The Gartner Chicago CHRO Community Executive Summit 2026 is not designed as a broad HR conference. It is a focused executive gathering built around peer conversations, Gartner insights, and the challenges CHROs are actually dealing with right now. The summit brings together Chicago CHRO Community members for a full day of immersive, peer-driven discussions and curated networking.
Taking place on October 20, 2026 at the Chicago Marriott Downtown Magnificent Mile, the summit is built around leadership agility, workforce resilience, AI adoption, organizational culture, talent strategy, and connecting workforce decisions to business outcomes.
Where CHRO Conversations Get Real
Most HR conferences talk about transformation like it is a project with a beginning and an end.
CHROs know better.
The work is continuous.
The Gartner Chicago CHRO Community Executive Summit is built around that reality, bringing senior HR leaders together to exchange real-world experiences, compare approaches, and use Gartner insights to tackle the issues shaping the function. The event is specifically designed around peer perspectives, interactive discussions, and curated one-on-one conversations.
That changes the conversation.
It moves away from generic HR theory and toward questions that are much harder.
How do you build a workforce that can adapt continuously?
How do you introduce AI without leaving people behind?
How do you turn culture into something leaders can actually observe, measure, and influence?
Those are the conversations at the center of this summit.
What to Expect at Gartner Chicago CHRO Community Executive Summit 2026?
Peer-driven keynote and breakout sessions
The summit combines keynote sessions with smaller breakout and executive boardroom discussions. Gartner says these formats allow CHRO practitioners and thought leaders to share how they are solving critical challenges while giving attendees space to discuss those problems directly with peers.
Gartner insights alongside practitioner experience
The opening keynote provides data-driven insights and field-tested best practices from a Gartner analyst, setting the context for the peer conversations that follow. That creates a useful balance between research and what leaders are actually seeing inside their organizations.
Curated peer networking
The summit includes dedicated networking time and curated one-on-one conversations with peers matched around shared priorities and interests. The emphasis is on relevance rather than simply increasing the number of introductions.
Executive boardroom conversations
The program includes several closed-format boardroom discussions focused on human-AI collaboration, workforce retention, data-driven workforce decisions, healthcare costs, and continuous organizational change.
A governing body shaping the agenda
The Chicago CHRO Community Governing Body includes AJ Brow of White Lodging, Kane Calamari of Ace Hardware, Amber Kennelly of William Blair & Company, and Melanie Tinto of Grainger. Gartner says these co-chairs shape the summit agenda to keep the content driven by CHROs, for CHROs.
Also Read: How to Design a Total Rewards Package for Employee Retention: A Strategic Guide for HR Leaders?
Key Themes Driving the 2026 Program
Change-ready leadership
The opening keynote, ‘Leadership Inflection Point — What’s Next for CHROs?,’ focuses on leadership agility, navigating organizational transitions, and building capabilities that sustain performance through persistent disruption.
Human-AI collaboration
AI is not treated as a standalone technology conversation. The ‘Rewiring the Organization for Human–AI Collaboration’ boardroom focuses on reskilling, aligning workforce and business strategy, and redesigning roles and operating models so people can work effectively alongside AI.
Workforce resilience and retention
The program looks at workforce stressors, engagement, burnout, flexible talent strategies, financial wellbeing, and retention. The emphasis is on building resilience as an organizational capability rather than treating it as a collection of isolated employee programs.
Culture that performs
The featured session ‘Culture That Performs While Strengthening Humanity’ examines how cultural ambition translates into leadership behavior and talent decisions. It also looks at accountability, candor, compassion, and the connection between culture and business performance.
Workforce decisions and business outcomes
Another boardroom brings CFO and CHRO perspectives together to examine how workforce investments can connect more directly to measurable business results. A separate session focuses on using verified workforce and market data to inform hiring, skills, and investment decisions.
AI-native HR operating models
The program also tackles agentic AI in HR. One keynote looks at the problem of fragmented AI agents across HR applications and the governance, data, and process conditions required before agents can move from answering questions to executing work.
Featured Speakers and Industry Voices
The summit brings together senior HR executives and business leaders who are actively working through these challenges. Some of the featured speakers include
- Lilicia Bailey – SVP & CPO, CommonSpirit Health
- Kane Calamari – SVP & CHRO, Ace Hardware
- Melanie Tinto – CHRO, Grainger
- Mark Salisbury – CHRO, North America, Transdev
- Henry Artalejo – SVP, Global HR, Griffith Foods
Check out the full speaker list here: http://evanta.com/chro/chicago/chicago-chro-executive-summit-9276
The Gartner Chicago CHRO Experience
This is not designed as a watch-and-leave event.
The summit moves attendees through keynote sessions, executive boardrooms, breakouts, networking breaks, peer-to-peer meetings, and a closing Governing Body Reception. The format gives senior HR leaders several ways to engage with the same issue, from analyst context to peer experience to smaller working discussions.
The structure also makes the peer layer central to the experience. Gartner says curated one-on-one conversations are matched based on shared priorities and interests, while the Governing Body helps shape an agenda that reflects what CHROs are actually dealing with.
That is what gives the event its character.
Less stage time for the sake of stage time.
More room for leaders to compare notes, challenge assumptions, and take useful ideas back into the organization.
Why Gartner Chicago CHRO Community Executive Summit 2026 Matters
The CHRO role is being pulled into the middle of several major changes at once.
AI is reshaping work. Workforce expectations are changing. Leadership models are being tested. Culture needs to support performance while retaining its human side. And HR leaders are increasingly expected to connect people decisions with financial and business outcomes.
This summit is built around those realities.
Attendees walk away with Gartner-backed perspectives, practical peer insights, conversations around AI and workforce transformation, and a stronger understanding of how other CHROs are approaching resilience, culture, leadership, and business alignment.
The real value is not another list of HR trends.
It is seeing how experienced leaders are turning those trends into decisions.
👉 Discover more at www.evanta.com/chro/chicago/chicago-chro-executive-summit-9276
