Be part of it. Sydney, 13 October.
Workforce readiness is the number one barrier to scaling AI across Australian enterprise. Not technology. Not budget. People.
On 13 October at The Fullerton Sydney, ADAPT brings together 160 of Australia's most senior CHROs and Chief People Officers for People & AI Edge: The Human in the Loop & Managing Digital Colleagues.
The agenda is built around questions that don't have clean answers yet: Who owns the agents when they enter the workforce? How do you redesign roles when AI displaces faster than reskilling absorbs? Does HR co-design the new operating model, or get handed the consequences?
Speakers confirmed: Karen Lonergan (PwC), Catherine Walsh (Qantas), Rebecca Nash (AMP), Dr Juliette Tobias-Webb (AI & Cyber Futures Centre), David Walker (former Group CTO, Westpac).
160 seats. Invite-only. Applications open now.
adapt.com.au/events/people-edge
10% of Australia's national workforce. One room. One day.
Over 150 of Australia's most senior CHROs and Chief People Officers — representing more than 10% of the national workforce — will gather at People & AI Edge on 13 October in Sydney.
The theme: The Human in the Loop & Managing Digital Colleagues.
This is the third People Edge. The most urgent yet. Agentic AI is reshaping roles, accountability, and culture faster than most workforce strategies were written to handle.
160 seats. Invite-only. Be part of it.
adapt.com.au/events/people-edge
HR has spent decades trying to earn a seat at the strategy table. AI just pulled up the chair.
Workforce readiness is the top barrier to AI adoption across Australian enterprise right now. Which means the people function is now critical path — whether it was ready or not.
At People & AI Edge this October, 160 of Australia's most senior CHROs and Chief People Officers work through what it actually takes to lead organisations through this. No hype. Practitioners sharing what's worked, what's cost them, and what the next 24 months require.
Be part of it. adapt.com.au/events/people-edge
Four conversations at People & AI Edge that are live problems right now.
1. Who owns the agents? As agentic AI enters the workforce, the question of ownership — HR, IT, or Risk — is unresolved in most Australian enterprises. The people function needs an answer before the org chart makes one by default.
2. Redesigning the workforce. AI displaces roles faster than reskilling timelines allow. What's the real plan when the workforce strategy document was written before agents existed?
3. Change without the chaos. Change management for AI adoption follows different patterns to previous technology shifts. The behavioural science of why — and what to do about it.
4. HR at the operating model table. Does the people function co-design the new operating model, or manage the consequences after one is built without it?
Sessions built from live cases. Speakers who've made the hard calls. Sydney, 13 October. By invitation only.
The question every CHRO is quietly sitting with right now: who owns the agents when they enter the workforce?
Is that HR, IT, Risk — or a new role that doesn't exist yet? It's the thread running through every senior people conversation right now. Agentic AI isn't a future problem. It's landing in enterprise now, and most workforce strategies weren't written for it.
At People & AI Edge on 13 October, that's the conversation — with the CHROs and CPOs working through it live. Karen Lonergan from PwC is sharing their internal story: six months of hard lessons on job architecture, change management, and agent ownership.
If you lead people at scale in Australia, this is the one to be at.
adapt.com.au/events/people-edge | 13 Oct, The Fullerton Sydney
AI has done something decades of strategic frameworks couldn't: it's made the people function genuinely critical path.
Workforce readiness is now the number one barrier to AI at scale across Australian enterprise. Not technology. Not budget. People. Which means the CHRO is no longer in a supporting role — they're in the room where the most consequential decisions in the organisation are being made.
That shift comes with pressure. Board questions the function was never designed to answer. A CIO who suddenly needs a strategic partner. Departments running AI tools that their vendors say will replace human roles, all looking at HR to figure out what happens next.
At People & AI Edge on 13 October in Sydney, that's the conversation. How the most senior people leaders in Australia are turning this moment into genuine strategic influence — and what it costs when the function isn't ready for it.
adapt.com.au/events/people-edge
A look at who's on the agenda at People & AI Edge this October.
Karen Lonergan, CPO at PwC Australia — sharing what six months of live agentic deployment looks like from a people function perspective: job architecture rebuilt, offshore redundancies navigated, and the agent ownership question answered the hard way.
Catherine Walsh, CPO at Qantas — workforce capability and culture at 27,000-person scale through continuous transformation under national scrutiny.
Rebecca Nash, CPO at AMP — staying human-centred when the AI roadmap moves faster than culture does.
David Walker, former Group CTO at Westpac and DBS — whether HR earns a seat in designing the new operating model, or manages the consequences after it's built.
One day, invite-only, The Fullerton Sydney, 13 October. Be part of it.
13 October. Sydney. 160 of Australia's most senior people leaders, one room, one hard conversation.
People & AI Edge is back — and this edition is the most relevant yet.
The agenda: The Human in the Loop & Managing Digital Colleagues. The speakers: Karen Lonergan (PwC), Catherine Walsh (Qantas), Rebecca Nash (AMP).
Invite-only. Limited seats. adapt.com.au/events/people-edge
At People & AI Edge on 13 October in Sydney, I'll be sitting down with ADAPT's Matt Boon to share what the last two years at PwC have actually taught us about leading people through AI transformation.
Consultants are at the bleeding edge of agentic impact. We've seen it land hard and fast on roles, workflows, and the question of who owns what. I'll cover where the offshore redundancies landed and how we managed it, why the cost savings didn't appear until we redesigned job architecture, the radical transparency required in the change narrative, and who ended up owning the agents — and why that answer surprised us.
This isn't a polished keynote about potential. It's a practitioner conversation about hard decisions with real consequences.
PwC runs agentic AI harder and faster than most Australian organisations will face for another two years. Karen Lonergan, their Chief People Officer, has led the people function through all of it.
At People & AI Edge on 13 October, Karen joins ADAPT's Matt Boon for a direct, unfiltered conversation: what six months of live deployment looks like from a people perspective, how job architecture was rebuilt from scratch, what radical transparency in change management actually means, and who owns the agents when the org chart hasn't caught up.
A rare look at what practitioner-level AI transformation feels like from the people seat.
At People & AI Edge on 13 October, I'll be in conversation with Dom Price about what it takes to lead a workforce of 27,000 people through transformation at national scale — when every decision is visible and the stakes are very public.
Qantas isn't just a company. It's part of the national identity. That creates an extraordinary amount of pressure on the people function, and it's also what makes the challenge of building capability, culture and resilience through AI transformation so interesting.
Looking forward to a frank conversation with the people leaders in that room.
Qantas isn't just Australia's national carrier — it's part of the national identity. When it flies well, the whole country feels it. That's an extraordinary amount of pressure on 27,000 people who show up every single day.
At People & AI Edge, Catherine Walsh, CPO at Qantas, joins Dom Price for a fireside conversation on what building capability, culture and resilience through continuous transformation at that scale actually demands of a people function.
A rare and candid look at what national-scale people leadership requires in 2026.
At People & AI Edge on 13 October, I'll be joining a panel on what it actually takes to lead a workforce through the age of intelligent agents — and how the people function itself is being reinvented in the process.
The questions I find most interesting right now: how do you stay genuinely human-centred when the AI roadmap accelerates faster than culture does? What does inclusive design look like when the workforce includes both humans and agents? And how does the people function prove its value when the metrics of work are changing?
Looking forward to unfiltered conversation with this group.
With over three decades of experience across global enterprise transformation, Rebecca Nash has led workforce strategy through some of Australia's most complex organisational change programmes.
At People & AI Edge, Rebecca joins the panel on The Human in the Loop — sharing what it takes to stay genuinely human-centred as AI roadmaps accelerate faster than culture does, and what the people function must do differently to prove its value when the metrics of work themselves are changing.
Unfiltered perspectives from one of Australia's most experienced people leaders.
At People & AI Edge on 13 October, I'll be on the panel discussing something my research sits right at the intersection of: why change resistance in AI adoption follows fundamentally different patterns to previous technology shifts, and what that means for how HR and people leaders should be designing their change programmes.
The behavioural science of this moment is genuinely interesting. The cognitive load of working alongside agents, the trust calibration required, the identity questions that surface when roles change — these aren't solved by better comms strategies. They need to be designed for from the start.
Looking forward to a room full of practitioners who are working through this live.
Change resistance in AI adoption doesn't follow the same patterns as previous technology shifts. The cognitive load of working alongside agents, the trust calibration required, the identity questions that surface when roles change — these require different design thinking from the people function.
At People & AI Edge, Dr Juliette Tobias-Webb, Adjunct Professor at the AI & Cyber Futures Centre and one of Australia's leading behavioural scientists, brings the decision science to the panel. PhD in Experimental Psychology from Cambridge. Work across Mastercard, Google, Citibank, and Atlassian.
The session that explains why smart change programmes still stall — and what to do differently.
At People & AI Edge on 13 October, I'll be on the closing panel asking a question I think is genuinely unresolved in most organisations: as agentic AI reshapes work, is HR ready to co-design the new operating model — or will it end up managing the consequences of one built without it?
Having sat in the CTO seat through significant AI adoption at Westpac and DBS, I've seen this from the technology side. The decisions that get made when HR isn't at the design table are recoverable, but they're expensive. The organisations that get this right are the ones where the functions build the operating model together.
Looking forward to a direct conversation with the people leaders who are navigating exactly this.
The organisations that get AI transformation right are the ones where the technology function and the people function build the new operating model together. David Walker has seen the cost of when they don't.
At People & AI Edge, David Walker — former Group CTO of Westpac and DBS Bank Singapore, now Chair of the AI Council at UNSW — joins the closing panel on the workforce question AI can't answer without HR. A technology leader's view on why the people function's seat at the design table isn't optional, and what happens to organisations that treat it as such.
A rare cross-functional perspective to close the day.
Preview: The people function has never had more to gain — or more to lose.
[First Name],
Workforce readiness is the number one barrier to scaling AI across Australian enterprise right now. Not technology. Not budget. People.
That puts your function at the centre of the most consequential business challenge of the decade — and most organisations haven't built a people strategy that reflects it yet.
On 13 October in Sydney, ADAPT is bringing together some of Australia's most senior CHROs and Chief People Officers for People & AI Edge: The Human in the Loop & Managing Digital Colleagues.
The day is built around questions that are live problems right now:
→ Agents are entering the workforce. Who owns them — HR, IT, or Risk?
→ AI displaces roles faster than reskilling timelines allow. What's the real plan?
→ Every major org has a workforce strategy document. Most of them are already obsolete.
Speakers confirmed: Karen Lonergan (CPO, PwC), Catherine Walsh (CPO, Qantas), Rebecca Nash (CPO, AMP), Dr Juliette Tobias-Webb (AI & Cyber Futures Centre), David Walker (former Group CTO, Westpac & DBS).
We think you'd get a lot out of the day. If you'd like to know more, reply here or pre-register: [LINK]
Ideally we'd hear from you by [DATE].
Jim Berry
CEO & Founder, ADAPT
Preview: The people costs they didn't forecast. Karen Lonergan, 13 October, Sydney.
[First Name],
Consultants are running agentic AI harder and faster than almost any other sector. PwC Australia has already lived through what most enterprises will face in the next two years.
Karen Lonergan, their Chief People Officer, is bringing that story to People & AI Edge on 13 October in Sydney.
What she's covering:
— Where the offshore redundancies landed, and how they managed it
— Why the cost savings didn't appear until they redesigned job architecture
— Who ended up owning the agents — and why that answer surprised them
— The narrative and change management approach that actually worked
Not a polished keynote. A practitioner walkthrough of hard decisions with real consequences, moderated by ADAPT's Matt Boon in a direct, unfiltered format.
The full day also features Catherine Walsh (Qantas), Rebecca Nash (AMP), Dr Juliette Tobias-Webb (AI & Cyber Futures Centre), and David Walker (former Group CTO, Westpac).
If this is the kind of conversation you need right now, reply or pre-register: [LINK]
Ideally let us know by [DATE].
Jim Berry
CEO & Founder, ADAPT
Preview: The third People Edge. The most urgent edition yet.
[First Name],
Some of Australia's most senior people leaders have already navigated the first wave of AI-driven workforce change. Roles redesigned. Structures rewritten. Cultures stress-tested.
On 13 October at The Fullerton Sydney, People & AI Edge brings them together for the hardest conversation in the people function right now: The Human in the Loop & Managing Digital Colleagues.
The gap between organisations managing AI transformation well and those absorbing the damage comes down to whether the people function was at the design table, or handed the brief after decisions were made.
Speakers include Karen Lonergan (PwC), Catherine Walsh (Qantas), Rebecca Nash (AMP), Dr Juliette Tobias-Webb (AI & Cyber Futures Centre), and David Walker (former Group CTO, Westpac & DBS).
Across the day: keynote fireside, expert panels, peer roundtables, and 1:1 meetings — all built around the actual decisions you're making this year.
This is the third People Edge. The conversation has earned its reputation. We'd like you to be part of it.
Pre-register here: [LINK]
Ideally by [DATE].
Jim Berry
CEO & Founder, ADAPT
Preview: People & AI Edge. Karen Lonergan, Catherine Walsh, Rebecca Nash. Worth 60 seconds.
[First Name],
People & AI Edge. Sydney. 13 October.
One day for Australia's most senior CHROs and Chief People Officers, built entirely around AI transformation and the workforce challenges that come with it.
Speakers on the day: Karen Lonergan (CPO, PwC), Catherine Walsh (CPO, Qantas), Rebecca Nash (CPO, AMP), Dr Juliette Tobias-Webb (AI & Cyber Futures Centre), David Walker (former Group CTO, Westpac).
Real cases. Hard lessons. The conversation the people function needs right now.
Worth a look: [LINK]
Jim Berry
CEO & Founder, ADAPT
Preview: 80 alumni seats. First access. Here's why this one matters more.
[First Name],
You were in the room when we ran People Edge — and a lot has changed since then.
Agentic AI is now inside the enterprise. Digital colleagues are entering the workforce. The workforce strategy documents most organisations wrote three years ago are obsolete. And the people function has landed at the centre of a transformation it was never designed to lead.
That's exactly why we're bringing People & AI Edge back on 13 October in Sydney.
The theme: The Human in the Loop & Managing Digital Colleagues.
We've built this edition around the questions that don't have clean answers yet:
— Who owns the agents? HR, IT, Risk — or someone new?
— When AI displaces roles faster than reskilling can absorb, what's the real timeline?
— How do you run change management for a workforce that's watching colleagues get replaced?
— Does HR co-design the new operating model, or manage the consequences of one built without it?
Speakers confirmed: Karen Lonergan (CPO, PwC), Catherine Walsh (CPO, Qantas), Rebecca Nash (CPO, AMP), Dr Juliette Tobias-Webb (AI & Cyber Futures Centre), David Walker (former Group CTO, Westpac).
PwC is at the sharpest edge of agentic disruption in professional services. Karen brings two years of hard, live lessons — including decisions on offshore roles, job architecture redesign, and who actually controls the agents.
Because you attended before, you have access to one of the 80 alumni seats before this opens to the broader market.
Ideally we'd love to hear from you by [DATE] — so we can hold your seat before the net-new list opens.
Reply here or pre-register: [LINK]
Jim Berry
CEO & Founder, ADAPT
Preview: People Edge is back. So is the question. 13 October, Sydney.
[First Name],
You joined us for People Edge before. This one is different — and more urgent.
Workforce readiness is now the number one barrier to AI at scale across Australian enterprise. Not technology. Not budget. People. That makes this the most important year in the history of the HR function, and for a lot of organisations, the most chaotic.
On 13 October in Sydney, we're running People & AI Edge for the third time. The theme: The Human in the Loop & Managing Digital Colleagues.
Karen Lonergan (CPO, PwC) is sharing the internal PwC story — what agentic AI has done to their workflows, where the offshore redundancies landed, why the benefits didn't appear until they redesigned job architecture, and who ended up owning the agents. Consultants are running AI harder than almost any sector. She has the data.
Catherine Walsh is bringing 27,000 Qantas employees' worth of perspective on building capability and culture through transformation at national scale.
Dr Juliette Tobias-Webb is addressing why change resistance in AI adoption follows a different pattern to previous technology shifts — and what that means for how you design your programme.
As a previous attendee, you have one of the 80 alumni seats — first access before the net-new list opens.
Ideally we'd hear from you by [DATE].
Pre-register: [LINK]
Jim Berry
CEO & Founder, ADAPT
Preview: 80 seats for alumni. The third edition. The most relevant yet.
[First Name],
Since you last joined us for People Edge, a few things have happened.
Every major Australian enterprise has an AI mandate. Most have a workforce readiness problem they haven't solved. And the people function has gone from cost centre to critical path — whether it was ready or not.
On 13 October, we're running People & AI Edge for the third time. The Fullerton, Sydney.
The theme: The Human in the Loop & Managing Digital Colleagues.
The speakers are the practitioners leading the hardest version of this problem live. Karen Lonergan (PwC) is walking through what six months of agentic deployment actually looks like from a people function perspective. Job architecture rebuilt. Change management through offshore redundancies. Who owns the agents when the org chart hasn't caught up. Catherine Walsh (Qantas) is covering workforce strategy at 27,000-person scale. Rebecca Nash (AMP) is on the panel addressing what it takes to stay human-centred when the AI roadmap moves faster than culture does. David Walker (former Group CTO, Westpac and DBS) is joining the closing panel on whether HR earns a seat at the operating model table — or gets handed the consequences after it's built.
There are 80 seats reserved for People Edge alumni. Your place is one of them.
Pre-register here: [LINK]
Ideally by [DATE], so we can confirm your place before the net-new list opens.
Jim Berry
CEO & Founder, ADAPT
[Direct to lens. Conversational tone. No desk, no slides.]
[NAME], your role is changing — and not gradually.
[BEAT]
You're being asked to manage AI agents alongside your people. You're redesigning roles that didn't exist two years ago. Every department is trialling tools their vendors promise will replace humans — and you're the one being asked what to do about it.
[BEAT]
Your CIO is now one of your most important relationships. Your board is asking questions the people function has never had to answer before.
[BEAT]
Tough gig. But you're not working through this alone.
[BEAT]
On 13 October in Sydney, we're bringing together some of Australia's most senior people leaders — including Karen Lonergan from PwC and Catherine Walsh from Qantas — for one day built entirely around this challenge. Real cases. Hard lessons. What actually worked.
[BEAT]
People & AI Edge. I think you'd get a lot out of it.
[BEAT]
Would you like to know more?
[Hold gaze. Smile. Cut.]
[Direct to lens. Slightly faster, more energy on the opener.]
[NAME] — your role is changing faster than your job description is.
[BEAT]
You're managing AI agents alongside your people now. Every department is running tools their vendors say will replace human roles — and you're the one figuring out what that actually means for your organisation.
[BEAT]
On 13 October in Sydney, some of Australia's most senior CHROs and Chief People Officers are spending a day working through exactly this together. The CPOs from PwC and Qantas are there. A lot of others you'd want in the room.
[BEAT]
People & AI Edge. I think it's worth a conversation.
[BEAT]
Keen to hear your thoughts.
[Nod. Cut.]
[Direct to lens. Warmer, slightly slower. Leaning forward.]
[NAME], I've been talking to CHROs and Chief People Officers across Australia for months, and the same thing keeps coming up.
[BEAT]
The role has changed. Not slowly, and not optionally. You're managing a workforce that now includes AI agents. Redesigning jobs that AI is replacing. Leading change that nobody has a clean playbook for yet.
[BEAT]
And your board wants answers. Your CIO needs a genuine partner. Your people need someone to make sense of all of it.
[BEAT]
We built People & AI Edge for exactly this moment. On 13 October in Sydney, some of the most experienced people leaders in Australia spend a day working through this together. Karen Lonergan from PwC. Catherine Walsh from Qantas. Practitioners sharing what they've actually learned — not what looks good on a slide.
[BEAT]
I think you'd find it genuinely useful. And frankly, I think the room would be better with you in it.
[BEAT]
Worth a conversation?
[Hold. Warm smile. Cut.]
[OPEN: Jim, direct to lens. Quiet room. Still. No intro music yet.]
Once a year, something changes in the way Australia thinks about people and work.
[BEAT]
Not because of a report, or a conference keynote, or a panel on a stage.
[BEAT]
Because the right people are finally in the same room.
[CUT TO B-ROLL: Wide shot of The Fullerton Sydney atrium, morning light. People arriving. Quiet conversation in pairs. The texture of a room preparing for something.]
[BEAT]
People & AI Edge brings together Australia's most senior CHROs and Chief People Officers at the exact moment the role demands it most.
[CUT TO B-ROLL: Close-up hands around a table. Someone making a point. Someone else nodding, writing. The look of a conversation that matters.]
AI agents are entering the workforce. Roles are being redesigned in real time. Boards are asking the people function questions it was never built to answer.
[BEAT]
The leaders in this room aren't watching that happen. They're deciding what it looks like.
[CUT TO B-ROLL: Speaker at the front of the room — not a stage, a conversation. Delegates leaning in, not leaning back. The feel of a boardroom, not an auditorium.]
Karen Lonergan, Chief People Officer at PwC Australia — sharing what six months of live agentic deployment actually costs, and what you rebuild after.
[BEAT]
Catherine Walsh, Chief People Officer at Qantas — on leading 27,000 people through transformation when the whole country is watching.
[BEAT]
This is the conversation the people function needs to have right now.
[CUT BACK TO JIM: Same setting as open. Quieter energy now. Not selling. Sharing.]
We've run this event twice before. Every time, the thing people say afterwards is the same.
[BEAT]
They wish they'd come sooner.
[BEAT — longer, 2 seconds. Let it land.]
People & AI Edge. Sydney. 13 October.
[BEAT]
[Jim looks directly into the lens. No smile yet. Full conviction.]
Be part of it.
[Hold 3 seconds. Cut to black.]
[END CARD: PEOPLE & AI EDGE · 13 OCTOBER 2026 · THE FULLERTON SYDNEY · adapt.com.au/events/people-edge]