Alan is a senior advisor to CRA | Admired Leadership clients and specializes in leadership and strategic communication. In his 34 years with the firm, he has led over 1,000 client engagements ranging from individual coaching relationships to advising on several of the world’s largest mergers, restructurings and technology deployments. His clients have included senior leaders and teams at Athenahealth, BAE Systems, B of A Merrill Lynch, Bristol Myers Squibb, Capital One, Cargill, Charles Schwab, Chubb, Comcast, Debevoise & Plimpton, Dell Technologies, Elliott Management, Fidelity, General Mills, Grainger, Hasbro, IBM, Independence Blue Cross, J & J, Kaiser Permanente, Juniper Networks, Kimberly-Clark, Levi’s, Marriott, McDonald’s, the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Meta, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, NASCAR, Novartis, Phillips 66, Prudential, State Street, Sumo Logic, TD Cowen, The Vanguard Group, Verkada and ZF Group, among others. He is one of the few advisors in his space to also work extensively in the public sector, advising leaders at multiple multilateral institutions including the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the European Investment Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the International Monetary Fund, UNICEF and the World Bank Group.

Brittany Podolak is chief people officer at athenahealth, a healthcare technology company that has been curing complexity for ambulatory practices and their patients since 1997. She leads the company’s global people strategy and serves as executive sponsor of its AI-first culture initiative, focused on ensuring that as athenahealth moves faster with AI, its people move with it, more capable, not more replaceable.Brittany’s view is straightforward: AI can process, generate and optimize. What it can’t do is wonder, build trust or make the judgment calls that matter most. Her work is about developing the human capabilities that become more valuable as AI takes on more of the routine — critical thinking, complex problem-solving and leadership that earns followership.Before athenahealth, she spent more than two decades at Dell Technologies in progressively senior HR leadership roles, guiding global businesses through growth, transformation and M&A. She holds a BBA from Southern Methodist University and an MBA from San Diego State University, and is based in Austin, Texas.