The ASHHRA Podcast
The ASHHRA Podcast is the definitive audio briefing for healthcare HR leaders navigating what’s next.
Hosted by Bo Brabo and Luke Carignan, this weekly podcast explores the forces reshaping the healthcare workforce, from talent shortages and leadership burnout to data-driven HR strategy, labor relations, and policy shifts that impact care delivery.
Each episode features candid conversations with CHROs, senior executives, and industry change-makers who are solving real problems inside hospitals and health systems right now. No theory, no fluff, just practical insight from leaders in the arena.
Listeners gain clarity on complex workforce challenges, early signals on emerging trends, and grounded perspectives that help bridge strategy and people operations. Whether you lead HR for a health system, support workforce strategy, or influence organizational culture, this podcast equips you to make better decisions with confidence.
New episodes drop weekly, with timely news updates, deep-dive conversations, and forward-looking insights designed for healthcare HR leaders preparing for 2026 and beyond.
The ASHHRA Podcast
#233 - Winning Healthcare - Workforce Leaders Embrace Smart AI
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What It Actually Looks Like to Move Beyond Traditional HR
Featuring Nakesha Lopez, Chief People & Culture Officer, Advocate Health
Recorded live at Advocate Health's The Pearl innovation quarter in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Advocate Health is one of the three largest nonprofit health systems in the country — 175,000 teammates across six states. Nakesha Lopez leads the people and culture function for all of it. She started in HR because someone mentioned a job posting at Memorial Sloan Kettering. She didn't know what HR was. Twenty-five years later, she's redefining what it can be.
📍 HR's Seat at the Table Isn't Given — It's Earned Through Business Fluency Nakesha's definition of non-traditional HR starts here: the people and culture strategy cannot be separate from the organizational strategy. HR leaders must speak CFO, speak operations, speak clinical — and translate across all of it. The interpreter who removes barriers and co-creates with operational leaders before rolling anything out. Her biggest early-career mistake taught her that lesson permanently.
🤖 People-Led, AI-Enabled — Not the Other Way Around Advocate Health's AI strategy is co-led by Nakesha and the Chief AI Officer. The frame is workforce transformation, not AI transformation — because the goal is improved teammate experience, not technology deployment for its own sake. Advocate is rolling out AI literacy organization-wide: helping 175,000 teammates assess where they are in their AI maturity and build from there. If your organization is not building AI literacy now, the new grad you hire in 2027 will notice.
⚡ Work Forward: Advocate's Workforce Transformation Strategy Work Forward is Advocate's structured approach to redesigning work alongside the teammates who do it — cross-functional teams identifying workflows to improve, enabled by AI, with clear accountability for what happens to the work that goes away and the new skills required to replace it. It is not a project. It is a culture being built over multiple years.
🔎 The Takeaway for Every Healthcare HR Leader Embrace the future — but do it together. Your peers, your vendors, your frontline teammates are your co-designers. The best outcomes come from bringing different minds into the same room and letting the debate happen.
Connect with Nakesha: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nakesha-lopez-b817821
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This episode is brought to you by AP3 — the ASHHRA Preferred Partner Program.
Healthcare HR leaders are navigating rising costs, workforce shortages, and an overwhelming vendor landscape. AP3 cuts through the noise.
Managed in collaboration with Lockton and backed by ASHHRA, AP3 is a governed ecosystem of vetted, healthcare-aligned solution providers across talent acquisition, benefits administration, workforce compliance, financial wellness, and employee engagement. Every partner is rigorously vetted. Every relationship is governed. Every solution is built for healthcare.
No directories. No bidding wars. Just trusted partners proven to perform.
Visit AP3.info to learn more and get connected with a partner.