2026 POTY Award Winners

Award Winners

Thursday, February 5th | The Walt Disney Concert Hall

STEM Impact: Built lasting partnerships with schools and nonprofits, empowering thousands of students and educators through scholarships, teacher training, and hands-on STEM experiences, including the NextGen STEM Fair.
Community Leadership: Strengthened long-term initiatives tackling hunger, sustainability, and family stability, including a 28-year collaboration with Second Harvest of Silicon Valley.
Culture Builder: Mobilized record employee volunteering and giving, embedding social purpose into Samsung’s culture and inspiring teams to create lasting community impact.

Sustainable Community Care: Led the creation of rooftop gardens on senior housing in downtown Seattle, transforming unused spaces into green sanctuaries that provide fresh food, social connection, and improved quality of life for residents.
Life-Saving LGBTQ+ Advocacy: Partnered with Pizza Klatch and The Trevor Project to expand crisis counseling globally, mobilizing and training Kaiser Permanente volunteers into a self-sustaining support system for LGBTQ+ youth.
Inclusive Leadership & Education: Facilitated impactful conversations and trainings on gender inclusion, racial equity, and pronoun use, helping organizations remove systemic barriers and build more equitable, inclusive cultures.

Strategic Operational Partner: Anticipated workforce and organizational needs during a year of transformation, leading workforce planning, turnover risk mitigation, and trusted partnership with Operations leadership through complex change.
Modernization & Execution Excellence: Modernized hiring practices, enhanced data-driven decision making, and played a key role in the OneGN transition—shaping future-state structures, scalability, and global job architecture.
Inclusive, People-Centered Leadership: Elevated employee engagement and inclusion through updated OneGN branding, new communication platforms, roundtables with direct labor teams, and actionable follow-up on employee voice and recognition.

AI Innovation at Scale: Led AI education for 3,000+ employees and shaped .Monks’ enterprise AI strategy, resulting in recognition as AI Agency of the Year in 2023.
Innovation That Sticks: Designed a scalable AI framework that embeds process transformation, enabling teams to move quickly while ensuring adoption, consistency, and long-term impact.
Talent-Powered Growth: Empowered employees across functions to use AI to create new tools, unlock innovation, and reskill themselves—turning existing talent into a sustained engine for growth.

Culture as a Business Driver: Led a purpose-driven cultural transformation at KEEN Footwear resulting in a 25% increase in engagement survey participation and a 35% improvement in NPS in just one year—proving culture and performance go hand in hand.
Intentional Engagement & Leadership Development: Designed and executed high-impact programs across communication, connection, wellness, growth, and purpose, including global leadership summits, ongoing manager development, skip-level feedback loops, and transparent goal-setting that strengthened accountability and alignment.
Belonging, Trust & High Performance: Embedded DEIB, wellness, recognition, and feedback-rich practices into every layer of the organization, creating a more inclusive, energized, and connected culture where people thrive, and business results accelerate.

Steady Leadership Through Disruption: Led Healthjoy through restructuring, global uncertainty, and rapid change, guiding a 350+ remote workforce with clarity, empathy, and trusted counsel to executives and people leaders.
Resilience in Action: Brought her global HR team together for the inaugural Catalyst Summit, equipping them with practical coaching, communication, and conflict-resolution tools to navigate complexity while staying connected, agile, and high-performing.
People-First Strength & Mindset: Models resilient leadership by prioritizing purpose, data-driven impact, and inclusive culture—empowering teams to adapt, challenge the status quo, and thrive through ongoing change.