Lattice CPO Council

Alan is a highly accomplished, commercial “T shaped” CPO who has successfully transitioned from CPO to COO & back to CPO, bringing the best of both and learning along the way. A compelling storyteller, Alan brings positivity, vulnerability, fun, and energy to everything he does. He has overseen significant spikes in finding, attracting, and recruiting top talent, and advises Founders on commercial growth, bringing into play his knowledge, experience, and playbook to help solve scaling challenges. Alan has worked for and with some of the UK’s most celebrated entrepreneurs at companies including Moneymarket, MOO, Octopus Ventures and iTech Media Group and now serves as CPO of GoCardless.

Alexis MacDonald has worked in the People & Culture space since 2008, across a variety of industries and sizes of teams: from large enterprise to the small business, to spending the last 7 years working in startup tech. She is currently the VP, People at Klue, with 200+ employees around the globe focused on building the category-leading Competitive Enablement software. She spent 6 years at a startup called Loopio, growing the team from 80 employees to 350, from Series A through a strategic investment from Private Equity firm Sumeru Equity Partners. Prior to her time in tech, she worked in travel, transportation and media - notably spending 7 years at CBC/Radio-Canada, supporting News & Radio teams. She has a Bachelor in Psychology from the University of Alberta and a Master's of Human Resources Management from York University.

Cara has deep experience scaling HR operations, recruiting, and learning & development at fast-moving, global companies. Prior to joining Lattice, previously as Chief People Officer and now in an advisory role, she was SVP of People at both Udemy (UDMY) and Planet Labs (PL) and previously served in HR leadership roles at Pinterest (PIN), Efficient Frontier – now Adobe, Young and Rubicam, and Knight Ridder, among others. Cara is also co-founder of PeopleTech Partners, a group of HR leaders working to bring new HR/recruiting technologies to market. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Kentucky, holds a master’s degree from the University of San Francisco, completed graduate studies at Stanford University and is finishing her Master’s degree in Leadership and Ethics at the University of Chicago.

Courtney Cherry Ellis is the Senior Vice President of People at AuditBoard, a B2B SaaS company focused on the audit, risk, and compliance space. As an HR leader, she has a passion for building high-performing teams, creating programs that reinforce culture, and celebrate business outcomes. She loves partnering with business leaders to find new and creative ways to hire, inspire, reward, and engage employees.

Donald Knight is Group SVP People & Culture at Warner Bros. Discovery. Previously Chief People Officer at Greenhouse Software, he leds with a people-first mentality hoping to unlock the potential of Greenhouse talent globally. With a focus on the connection between people and the processes that serve them, Donald and his team created proximity by building bridges focusing on enhanced experiences that nurture culture and develop people.

Leading the People team, Donald worked to help Greenhouse create an environment for people to do the best work of their lives. He was responsible for providing global strategy and leadership in developing, overseeing, and administering people programs. With expansion top of mind, the team delivered a scalable people strategy that enables the organization to expand globally.

Heather is a 3x Chief People Officer with over 15+ years of experience in the People space. She currently is the CPO at Brex, where she leads all things People, Talent, and Workplace. Prior to Brex, she was the CPO at Gem, a recruiting software startup, where she served in a much broader customer facing role not only leading People, but contributing to Marketing, Sales, Customer Success, and Product. In addition, she was the CPO at Newfront, an insurtech startup, where she took the company from 300 to 700+ through a successful merger. Previous to her CPO roles, she led the HR Business Partner team at Dropbox through their scale and IPO, and held roles in Recruiting, Compensation, and HR Business Partner at Microsoft. In addition to her day job, Heather holds a number of angel investments and advisory roles across early stage startups.

Melanie Naranjo is the VP of People at Ethena, a modern compliance training provider focused on building more inclusive and ethical workplaces. With 9+ years of experience in the HR and People space, she’s been interviewed by HR Brew, FastCompany, NBC, and more for her unique insights. When she’s not scaling teams, leading trainings, or coaching managers, she’s recharging by either baking something sweet or taking one of her dogs (or cats) for a walk.

Melanie Steinbach is CPO at MasterClass where she drives HR strategy and operations, recruitment and culture initiatives. Prior to MasterClass, she served as CPO at Cameo. Mel has years of experience at the intersection of talent and business strategy including as SVP and CPO, McDonald's USA, VP and Global Chief Talent Officer, McDonald’s Corp. and CHRO at Milliken. She also spent 15 years in the consumer, retail and marketing sectors at executive search firms, Russell Reynolds Associates and Spencer Stuart. She received her AB Political Science from Duke University. Mel serves on the Board of Directors of the Court of Master Sommeliers, Americas and on the Board of Stonehurst Group.

Natalie Breece is the Chief People + Diversity Officer for thredUP Inc. (NASDAQ: TDUP) where she has dedicated the last 7 years building, innovating and executing the Talent Acquisition, People Operations, Total Rewards, DEIB and L&D strategies for the company. Natalie and her team is in relentless pursuit of cultivating an environment that enables thredUP 2000+ employees to do the best work of their lives while inspiring a new generation to think secondhand first.

Q is currently the global Chief People Officer at HighLevel, an all-in-one white-label marketing platform for agencies and consultants that is backed by PeakEquity Partners and General Atlantic. As a profitable, disruptive, and rapidly growing SaaS company, HighLevel continues to expand with over 1,200 employees working remotely across the globe. Prior to HighLevel, Q was an executive team member at Paper, a Series D edtech company, where he was responsible for the People and Communication functions, including Talent Acquisition, Public Relations, and Internal and External Communications teams. Q also spent nearly five years at Airbnb as their first global People Operations leader and is an ongoing contributor to Forbes, guest faculty at the London Business School, and an avid traveler always exploring new destinations and cultural experiences.

Rana is the Chief People Officer at Tekion, where she leads all aspects of Human Resources for the company’s rapidly growing global team. Tekion is transforming the automotive retail industry through its cloud-based Automotive Retail Cloud (ARC) platform, which seamlessly integrates sales, service, CRM, and accounting. Powered by AI and machine learning, ARC delivers personalized experiences, streamlines operations, and drives efficiency for dealerships.With over two decades of HR leadership experience, Rana has held senior roles at high-growth technology companies. Prior to joining Tekion, she served as Chief People Officer at HackerOne and Vice President of Global People Operations at New Relic, where she helped scale the company from a 300-person pre-IPO startup to a publicly traded organization with more than 2,000 employees across 12+ countries.

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In addition to her full-time ‘day job’ as Chief People Officer at Khan Academy, Regina L. Ross serves others as a transformational strategist, coach, pastor, consultant, speaker & author with a passion for empowering people to discover and authentically express their potential in a way that creates purpose, value and fulfillment.  Prior to joining Khan Academy, Regina held senior leadership roles in Operations, Human Resources, and Change Management at Target, Amazon, and Pitney Bowes. Regina earned her BS in Industrial Engineering from Auburn University, and she holds professional certifications in Human Resources, Change Management, Coaching, and Continuous Process Improvement. Regina, who currently lives in Northern CA, loves to travel and has RVing cross-country on her bucket list.

Valentina Gissin is Chief People Officer of Garner Health Technology, a venture-backed company on a mission to transform the U.S. healthcare economy. She has been a thought leader in the People space for over a decade, spanning industry and stage. Valentina pivoted from a career as a technology lawyer to manage talent for Bridgewater Associates, and since then has always taken a first principles, non-traditional approach to People. Valentina went on to lead talent management, employee experience, talent development and several aspects of human resources for Chewy, building the foundations that enabled Chewy to grow by almost 50% during her tenure. Prior to joining Garner, she was the Chief People Officer of Citizen.