Elevating Manager Effectiveness to Drive Strategy Achievement and Employee Engagement

Presented by Alexis Kearns, Chief People Officer, and Jaclyn Pedersen, Director of OKR Strategy and Alignment, GHX at Accelerate 2025

Alexis Kearns
Chief People Officer, GHX

Alexis Kearns serves as the chief people officer (CPO) at GHX. She is a passionate professional who believes that an organization’s number one competitive advantage is the high performance of its people. With more than 20 years of executive HR experience, Alexis has dedicated her career to helping organizations create solutions that unlock that performance. She specializes in transformational change management, HR strategy, strong organizational cultures, pre- and post-merger and acquisitions, leadership development, team effectiveness and executive coaching. Alexis has worked in a variety of industries including healthcare, energy, technology, consumer products, manufacturing, hospitality, public safety, retail and telecommunications. Prior to joining GHX, Kearns was the senior vice president of HR for ReedGroup, directing all HR activities for 1,500 employees in the U.S. and Canada.

Jaclyn Pedersen
Director of OKR Strategy and Alignment, GHX

Before working for GHX, Jaclyn spent 16 years as a competitive dancer, ten years in various sales and marketing roles for leading tech companies and then completed her MBA at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management. During her time at Kellogg, she realized that the way you train for a competitive sport is the same way you should train for elite sales. She sought out and joined GHX where she helped sellers become magnetic, value-driven human beings. After leading Revenue Enablement, Jaclyn felt there was an opportunity to transform how GHX teams work cross functionally and create transparency and alignment. She now has the privilege of leading the GHX Corporate OKR Strategy. Because her sister, Nicole, is an ER Physician, she has always felt inspired to have a bigger impact... and helping the amazing teams at GHX allows her to marry her love for corporate strategy execution and her desire to have a global impact in healthcare.