

Fragmentation burdens people. Functions move fast but not together, leaving employees to absorb the cost of conflicting signals and disconnected systems.
AI raises the bar for cohesion. The technology increasingly shaping our workplaces doesn't fix existing misalignment. The reality is it amplifies and compounds underlying problems at scale.
Disconnect erodes trust. Fragmented expectations drive frustration, lower engagement, and limit the value of new technologies.

But this moment also presents a real opportunity to work differently and cohesively, to start building the experience people expect and the performance they need.

Join us at Pop Summit Chicago to explore The New Convergence: How Communications, HR, and IT can shape a next-gen workplace ready for what's ahead.

Speaker Spotlight

Mark Levy

The Architect of Employee Experience

Keynote Speaker

A visionary who turned HR into human experience at Airbnb and sparked a global movement. Mark brings the blueprint for workplace cultures where employees truly belong and thrive.

David Grossman

Founder & CEO, The Grossman Group

Keynote Speaker

David uses data-driven strategies and new Harris Poll research to align leadership intent with employee experience, closing the gap between good intentions and real impact.

Honore Nolting

Senior Director, Internal Communications

Gallagher

At Gallagher, Honore ties global teams to business priorities and turns complex strategy into work employees understand and act on, especially through mergers and major change.

Tawnya Pirch

VP Executive & Internal Communications

BNY

Tawnya connects BNY's strategy to the everyday experience of employees across a global workforce, turning the complex topics leaders care about into language people understand.

Bailey O'Malia

VP, Employee Engagement Communications

Zeno Group

A trusted C-suite advisor and PRWeek Woman to Watch, Bailey has spent 12+ years shaping how Fortune 500 brands engage and inspire their people through periods of transformation.

Eve Wallin

Manager, Communications Center of Excellence

Deloitte

Eve pairs creativity and analytical thinking to build campaigns across Deloitte's firmwide programs—from employee experience and talent to sustainability and brand sponsorships.

Matthew Beninghof

Global Director of Solutions Engineering

Poppulo

Matt pairs big-picture thinking with hands-on delivery, bringing clarity and structure to complex technology, and a genuine sense of what it can do once it's in the right hands.

Shannon LaFleur

Director of Sales

Poppulo

With nearly 30 years in sales, Shannon brings a strategic eye to the processes and partnerships that help teams grow, and puts client outcomes right at the heart of what she does.

Alex Wolfson

Director of Sales, Strategic Accounts

Poppulo

Alex has helped communicators at large enterprises strengthen their comms—aligning leadership and staff, translating intent into impact, and turning gaps into measurable action.

Agenda

8:30 am

Registration & Breakfast: Time to settle in and meet others attending, as we kick off the day.

9:00 am

Welcome to Pop Summit: Opening remarks and setting the context for the day.

9:15 am

Keynote: David Grossman has spent 25 years helping Fortune 1000 companies strengthen how they lead and communicate through change. As Founder & CEO of The Grossman Group and author of The Heart Work of Modern Leadership, he works with senior executives to lead with greater clarity and impact—starting from an insight few organizations see: that capable, well-intentioned managers are often the source of the uncertainty and misalignment they're trying to fix. Drawing on original research with The Harris Poll, he challenges the assumption that better structures and technology alone can solve fragmentation. The way leaders communicate, he argues, is what separates exceptional ones from the rest—and Communications and HR must work together to build the leadership capability AI-driven change demands.

10:00 am

Keynote: Mark Levy is the architect of Employee Experience, having pioneered the shift from HR to EX at Airbnb in 2013. His work there helped the company become Glassdoor's #1 Best Place to Work. More than a decade later, he argues that too many organizations have adopted the language of EX without making the fundamental shift it requires: moving from doing things to employees to designing work with them. Drawing on the EX model he pioneered at Airbnb and his new book, Employee Experience Design: How to Co-Create Work Where People and Organizations Thrive, Mark explores what genuine EX looks like in practice. His premise is that EX is not an HR initiative: all functions that touch the employee need to change how they approach employees. He'll share practical principles for putting that idea into action through listening, dialogue, employee voice and co-creation—with Internal Communications playing a critical role.

10:45 am

Coffee & Networking

11:05 am

Panel Discussion—Co-Creating the Future of Work: Senior leaders will examine where alignment breaks down today and what it takes for Communications, HR, and IT to move from parallel efforts to coordinated action that improves employee experience and drives performance.

12:00 pm

Inspiration Tour: Practical takeaways to inspire what the future of work could be.

1:00 pm

Lunch & Conversation: Enjoy lunch and continue conversations at your own pace.

Why Attend?

Learn From Real-World Practitioners

Hear how leading organizations are rethinking communications, alignment, and activation at scale—what's working, what isn't, and what they'd do differently.

Stay Ahead of the Curve

Learn how a communications-led approach creates cohesion at scale, transforming silos into shared understanding and a more connected employee experience.

Activate Your Workforce With Agentic AI

Explore moving beyond traditional engagement to drive clarity, alignment, and activation—to turn every interaction into a catalyst for performance and growth.

Break the Silos. Elevate the Experience.

Agentic AI exposes every gap. Discover how communications-driven cohesion turns fragmentation into activation.

Learn From the Best. Shape What's Next.

Build meaningful connections with senior leaders driving transformation—exchange ideas and be part of the conversations that co-create the future of work.

From Ideas to Action. Starting here.

Walk away with fresh perspectives and practical insights to help bridge the gap between strategy and execution, so your organization moves with the speed and confidence that's needed today.