Fearlessly Rooted in Inclusion and the Future of Workforce

Nearly 400 fearless attendees showed up for The BrandLab’s (TBL) Fearless Conference 2025, seeking the annual inspiration, reset, and focus that gathering provides. In its sixteenth year, The BrandLab continues to provide a space for community and conversations that are critical for the marketing and advertising profession. True to form, TBL leadership and the nonprofit organization remain resilient as political and corporate landscapes impacting TBL’s corporate partnerships, shift to extremes not yet seen.

The BrandLab CEO Kelli Williams opened the conference by addressing these changes in the landscape and how TBL directly responded to them. TBL’s four-part pyramid saw its base level change from “equity” to “inclusion” and its mission renewed: “to open the marketing and advertising profession to all voices and perspectives.” She noted an unwavering commitment to the mission and TBL’s focus on continuing advocacy, updates in the language and way TBL is shared, and strengthening talent through early exposure to the profession, thoughtful training, and effective educational pipelines.

This year’s conference theme: The Future Workforce: Cultivating Talent for a Changing World, highlighted topics including how to build talent, confronting bias, effective internship programs, and measuring inclusivity. Trickling down from the refreshed mission, a new vision was presented: “We envision sustainable careers in inclusive workplaces for all through exposure, access, and opportunity in the marketing and advertising profession.”

Taylor Harris, TBL Board Member, emcee of the conference, ushered us into the day with a promise of quality content and fun. She reminded us of the conference intent to inspire growth mindset, which began with the day’s first panel featuring TBL alumni offering their perspectives on the future of workforce.

Alumni Panel: The Future of Workforce: Building a Strong and Inclusive Talent Pipeline

Aisha Malim, campaign specialist at VML, panel moderator, led with the question for panelists who have all held recent internships what makes an internship program truly impactful and what should companies focus on to make it great?  The conversation among Alexander V. Casiquez, student at UW-Milwaukee, Don Le, project coordinator at Rust Consulting; and Leila Pedreros, student at UMKC seamlessly flowed from there. They cited the duality of internships to gain experience and guide or even cement what it is they wanted to do (or not do) next along their career journey. All noting how early exposure to careers is huge and the best internships don’t silo the intern to a direct report, rather give access to other employees, leaders, and roles in the company.

They also elaborated on their intern experiences being elevated by mentors who fostered a sense of encouragement to ask questions and contribute, which led to interns feeling a part of the team and their ability to make a difference even in short-term internships. They got a healthy dose of corporate culture, too, for use in evaluating future job opportunities. And they appreciated the opportunities to learn new skill sets, tools, and platforms they’d otherwise not have access to; and develop networking skills while building actual relationships in workplace for future career growth.

Fireside Chat: Marketing in the Age of AI: Confronting Bias to Build Connection

On stage, the chat between Kelli Williams and invited speaker S. Craig Watkins, Exec Director and Professor, IC2 Institute, University of Texas at Austin, revealed valuable insights on responsible AI and where bias shows up. The resounding notes on this discussion is that 1 it’s no longer a question of if AI will shape the world, rather how it will; and 2 humans have an immediate and critical role in how AI unfolds.

Fear of AI was transparently acknowledged along with a healthy heavy nudge that humans need to be part of the process. The use of AI is inherent with risk. It lacks understanding that humans have for context, history, ethics, and nuances. AI can miss on tone and fact-checking, and it can apply bias humans would never intend. Dr. Watkins cited examples of AI bias causing harm or inaccuracies in predictive behaviors, all hitting home the need to use AI to expand human capacity and efficiency with an ethical compass, cultural literacy, and in skillful, strategic, and responsible ways. Think AI with guardrails.

The Leadership Panel: Effective Internship Programs: Bridging the Gap

Mananya Komorowski, Exec Social Influencer Strategist & Board Member, Angela Mears Foundation, moderator for the leadership panel, and panelists Derrius Jackson, Director of Video and Programmatic Media, Ovative Group; Jordan Grace Miller, VP of Marketing, Inspire; and Sonia Punwani, CMO and SVP of Strategy at YMCA of the North; shared how their companies approach mentorship and how they’ve recognized and addressed gaps in the internship experiences.

Derrius talked about how good mentorships and internships are rooted in values, and how they want interns to walk away with an understanding of what a good corporate culture looks and feels like. Sonia chimed in with the mentor/mentee foundational understanding that internships are a great and safe space to fail fast and learn. Jordan described in detail how frequent check-ins and building discovery into the internship process helps with onboarding and ensuring momentum during a typical 90-day internship.

Overall, internship efforts these panelists noted about their companies were about creating intern experiences that build confidence for the intern by allowing them to lead, develop skills, and explore career paths. On the flip side, employers should treat the relationship as a two-way street, seeking leaders in the company who are hungry to build leadership skills via mentoring, and lifting up the intern as one who holds a fresh and valued perspective to any client challenge.

HR Panel: Leadership and Inclusion: Shaping Inclusive Workplaces

By 1:30, the audience was just coming off an amazing lunch by Chef Jeff and ready to dive into the conversation by human resource leaders on shaping inclusive workplaces. Moderator Courtney Schroeder, Head of Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging at General Mills; and panelists Lao Sue Hang, HR Business Partner, Amazon; Nicole Lowry, HR Director, Quad; and Soon Mee Kim, EVP | Chief Inclusion and Impact Officer, Omnicom Communications Consultancy Network, touched on issues from talent retention, catching where bias shows up, and bringing your full self to work.

Directness and authenticity were hot topics with this crew, as they cross-examined language, actions, and the meaning of psychological safety and authentic self in workplace environments. Nicole expanded on psychological safety as showing up in the parameters that are safe for you. Lao talked about a people-first approach to earning trust and he, along with Soon Mee, challenged the broad, undefined concept of “bringing your authentic self to work” for many companies. Authentic self, more specifically, might mean what about your identity that you’re willing to or not willing to compromise or cover up out of fear of being judged, excluded, fired, or other negative outcomes.

The panel closed with thoughts on leadership being vulnerable and curious (Nicole), guilt and sympathy as short-term vs empathy and deep understanding of a why as long-term to move in positive direction (Courtney), flipping from imposter syndrome to imposer point of view, recognizing feelings of self-doubt are normal (Soon Mee), and a cautionary note of making assumptions as a significant pitfall (Lao).

Keynote: The Inclusion Equation

Dr. Serena Huang, AI keynote speaker and author of The Inclusion Equation, took the stage to connect the concepts of cultivating talent and measuring and creating inclusion. She noted three big ideas:
1 How Gen Z is completely redefining what matters at work,
2 Why inclusion needs to be measured, not just talked about, and
3 How AI is transforming talent pipelines (in ways that might surprise you)

Dr. Huang shared statements she’d recommend to solicit feedback from employees that go beyond the basic checkbox in a pie-in-the-sky employee survey, including their reaction to “I feel that my opinions area valued and considered in decision making,” and “During meetings, I feel comfortable speaking up and providing my perspective.” Gathering employee feedback in this way is how inclusion is measured. Dr. Huang also presented a graphic representing a powerful organizational network analysis that revealed collaboration patterns based only on gender and role, demonstrating where organizations can look for inclusion or exclusion truths and gaps to address.

She planted this firm reminder: Gen Z, currently with 50% self-identifying as non-white, won’t work for a company where the leadership team is not diverse, and mental health matters greatly to them. Dr. Huang wrapped her inspiring share with AI pathways to transform talent pipelines and discover hidden talent within existing employees.

Tend to the Roots

As the full-day conference came to a close, Kelli Williams signed off as CEO, effective end of June 2025, after three impressive years at the helm and an additional ten years prior to that as volunteer and strategic advisor. She called for attendees to complete the 2025 State of the Profession Survey, an ask consistent with year after year of driving home and measuring impact through high levels of participation from the marketing and advertising profession.

Williams cited an analogy of The BrandLab as a tree. In its landscape, the winds have been blowing and we’ve had enough rain already, but TBL is still standing, deeply rooted. She summoned attendees to continue the vision cast for TBL, walk in purpose in helping to fulfill its mission, and understand that community is essential to the tree – The BrandLab – continuing to thrive. She exited with a message to focus on the collective impact TBL work will have as everyone moves forward together, planting a seed originating from Michelle Obama, “When they go low, we go high.” A standing ovation followed, and Fearless Conference 2025 closed on a high note with optimism and the groundwork for renewed objectives firmly rooted.

--- Photos in gallery by photographer Hollie Leggett; header post photo by Jen Veralle

--- Event recap provided by Jen Veralle of Sparktrack, who covers events so event hosts and attendees can continue the event inspiration beyond the event itself. Find her on LinkedIn @jengilhoiveralle or online at sparktrack.com. The summary captures the spirit of sharing and the themes of the event in a quick or longer form digestible way so that attendees can refer to it and take action; it also allows the host to archive what was shared and build on that for future events and use in marketing promotions.