By TAP Network
What a day! Thank you to everyone who joined us at Tech Talent North—people leaders, talent practitioners, founders, speakers, and sponsors in tech made this year’s conference an incredible day of learning and connection. Across every session, one theme rang true: in times of significant change, trust and human-centered leadership are the foundation and performance multipliers. Here are the moments and takeaways our community is still talking about—and why they matter for People and Culture leaders now.
1. Leading in chaos. In his opening keynote, Fahd Alhattab (Unicorn Labs) reframed chaos as opportunity: a time to explore, adapt, and build unstoppable teams.
Stand-out points:
- You can’t out-policy a bad culture…or bad leadership.
- In today’s business climate: “It’s always on fire. Embrace the fire, use the fire”.
- In chaos, culture becomes your competitive advantage.
- Ask yourself / your team: what will still be true 10 years from now? Anchor there, then keep moving.
2. Keep culture intact through layoffs and leadership changes. Tina Lai (Kabam), Tara Ataya (Hootsuite), and Shannon Archambault (IFS Copperleaf), in conversation with Shawn Hewat (Wavy), pulled back the curtain on culture amid layoffs and acquisitions. The through line: lead with trust and exit people with as much dignity as you onboard them. When it comes to influence, “culture is the sum of your last 100 interactions”. Values aren’t for posters—they’re lived behaviours, especially in hard moments.
3. Change management for high-velocity teams. Curt Sellers (Sophos) distilled change management into a simple truth: “When [HR] does it right, we’re invisible.” The real work lives with frontline managers, not just at the executive table.
4. Change moves fast—trust makes strategy stick. In an afternoon keynote, Julie Currie (Global HR Exec & Advisor) defined true competitive advantage: “In times of change, people don’t follow strategy. They follow leaders they trust.” As the pace of change accelerates, the strategic question is: how do you build trust and make it last?
Key takeaways:
- You won’t have all the answers—so provide clarity over certainty.
- Communicate what you know when you know it.
- Lean into tension; that’s where trust can grow.
- When you can’t share in advance, have tools of repair to rebuild trust afterward.
5. AI adoption: fix the “why” before the “what”. Rocky Ozaki (The NoW of Work) named what many are feeling. AI adoption is broken when it’s tool-first, governance-light, and vanity-driven. Don’t impose AI—you’ll trigger an “immune reaction”. Start with problems worth solving, understand organizational readiness, set objective metrics, and keep the human at the centre.
6. Leverage AI for performance. In a candid, practical discussion, Wendy Pat Fong (Microsoft), Christopher Yeh (Clio), and Moderator, Laurie Murdoch (Sony Pictures), discussed human-centered AI in practice, illustrating what it looks like in the real world.
Their practical advice:
- Live your core values and favour bottom-up, opt-in adoption for AI.
- Define the processes and problems that truly need improvement and keep people at the center to remain accountable for outcomes.
- Automate repetitive tasks while focusing human energy on compassion and connection.
- Build a skills strategy for upskilling, reskilling, and redeployment.
- Establish governance early with clear AI principles and transparency to build a stronger foundation.
7. Hiring fraud is here—and growing. Timothy Khoo-Jones (Hillspire LLC) sounded a necessary alarm: it’s likely that 40% of applicants you see aren’t who they say they are. He mapped four fraud levels—from resume enhancement to infiltration—and showed how quickly synthetic identities can be created (“two fake LinkedIn headshots in 10 minutes”). Call to action: design for “proof of personhood”.
8. Humanoids in the org chart. Conference Chair, Lewisa Anciano, and Ben Nyland (Sanctuary AI) demystified “physical AI”—robots working alongside humans.
The takeaways:
- Robots replace tasks, not people.
- Don’t blindly trust or distrust the tech; evaluate the people building and deploying it.
- Give teams freedom to experiment so they can discover better ways to work.
What we’re taking forward
This year’s TTN Conference reminded us that technology doesn’t transform organizations—people do. Trust scales and sustains change. Clarity beats certainty. Culture is built (or broken) in everyday interactions and behaviours. And when the world feels “always on fire,” the leaders who lean in, listen hard, and act with integrity will build teams that are truly unstoppable and resilient.
Let’s keep the conversation going. Share your biggest takeaways—tell us what you’ve learned, what you’ll explore next, and what you’ve implemented. Watch this space for more TAP Network resources to help you turn insight into action.
There were so many more insights from Tech Talent North last week. Thank you to all of our speakers and community for bringing courage, candor, and practical playbooks: Lewisa Anciano, Tina Lai, Tara Ataya, Shannon Archambault, Shawn Hewat, Ben Nyland, Julie Currie, Rocky Ozaki, Fahd Alhattab, Timothy Khoo-Jones, Wendy Pat Fong, Christopher Yeh, Laurie Murdoch, Vimal Patel, Steve Crozier, Tyler Cheyne, Claudia Ivanova, Matthew Heiydt, Liz Elliott, Jennifer Kwong, Simran Bahia, Paul Callaghan, Joyce Hung, Jordan Michaux, Justin Wong, Fiona Ho, and Curt Sellers.
Community Connections
Although we love all of the learning and insights at Tech Talent North, the best part is the people we meet and the community we build.
“Last year, I felt like a stranger walking into a sea of name tags. This year, I found myself bumping into familiar faces and catching up with folks I’d met along the way. It reminded me that our local tech community is full of kind, generous, and genuinely supportive people….That’s what I’ll remember most: the ideas, the laughter, and the people who make it all worth coming back for.” – Linda Wong
“I walked away from the Tech Talent North event thinking less about the tools, and more about the people who use them. HR professionals are doing hard, essential work in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous time…Conferences like this are a reminder of how vibrant the local tech ecosystem in Vancouver is.” – Hanna Flostrand
“After a full day of sessions at TAP Network’s Tech Talent North on leadership, culture, and AI, one takeaway stands out: tools don’t transform companies, people do. All the AI in the world won’t help achieve business goals if your teams don’t trust it or feel empowered to use it.” – Kaitlin Graves
About TAP Network
TAP Network is a unique nonprofit peer network for People and Culture professionals in Canada’s tech sector to share their learnings and best practices. Members have access to a complete ecosystem of tech-specific data, community, resources, and advocacy to accelerate their success and simplify their work.
About Tech Talent North – Canada’s Conference for People & Culture in Tech
Since 2002, Tech Talent North, hosted by TAP Network, has been the must-attend event for senior HR and People & Culture leaders in tech.
As AI and evolving skillsets redefine the workplace, CHROs and People leaders are being called to drive transformation. TTN is where strategy meets action—with real-world insights to move your people and your business forward.
