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Meeting Details

Key Topics Discussed

  • Trust and transparency as the foundation for AI adoption: Cotality launched its AI journey with an enterprise vision communicated by executive leadership, responsible-use policies, employee and leader training, and clear guardrails. Rather than positioning AI primarily as a technology rollout, leaders treated it as a significant organizational change effort.
  • Building AI capability through continuous learning: Cotality applied a 70-20-10 learning model, supplementing formal foundational courses with role-specific learning paths, peer champions, mentoring, hackathons, development days, and experiential use of AI tools. Functional champions in areas such as product, sales, data science, and operations help employees learn directly from colleagues closest to the work.
  • HR as an AI transformation orchestrator: HR took an active role in bringing technology, legal, compliance, InfoSec, communications, change management, and business leaders together. The HR team also modeled experimentation by developing enterprise AI tools for performance-review drafting and applying AI in recruiting and other HR processes.
  • Governance with humans in the loop: Cotality uses a cross-functional AI governance committee to review AI and AI-enabled technology. Angier emphasized that humans remain responsible for consequential decisions; AI tools can support work, but are not intended to independently make decisions such as employee ratings or forced rankings.
  • Moving from adoption to workflow redesign: With adoption established, Cotality is increasingly focused on embedding AI into the flow of work. The speakers described experimentation with small, agile “tiny teams” or AI pods and how AI is compressing development cycles, reducing handoffs, and increasing the value of human judgment, problem-solving, and customer insight.
  • Leadership through the “messy middle”: Cotality acknowledged both the promise and the strain of AI transformation. Employees - particularly in engineering - are experiencing changing roles, faster work cycles, uncertainty, and fatigue. Leadership readiness and empathy will be critical as the organization moves from experimentation and efficiency toward more fundamental work redesign.

 

Resources Shared

  • The New Rules of Succession Management. Discover how leading organizations are strengthening talent pipelines, bench strength, and future leadership readiness. Download the Executive Brief
  • 2027 Next Practices Now Conference: The first speakers for i4cp Next Practices Now 2027 have been announced. Join leading CHROs and HR executives March 23–25 for i4cp’s signature vendor-free, strategic HR conference. Register by December 11 to save $300.

 

Kendra Angier, Chief Human Resources Officer, and Bethany Cooper, Vice President of Global Talent Management at Cotality offered an inside look at Cotality’s evolving approach to AI transformation - one that deliberately puts people, trust, and learning at the center. Since launching its enterprise AI journey in 2025, Cotality has paired a clear leadership vision with responsible-use policies, foundational education, cross-functional governance, adoption dashboards, peer learning, and hands-on experimentation. Angier and Cooper also described how HR has modeled adoption itself, developing AI-enabled tools and agents while helping orchestrate collaboration across technology, legal, compliance, InfoSec, communications, and the business.

i4cp cohosts Amber Burton and  Nathaniel Hudson, connected Cotality’s experience to i4cp research on future-ready organizations and change-ready cultures. Their discussion reinforced that AI transformation is not simply a technology implementation: organizations need the leadership readiness, culture, skills, trust, and organizational agility to help people adopt new tools and ultimately rethink how work gets done.

For senior HR executives, Cotality’s experience offers a practical view of what comes after initial AI adoption. The next frontier is moving beyond individual productivity gains to redesigning workflows, developing AI-native capabilities, strengthening human judgment, and equipping leaders to guide employees through uncertainty and change. The conversation is particularly relevant for HR leaders determining how their function can serve as an enterprise orchestrator of AI-powered transformation.

To ensure open discussion, this event was exclusively for HR practitioners. Vendors and consultants were not permitted to attend.