18 Learning Leaders at California Public Companies

Learning and development leaders do some of the most important work inside a growing organisation. They help people build judgement, capability and confidence while the business changes around them.

This California list focuses on current leaders at public companies headquartered in the state. The people included work across learning, talent, organisational development, employee experience or wider people strategy. The point is not a league table. It is a useful set of examples for anyone thinking about how people grow at scale.

The list includes both learning specialists and senior people leaders whose official responsibilities clearly include development. That broader view reflects how the work is organised in real companies. Learning may sit in a named team, inside the People function or alongside a wider change and capability brief.

1. Chris Ernst.

Chief Learning Officer, Workday.

Chris Ernst sits at the clearest learning-specific point in this group. As Workday’s Chief Learning Officer, he leads a brief that reaches beyond courses and programmes into talent strategy, performance, leadership effectiveness, organisational development and employee experience.

Ernst brings an industrial and organisational psychology background to that work, along with experience translating people questions into practical systems. For leaders building capability during fast change, the lesson is straightforward: learning becomes more valuable when it is connected to how work, leadership and movement through the organisation actually happen.

2. Ashley Goldsmith.

Chief People Officer, Workday.

Ashley Goldsmith leads Workday’s people function from Pleasanton, with responsibility spanning human resources, belonging, diversity and global impact. Goldsmith’s role shows how learning leadership can sit within a broader people brief while still remaining central to the way an organisation prepares its workforce.

Workday has also described its largest ever learning and development effort in a company story that discusses the future of work and AI. Her example is useful for executives who are trying to move from scattered training activity towards a clearer skills, mobility and capability conversation across the whole organisation.

3. Deirdre O’Brien.

Senior Vice President, Retail and People, Apple.

Deirdre O’Brien holds one of the broadest people and learning briefs in the list. As Apple’s Senior Vice President, Retail and People, she leads the People team as well as the company’s retail organisation. That combination makes her a strong example of learning leadership that is tied directly to how a company operates.

Apple University is the distinctive point here. O’Brien’s profile also reflects a practical tension many senior people leaders face: building consistent leadership and culture across a complex global organisation while staying close to the customer experience. That is a useful lens for anyone designing learning at scale.

4. Carol Surface.

Chief People Officer, HP.

Carol Surface became HP’s Chief People Officer in 2025, bringing a career shaped by transformation and operating model change. Surface is not presented as a course specialist. She represents the senior people leader who has to make culture, structure and capability work together as the business changes.

Her decade as Medtronic’s Chief Human Resources Officer is the distinctive thread. That background matters for learning leaders because development rarely survives as a standalone activity. It has to fit the way decisions are made, the way leaders are supported and the way a workforce is organised.

5. Nathalie Scardino.

President and Chief People Officer, Salesforce.

Nathalie Scardino leads Salesforce’s Global Employee Success organisation as President and Chief People Officer. Her remit includes the employee experience, culture, equality and AI-enabled work across engagement, hiring and workforce planning. That makes her a useful example of a modern people leader whose work sits at the intersection of development, technology and business strategy.

Scardino’s distinctive background is especially relevant to this list. Before taking the top people role, she led recruiting, onboarding, employee learning and development, and upskilling at Salesforce. The company has also discussed Career Connect, a reskilling effort designed to help people move towards new opportunities.

6. Jacqui Canney.

Chief People and AI Enablement Officer, ServiceNow.

Jacqui Canney’s role at ServiceNow is a direct sign of where learning leadership is heading. As Chief People and AI Enablement Officer, she combines people strategy with the work of helping the organisation use AI well. The official profile describes a remit that includes talent strategy, employee experience and preparing the workforce for technological change.

Canney brings experience from WPP, Walmart and Accenture, but the current distinctive point is the combination of people and AI enablement. It suggests that workforce learning is no longer only about teaching a new tool. ServiceNow’s Santa Clara base makes the example especially relevant to California’s public technology sector.

7. Alejandro Vallejo.

Executive Vice President, Chief People Officer, PG&E.

Alejandro Vallejo leads the People organisation at PG&E, a large Oakland-based public utility with a workforce spread across California. His remit includes talent acquisition, labour relations, coworker development and change management. Vallejo’s inclusion keeps the article grounded in a sector where capability has a direct effect on customers and communities.

Vallejo’s distinctive fact is his long internal path. PG&E says he has spent 15 years with the company before taking the Chief People Officer role in September 2025. For L&D teams, it is a reminder that internal succession can be a form of capability building in its own right.

8. Francine Katsoudas.

Executive Vice President and Chief People, Policy and Purpose Officer, Cisco.

Francine Katsoudas has one of the widest leadership briefs in the group. Her work spans the People and Communities organisation, inclusion, sustainability, workplace resources and the Digital Impact Office. The learning connection is clear: capability is part of the culture and purpose system, not something separated from the wider organisation.

Cisco’s official biography says Katsoudas has spent 30 years at the company, led large organisational transformations and cultivated new generations of leaders. That long view is the distinctive fact worth taking from her example. It shows how leadership development can become part of an organisation’s institutional memory.

9. Gloria Chen.

Chief People Officer and Executive Vice President, Employee Experience, Adobe.

Gloria Chen leads people and employee experience at Adobe from San Jose. Adobe’s public leadership material presents her as a long-serving executive who has stayed close to the company through major changes. That matters because capability building is often most useful when it is designed alongside the workplace itself.

Chen’s distinctive fact is her tenure. Adobe says she has spent more than 25 years with the company, including through important changes in culture, e-commerce and enterprise growth. Chen’s example is a reminder that employee experience becomes more credible when leaders connect it to how work is actually done.

10. Brian Miller.

Chief Talent, Diversity and Inclusion Officer, Adobe.

Brian Miller leads Adobe’s global talent, diversity and inclusion work. The two roles should not be confused: Miller is included because his official profile describes the specialist work of building talent systems and development pathways, while Chen leads the wider employee experience and people strategy.

Miller’s distinctive background includes talent and development leadership at Gilead and service on the Association for Talent Development board. That combination places him close to both organisational practice and the wider learning profession. Better capability systems are more useful when people can see a fair path into them and through them.

11. Mala Singh.

Chief People Officer, Electronic Arts.

Mala Singh leads the People Experience team at Electronic Arts, headquartered in Redwood City. She also oversees learning and development, succession planning, people analytics and inclusion. That makes her one of the most direct examples in the article of a Chief People Officer whose brief visibly includes the full learning system.

Singh’s return to EA after leading people work at Minted is a distinctive part of the story. The practical lesson is relevant beyond games: the best learning work is often less about adding content and more about creating an employee experience that helps people take responsibility, develop judgement and stay connected to the organisation’s direction.

12. Carl Segerstrom.

Chief People Officer, Acadia Pharmaceuticals.

Carl Segerstrom joined Acadia Pharmaceuticals as Chief People Officer in July 2026, bringing a strong talent and transformation background to the San Diego company. In life sciences, workforce capability connects to science, scale, regulation and the need to keep specialist teams moving together.

Segerstrom’s earlier work as Chief Talent Officer at Merck provides the distinctive fact. That is a full capability spine rather than a narrow training brief. His example gives L&D leaders a practical question to ask: which future skills, leadership moves and operating changes must be prepared before the business feels the pressure?

13. Shaluinn Fullove.

Chief People Officer, Ouster.

Shaluinn Fullove became Ouster’s Chief People Officer in July 2026, joining the San Francisco company as it scales its sensing and perception work. Her role covers the complete employee lifecycle, including talent acquisition, organisational design and organisational development. The development question is not only what people need to know.

Ouster’s announcement describes Fullove’s mandate as building public-company-grade people infrastructure. It also points to her experience at Google, Lyft, GM and Nest, including large organisational transformations and global talent development. Learning leaders can help with that by making capability, leadership and culture visible before growth turns every gap into an urgent problem.

14. Bobbie Grafeld.

Chief People Officer, BILL.

Bobbie Grafeld leads the people function at BILL in San Jose. That gives her a clear place in a learning and development listicle, even though the title is not Chief Learning Officer. Senior capability work often lives inside the wider work of helping leaders build teams that can perform and adapt.

Grafeld’s distinctive background is the range of companies where she has held senior people roles, including RingCentral and 2K Games, alongside earlier work at Walmart, eBay, PayPal and Wells Fargo. Those moves give her a view across different growth and operating models.

15. Christina Sawyer.

Chief People Officer, Adeia.

Christina Sawyer leads the people function at Adeia, a San Jose technology company working across semiconductor and media intellectual property. That gives her experience of both the system side of people work and the everyday reality of helping teams operate well.

Sawyer’s career is distinctive because it did not start in a traditional HR lane. A learning leader who understands how work creates value can design development that is easier for managers to use, easier for teams to trust and easier for the business to connect to results.

16. Sunita Solao.

Chief People Officer, Upwork.

Sunita Solao leads the people team at Upwork, the San Francisco work marketplace. Upwork’s public appointment announcement describes her as a people executive who helps teams grow, enables business results and scales organisations. That is the capability challenge in plain terms: keep the work moving while the shape of work changes.

Solao’s background across Convoy, Airbnb and eBay gives her a distinctive future-of-work perspective. Upwork says she has led teams and helped shape culture at digitally native companies where growth and flexibility were central concerns. For L&D leaders, her example reinforces the value of designing learning for movement.

17. Emily Field.

Group Managing Director, Chief People Officer, LPL Financial.

Emily Field leads human resources and employee experience at LPL Financial in San Diego. Her remit includes talent management, learning, culture and engagement, with a focus on making HR a strategic partner to the business. That makes her an especially practical example for readers who want to connect leadership development with everyday management.

Field co-authored Power to the Middle: Why Managers Hold the Keys to the Future of Work, and LPL has described a revamped manager learning programme launched after she joined. L&D leaders can learn from that choice by making manager capability a business system, not a once-a-year event.

18. Brigette McInnis-Day.

Chief People Officer, Guidewire.

Brigette McInnis-Day leads People and Enterprise Business Operations at Guidewire in San Mateo. Her official leadership profile links HR, operations and organisational transformation, giving her a strong fit for a learning list that is about capability in motion. The role demonstrates that organisational development can sit close to the core operating model.

McInnis-Day brings more than 25 years of experience across UiPath, Google Cloud, SAP and Mercer. Guidewire also says she has worked on AI and automation in HR, scaling teams and building high-performance cultures. That is the distinctive thread. The lesson for L&D leaders is not to chase every new tool.

What these leaders have in common.

The strongest pattern is that learning is connected to the work. It appears alongside talent strategy, leadership, employee experience, organisational design, AI enablement and change. That connection makes development easier to use because people can see how it helps them make decisions, lead teams and move through the organisation.

A second pattern is that the role is changing shape. Some leaders run a named learning function. Others hold a wider people brief that includes development as one part of a bigger system. Both models can work when the organisation is clear about the capabilities it needs and gives leaders the time, tools and support to build them.

For a senior team, the practical question is simple: what do people need to learn next, and how will the organisation help them use it? That question turns learning from an event into a way of working.

About Jonno White.

Jonno White is a Brisbane-based leadership consultant, keynote speaker and Certified Working Genius Facilitator, and the author of Step Up or Step Out. He works with schools, corporates and nonprofits around the world. To enquire about a keynote, workshop or facilitated leadership session, email jonno@consultclarity.org.