September 18-19 • Oakland Museum of California

An immersive 2-day experience for CHROs and People Leaders. Join us for a different kind of conversation about human connection, behavior, and work.

We’re in a new era

Responsive Conference is a two-day summit for HR leaders, executives, and those working within organizations to shape culture and the way work is done. 

For the past 10 years, the Responsive Org movement has been ahead of the curve in engaging with workplace trends. We debated remote work at Responsive Conference 2016, belonging at work in 2017, and the challenges of AI in 2019.

Each year, Responsive Conference assembles a community with the shared belief that purposeful work matters, and that there are ways of working together in the future that are better than those of the past. 

Responsive Conference has never been a sit-and-absorb conference. From our immersive venues, to experience design baked into the program, to the organizing team itself, Responsive Conference is an experiment in self-organization and design.

Join us at Responsive Conference 2024, where you and other changemakers will practice changing how we work.

A few of our 2024 Speakers

  • Carole Robin

    Stanford’s Interpersonal Dynamics ”Touchy Feely” course
    Author of “Connect: Building Exceptional Relationships with Family, Friends, and Colleagues”

  • Cat Bohannon

    New York Times best-sellng author of “Eve: How The Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution”

  • Roy Bahat

    Head of Bloomberg Beta
    Lecturer at the Haas School of Business

  • Pamela Larde, PhD

    Author, The Practice of Joy
    Professor of Leadership at AU

  • Joe Bengfort

    Chief Information Officer
    UCSF

  • Y-Vonne Hutchinson

    Founder & CEO
    ReadySet

  • Ellen Huet

    Journalist
    Bloomberg News

  • Tara Viswanathan

    Founder & CEO, Rupa Health

  • Sally Thornton

    CEO & Founder
    Forshay

  • Jenny Sauer-Klein

    Founder + CEO, Scaling Intimacy School of Experience Design

  • Carine Kanimba

    Human rights activist
    Daughter of Paul Rusesabagina, "Hotel Rwanda."

  • Kelli Dragovich

    Host, HR Heretics Podcast
    VP of People, Pendo.io

  • Gayle Karen Young Whyte

    Founder, Cultivating Leadership
    Chief Talent and Culture Officer, Wikimedia

  • Kate Fayh

    Talent
    OpenAI

  • Anna Binder

    Head of People
    Asana

  • Mirit Cohen

    Global Workplace Experience Programs
    Adobe

Featured Sessions

  • Cat Bohannon

    "Dinner for Primates" on Sept. 18

    Cat Bohannon

    We are thrilled to announce a special dinner and event at Responsive Conference 2024!

    📅 September 18th
    📍 The Cook and Her Farmer, Oakland
    🎤 Hosted by Cat Bohannon

    Dinner for Primates will be a participatory dinner party – equal parts dinner, science experiment, and comedy special. Hosted by Cat, the night is based on the ‘Perception’ chapter of Cat’s book, which talks about the differences in perception between the sexes.

    Attendees are going to experience what it means to be in a differently-sexed body – with an orientation towards curiosity, generosity, and playfulness. It’s all about exploring and being aware of what we are feeling.

    What does connection mean in an immersive dinner experience designed to to help you understand someone else’s perspective. Get to know your fellow attendees outside of the confines of a typical conference at a “Dinner for Primates.”

  • HR Heretics Live Podcast

    HR Heretics with Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich

    📅 September 19th
    📍 Oakland Museum of California
    🎤 Hosted by Kelli Dragovich

    Kelli has over 24 years of HR leadership experience in Global Tech companies ranging from later stage companies (Google,Yahoo!, Intuit) to earlier stage companies (Hired, GitHub, Looker, Pendo). Most recently Kelli was the Chief People Officer at Pendo and continues to be an active Advisor to Pendo.

    Kelli will be joined by her co-host Nolan Church and VP of People at Ethena, Melanie Naranjo for some real talk about the current state of HR.

  • The Power of Human Connection

    Adam "Smiley" Polwolsky

    📅 September 18th
    📍 Oakland Museum of California
    🎤 Smiley Poswolsky

    Adam "Smiley" Poswolsky is a globally-recognized expert on workplace belonging and human connection. As a keynote speaker and bestselling author, Smiley has dedicated over a decade to helping companies build a culture of belonging in today’s work environment. He says that belonging is the future of work, focusing on the importance of connection and inclusivity.

    Smiley has delivered over 600 keynotes in 25 countries, reaching 250,000 people, and his TED Talk has been viewed two million times. His work has been featured in prominent media outlets such as Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

  • How to Foster Connection in a Distributed World

    with Rebecca Port, PhD

    Rebecca Port has served as Chief People Officer of 10x Genomics since 2021 and brings over 20 years of experience in building and scaling global teams across a range of industries.

    At Responsive Conference 2024, Reema Batnagar, VP of People at Pixar, Rebecca Port, PhD, CHRO at 10x Genomics, and Samara Jaffe, Co-founder and GM at Transform, will have a conversation on the mainstage on the topic of how to foster connection in a distributed world.

    This session will explore how various organizations are addressing the challenges of building connection in a distributed work environment. Reema will share insights from Pixar, where creative collaboration is key, while Rebecca will discuss creating connections among scientists working together in labs.

    As a group, they will provide strategies for enhancing team cohesion and connection in the modern, distributed workplace.

Companies in Attendance

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Our Sponsors

Learn more about sponsoring the conference →

Some Common Questions

  • Responsive Conference is an immersive two-day event consisting of main stage talks, interactive workshops, and unconference formats designed for attendees to come together and share tactics about work.

    The conference was founded in 2016, on top of the global Responsive Org movement, to bring people from across industries together to define and share tactics for working better together.

    The Responsive Org manifesto describes a variety of tensions that every organization must balance to keep pace and thrive.

  • Responsive Conference is a two-day experience for HR leaders, executives, and those working within organizations to shape culture and the way work is done. 

    The conference brings together 250 attendees, including HR executives, founders, CEOs, and those working within organizations to impact what it feels like to work within those companies.

    Responsive Conference isn’t just a business conference. It is a learning experience where attendees come together to learn from each other and to change.

  • This is not a typical business conference. Don’t attend only sell your services or if you’re not interested to learn.

    Responsive Conference assembles a community with the shared belief that purposeful work is important, and that there are ways of working together that are better than those of the past. 

    People report walking away from Responsive Conference with the conviction that work doesn’t need to look a certain way; that there are many different ways of working. You’ll leave with renewed hope about work.

    Learn new ways of working, and from other practitioners trying to change their own companies.

  • You should attend Responsive Conference if you are interested in how other HR practitioners and cultural change agents are influencing behavior within their own startups, enterprise organizations, and SMBs.

    You should attend Responsive Conference if you, yourself, are working within an organization that is trying to undergo change or willing to experiment around the edges of what’s possible – or your company isn’t, but you are looking for how to try a new approach to work, yourself.

    Responsive Conference is a gathering of 250 practitioners who are striving to build better workplaces, and willing to put in the work, themselves, necessary to change.

    You should attend Responsive Conference if you are looking to change.

  • Responsive conference was founded in 2016 by Robin Zander on top of the global Responsive Org movement, which began in 2014

    Coming from a background ranging from management consulting to the circus –  and never having previously attended a business conference – Robin set out to create a three ring circus in the guise of a business conference.

    Choosing unique venues for the event, like the Lawrence Hall of Science in the Berkeley Hills, CA and the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, NY, Responsive Conference has been designed, from the ground up, to be an immersive experience delivering the same qualities of experience that attendees gather to discuss.

The Venue

With more than 1.9 million objects, OMCA brings together their multidisciplinary collections of art, history, and natural science, all within 110,000 square feet of gallery space and seven-acre campus.

OMCA is a leading cultural institution of the Bay Area and a resource for the research and understanding of California’s dynamic cultural and environmental heritage for visitors from the region, the state, and around the world.

Learn more about OMCA

Join us in building a better future

Don’t miss this incredible summit!