May 1, 2026 – Manager Method Ashley Herd and Suffering Dr Suzan Song

Ashley Herd – Founder of Manager Method and Author of The Manager Method: A Practical Framework to Lead, Support, and Get Results If you walk out of a situation at work and all you’ve accomplished is jamming it down someone’s throat that you’re right, no matter whether you are or not, that’s likely going to impact the way that person works for the rest of the day. Ashley Herd is the Founder of Manager Method and the author of The Manager Method: A Practical Framework to Lead, Support, and Get Results. She is a former Head of HR for North America at McKinsey & Company and an employment attorney who began her career at Ogletree Deakins. Across her career in law, legal, and HR leadership roles at organizations including Yum! Brands, Ashley has worked with everyone from frontline restaurant managers to senior consultants, giving her a rare, ground level and executive view of what actually works in management. Ashley is known for her practical approach to leadership, shaped by years of seeing preventable workplace issues escalate simply because managers were never taught how to handle real situations. She has built a large following of more than 500,000 professionals by sharing clear, actionable guidance on hiring, feedback, performance management, and employee relations. Her work focuses on closing the gap between what companies expect from managers and what managers are actually trained to do. Through Manager Method, Ashley created a modern training system that combines on demand learning with live, HR led cohorts, allowing organizations to scale consistent, real world management training without relying on one time workshops that fail to stick. Her framework emphasizes scenario based learning so managers can practice high stakes conversations before they happen, improving both performance and workplace culture. Dr Suzan Song – Author of Why We Suffer and How We Heal: Using Narrative, Ritual, and Purpose to Flourish Through Life’s Challenges Purpose is something that has meaning that’s outside of oneself Dr Suzan Song is a Harvard and Stanford-trained psychiatrist, medical anthropologist and humanitarian mental health adviser. For more than two decades, she has dedicated her work on building resilience in individuals and communities affected by adversity – from everyday struggles to the world’s most challenging environments of war and human trafficking. Dr Song has advised the United Nations, multiple U.S. federal agencies and Ministries of Health, shaping systems of care for children and families in crisis to bridge clinical innovation with systems reform and localized approaches. She has a private practice in Washington D.C., is a professor of psychiatry at George Washington University and a sought-after speaker on leadership resilience, systems change and the science of healing. Her mission is to bridge clinical reality and systemic change, bringing the lessons of human survival into leadership, policy and programmes that can transform lives at scale.