2025 JMI HR Roundtable: Strategic HR in the Age of AI

Last week, JMI Equity hosted more than 50 HR, Talent, and People leaders in Washington, D.C. for the 2025 JMI HR Roundtable. The two-day event was focused on harnessing the transformative power of AI in business and empowering HR leaders to drive adoption, readiness, and enterprise-wide change.

Attendees engaged in a mix of keynotes, breakout tracks, networking sessions, and cross-functional discussions focused on the evolving role of the HR function in an AI-enabled future. The sessions were designed to equip leaders with actionable insights and frameworks to take back to their teams.

Kicking off the event, JMI Co-Founder and Executive Chairman Harry Gruner delivered a strong call to action: AI is not a distant consideration, it is an immediate imperative. Sessions went on to frame the pace of change and the strategic opportunity for HR to lead business transformation.

Keynotes from Robin Merritt, Chief People Officer at Gainsight and Brandon Sammut, Chief People officer at Zapier offered real-world examples of how organizations are adopting AI at scale, redesigning teams, and enabling non-technical functions to drive innovation.

Later in the day, breakout sessions provided smaller-group opportunities to dive into core themes, including:

• Organizational design in the age of AI
• Preparing and structuring HR data for AI-powered people analytics
• Upskilling teams to manage and collaborate with intelligent systems

The program concluded with a cross-functional panel on how AI is actively transforming all business functions across go-to-market and product/engineering. Panelists revealed both emerging trends and the ways leading companies are leveraging AI to elevate strategic decision-making and performance.

As AI continues to redefine how we work, HR leaders have a critical role to play—not only in managing talent and change, but in shaping how organizations compete, evolve, and grow.

Thank you to all attendees, speakers, and facilitators who made this year’s HR Roundtable both thought-provoking and action-oriented.

The next roundtable will be held in San Diego on September 17-18 and will gather sales, customer success and marketing leaders for JMI’s annual Go-to-Market roundtable.