From Dirt Floors to Boardrooms: What a Career in HR Taught Me About Leading the Future of AI
My career has taken me from drinking tea with community outreach workers on dirt floors in India, to managing indigenous, Quechua-speaking motor fleet and facilities workers in Bolivia, to boardrooms in San Diego, Washington, D.C., and New York. Across continents, crises, and cultures, one truth has remained constant: HR is a career of expansive reality, regardless of the title we have been given.
My first role in this field was “Personnel Officer” for the USG. Later, I held several Human Resources roles in for-profit settings, and most recently, I’ve been a functional leader in the People & Culture department for a global nonprofit organization. The terminology has evolved because it has never fully captured the work. Our work has always been bigger than the label. It has always been about people: their growth, their wellbeing, their potential, and the collective impact they can generate when they are able to thrive inside complex organizations.
In the international development and humanitarian aid sector, where I spent most of my career, a “COVID-level crisis” is not a once-in-a-lifetime event; it is a Tuesday. Whether it is an Ebola outbreak, a war, a natural disaster, famine, or another crisis that puts vulnerable people in harm’s way, the organizational response becomes an all-hands-on-deck effort. The organization, and the people in need we are trying to reach, cannot afford for HR to be a reactive, back-office function. We must be strategic and proactive, agile and innovative. Partnering with, and in some cases leading, the technical and programmatic teams is what makes achieving the mission possible.
That is the part of our work that is not always seen. HR is the connective tissue of the entire organization, the mycelial network beneath the forest floor. Unseen, but essential. We speak the language of every business unit. We sense misalignment before it becomes visible. We know when a region is struggling, when a leader is out of sync, and when a team is carrying emotional weight they cannot yet name. We see the human cost of business done poorly, and we are the ones who help clean up the mess when it goes wrong.
And we do all of this while holding the human center: the psychological safety, wellbeing, and value of the people who make achieving business objectives possible. That emotional labor is real. It is quiet. And it often has a long incubation period.
Earlier in my career, I inherited an HR department that was transactional and mistrusted. Over time, I rebuilt it into a strategic, sought-after partner. Years later, an alum from that organization told me, “People stopped thinking about leaving. They started enjoying their jobs again.” Stability grew. Careers grew. Some of those junior program assistants are COOs and CEOs today. That is the long arc of HR’s impact, the kind that rarely shows up on dashboards but changes the trajectory of lives and businesses.
Which brings me to this moment we are all standing in.
AI is here. It is accelerating and there is real fear around AI. People, ourselves included, are worried about what it means for their work, their identity, their security, and their sense of value. That anxiety is natural. And while fear may be human, it cannot be the driver. So, what do we do? What gives me comfort is knowing we do not have to navigate this moment alone. Building community is one of our greatest strengths; within our teams, across our organizations, and throughout our profession. We can lean on that strength now as we prepare ourselves to guide our organizations through this change with compassion and clarity.
Where does that leave us; what becomes of our profession? A.I. will undoubtedly reshape our work, but it should not change the core of our profession. This has always been, and must always remain, a people-oriented field. Everything else is just enablement.
That is why it is more important than ever that People & Culture leaders lead, rather than react to, the integration of AI. We cannot afford a misstep in this moment or let others define it for us. Having benefited from those who grew the profession from the Personnel era to the People & Culture era, our job now is to shepherd the human center of our work into the age of AI. You may not be an expert in the technology of AI, but you are an expert in the people in your organization and how to help them adapt to change.
Future generations of HR professionals, and the employees and leaders they will serve, are counting on us to get this right. Our responsibility is clear: use AI to strengthen the human center, not weaken it. Use AI to elevate people, not replace them. Use AI to enable the business to grow through people. Because if HR does not lead this moment, someone else will - and the future of work will be shaped without the very perspective it needs most: Ours.
Susan Bersonis a global People & Culture leader with 20+ years of experience in talent management, culture transformation, and organizational effectiveness. She is the founder of GROW Coaching & Consulting, a practice built around Purpose, Process and People - and is known for building talent infrastructure from the ground up, leading complex enterprise-wide initiatives, and cultivating the authentic relationships that make change actually stick. Susan brings both strategic clarity and relational intelligence to her work, with deep expertise across the full employee lifecycle, P&C strategy, and organizational design. She is passionate about the intersection of people and business outcomes - and equally passionate about paying that forward.
