Building People Experiences That Bring Culture to Life

Session Time: 11:00 am — 12:00 pm

Speaker: Amber Ushka, CEO, Verte Square, LLC

Session Description: Many have said that culture east strategy for breakfast. Culture, however, continues to be an elusive term for people to define, build and nurture. This session will suggest that culture is, in itself, built from a set of experiences anchored in purpose, identity, and practice. These experiences are created through all phases of the employee lifecycle and can be leveraged and compounded, throughout all levels of the organization to create an ethos that is equal parts aspiration and action. Through the definition of an experience chain and its components, one can design experiences at every phase of the employee lifecycle that will connect, engage and empower individuals, teams, and leaders. Participants will walk away with ideas, approaches, tools, and information to make lasting, meaningful change in their company environment that resonates with employees, regardless of level.

• Core Competency #1: Relationship Management

• Core Competency #2: Communication

Speaker Bio:
To say Amber Ushka is passionate about HR is an understatement of epic proportions. After fifteen years in sales and marketing leadership roles, she went to what many call the “dark side” and has spent the last twelve building and delivering exceptional people experiences. HR is a place where her talents come together to solve real-time business problems. Great HR business partners are the connective tissue of an organization and can drive meaningful transformation. She has held HR leadership roles at Microsoft, Getty Images and Deltek and is CEO of her six-year-old consulting firm helping companies discover, engage and empower their most important business resource - people. Her vision of an evolved HR spurs the work she does with clients to build powerful talent attraction and acquisition strategies, culture models and change agency for healthy cultures and talent management programs which connect the dots for employees. Her up-front, engaging style and common sense approach make her a sought after speaker; you may have seen her at Seattle SHRM, LWHRA and SMA events throughout Seattle. A California native, she now calls Bellevue home where she loves to spend time entertaining and cooking for her husband and family which includes four sons and a freshly-minted daughter-in-law.