People as a business accelerator.
I’m Brad Wilkins. For almost twenty years I’ve built and run People functions the way operators run a business — instrumented, accountable, tied to revenue, valuation, and retention, from seventy-five employees to seventy-five hundred. That’s the résumé version. The fuller version is that I’ve spent those years showing up early to shifts the field called premature, and thinking about this work from angles most of it hasn’t reached yet — shaped as much by a basketball whistle, a theater degree, and two kids as by any operating model. This is where I think out loud about all of it.
Brad embodies what every business leader wants and needs, but rarely gets: a business oriented, progressive and strategic HR leader.
Marcello Mastioni — COO, Loadsmart & Altisource · Expedia, HomeAway, Vrbo
written recommendations — C-suite operators, peers, and former interns now running functions of their own.
Read them →Accelerator. Builder. Architect.
An operating function, not a support function
I run People as an operating lever tied to the numbers a board actually tracks — org design, talent, and rewards built to move valuation and retention, with the people analytics to make every decision defensible. If your people strategy can’t survive contact with a CFO, it isn’t a strategy.
Built 0-to-1. Proven at scale.
HR, Talent, and Performance infrastructure built from scratch and scaled globally — and the leaders who run it. Five former direct reports now sit in Chief People Officer seats of their own.
AI-native by design
I architect how the People function runs on AI — the cheesecloth for every workflow, a prove-the-negative default, and agents as a third column on the org chart with charters and owners. The governance line stays bright: where agents decide, where they recommend, and where a human must.
Managers. Individual contributors. Agents.
The org chart of 2018 had two columns. The org chart of 2028 has a third — agents with charters, owners, and performance expectations. You can already be an individual contributor with six direct reports, all of them agents. Someone has to draft the rules for that world: where agents decide, where they recommend, and where a human must.
On the record.
The Human Element — with Barb Bidan
Connecting people data the way industry connects sensor data — and the cheesecloth framework for AI-first work.
Listen → PodcastWe’re Not Recording — S2E12
From managing teams to measuring impact: ditching performance theater for outcomes that matter.
Listen → ForbesThe Biggest Disrupters in HR are Speed and Simplicity
An interview with Dan Schawbel on next-generation People strategy.
Read →
House, whistle, stage, storybook.
I grew up in a house that fostered more than 150 kids, run by two parents who were both CEOs — people and business were never separate subjects. Basketball referee trained by the best officials in the game, with a past NBA tryout to show for it. Children’s-book author (Let’s Go Bananas). Theater-trained, which explains more about how I lead than any certification. Dad of two in Atlanta.