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Below the Surface: How the best people leaders build high-performing teams

by Joelle Emerson

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Latest episodes

Inside LSEG: How a 300-Year-Old Finance Leader Runs AI Experiments When It Can't Afford to Fail | Erica Bourne

October 13, 2026 · 52 min

Erica Bourne, Chief People Officer at LSEG, believes AI transformation is a people change before it is a technology change. The London Stock Exchange Group runs the infrastructure financial markets depend on, so it has to innovate without…
J&J's Longtime CHRO: HR is about Value Creation | Peter Fasolo

October 6, 2026 · 46 min

Peter Fasolo, Johnson & Johnson's longtime CHRO, believes HR is not about HR. It is about linking people practices to the value a company is trying to create. That belief shaped how he built J&J's people data science team, reorganized the…
How Moody’s Is Turning AI Adoption Into a People Strategy | Patrick Martin

September 29, 2026 · 45 min

Patrick Martin, Chief Talent Officer at Moody’s, believes AI transformation is a people challenge, not just a technology one. That is why Moody’s put its AI enablement team on the people team. It is also how a company built on caution has…
Inside Anthropic's Culture: Learn Faster, Dream Bigger | Hannah Pritchett

September 22, 2026 · 51 min

Hannah Pritchett, Chief People Officer at Anthropic, believes the ability to learn starts with ambition. Her test for whether a company is truly set up to learn is simple: are people encouraged to think expansively, take meaningful risks…
Lightspeed CHRO: Everything is about people | Beth Karlsson

September 1, 2026 · 45 min

Ask a CEO to name their hardest problem and they will rarely call it a people problem. Beth Karlsson will take that bet every time. From her seat at Lightspeed she watches dozens of the fastest-scaling companies in the world figure out…

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Lattice CEO: Build for the Success of People First | Sarah Franklin

August 24, 2026 · 52 min

Companies have spent the last few years measuring the value of AI by the headcount it lets them cut. Sarah Franklin calls that a strategic error — one the market is already correcting. Her bet: the companies that win the next five years…
Superhuman CPO: To Change How People Work, Change What You Reward | Kenny Mendes

August 18, 2026 · 36 min

Superhuman's return-to-office mandate wasn't working. The required days came, and the desks stayed empty. So Kenny Mendes scrapped the mandate and changed what the company rewards instead. Kenny is Chief People Officer at Superhuman, the…
How Notion Rebuilt HR from First Principles | Katy Shields

August 11, 2026 · 46 min

When Katy Shields joined Notion as Chief People Officer, she didn't ask her team to improve what was already there. She asked them to throw it out. Katy joined just over a year ago, when Notion was around 800 people. Before that, she…
Greenhouse's Daniel Chait: Hiring Is Broken and Nobody's Winning

August 4, 2026 · 51 min

Hiring is in a doom loop. Candidates are using AI to apply to more jobs than ever, companies are using AI to screen them out faster than ever, and both sides are getting worse outcomes for the effort. Daniel Chait is co-founder and CEO of…
WRITER's Chief People Officer: Companies Aren't Failing at AI, They're Failing at Change | Jevan Soo Lenox

July 21, 2026 · 50 min

Most companies aren't failing at AI. They're failing at change. That's the argument from Jevan Soo Lenox, Chief People Officer at WRITER, who says the technology is rarely the problem. The culture around it is. Jevan is a five-time chief…
How Linear Built a Winning Culture: Focus on Impact, not Hours | Cristina Cordova

July 7, 2026 · 57 min

How does Linear build a $1B+ business with under 200 people, without a culture of burnout? Cristina Cordova is COO of Linear, the product development system for teams and agents. Before Linear, Cristina was an early employee at Stripe…
Cursor’s Hiring Secret: Treat Every Role Like an Executive Search | Adam Ward

June 23, 2026 · 44 min

What does hiring look like at the frontier of AI? Adam Ward is Head of Talent at Cursor, one of the fastest-growing software companies in history. Before joining Cursor, Adam helped scale Facebook through its IPO, led global recruiting at…

Full episode archive on Apple Podcasts →

About the show

Below the Surface is a show about what the world's best companies are doing right now to build high-performing teams. Each episode, Joelle Emerson (co-founder and CEO of Paradigm) talks with a leader who's rethinking people, talent, and culture. Conversations consider how AI is reshaping work, what hiring should look like as organizations evolve, and how to create the conditions for performance. Made for CHROs, chief people officers, and HR and talent leaders — and anyone who builds teams.