You Don’t Have an AI Problem - You Have a People Problem with Michelle Rife and Amberly Marston

What happens when the roadmap disappears, the C-suite keeps changing, and AI shows up promising to transform everything? On this episode of Transformation Realness, Kyle Lagunas sits down with Michelle Rife, longtime VP of Global Talent, and Amberly Marston, Senior Director of People Operations, to talk about what it actually takes to lead when change isn't an initiative anymore. It's the operating environment. Michelle and Amberly have been through it together: pre-IPO expectations that evaporated, multiple CEOs, rounds of layoffs, rebuilding, and the kind of constant uncertainty that forces you to rethink what good leadership actually looks like. They dig into why HR needs to stop defending the perfect plan, why throwing AI on top of broken processes just creates a faster mess, and why employee experience should be treated like a product rather than a collection of programs and platforms. They also unpack the shift from hiring for perfectly matched experience toward hiring for agility, curiosity, grit, and the ability to keep moving when the ground shifts. Because AI can change the tools, accelerate the work, and rewrite the roadmap. But the fundamentals haven't moved nearly as much as the hype would have you believe. Trust, communication, judgment, resilience, and helping people find their footing still matter. Turns out the future of HR might be a lot less about having all the answers and a lot more about knowing how to lead when nobody does. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices