Meetup Details

Meetup Name: Philadelphia People Analytics Meetup

Location: Philadelphia, USA

Meetup Organisers: @Joe Grohovsky, Mike Guglielmo, Fiona Jamison, MacKenzie Breinlinger

Inaugural Meetup: April 2020

Meetup URL: Please click here

Tell us a bit about yourselves. Who are you and what do you do? 

• Joe Grohovsky  – Sales Director, One Model.  Joe provides guidance on leveraging data, technology, and artificial intelligence to provide insight into an organization’s workforce. Customers found this especially valuable as COVID forced their business and jobs to be redefined.
• Mike Guglielmo – Academic Director, Temple University.  After 40 years of Fortune 500 experience Mike now drives the Global Executive MBA program for the Fox School of Business. In pre-COVID times he has instructed in Colombia, Tokyo, Paris, and Singapore.
• Fiona Jamison – CEO, Spring International.  Fiona leads a full-service research and consulting firm that provides expertise in consumer, employee, and stakeholder research to Fortune 500 companies. Her findings help companies become best places to work and employers of choice for high potential talent. 
• MacKenzie Breinlinger – Organizational Development Partner, Qurate Retail Group.  MacKenzie helps structure an effective workforce/business alignment for a conglomerate of diverse businesses.  Her work empowers employees who deliver experiences and communities for millions of discerning shoppers.

Tell us a bit about your community. When did it start? What makes it awesome? 

The Philadelphia People Analytics Meetup held our first session in April 2020.  Our stated goal was to provide an environment where knowledge sharing, networking, and mentorship could occur for those who are interested in this field.  As founders, we are delighted to point out that in every Meetup held not only have we exceeded our attendance goals, but a healthy percentage of those participants were students and newcomers to People Analytics.

Why do people attend your meetup? What do you hope your community gets out of the sessions?

Using a team of meetup organizers instead of a single person provides significant benefits.  The most obvious is sharing the workload both in planning our sessions as well as working together during our meetup to provide a high-quality experience for participants.  Each founder brings a different background and perspective to our community.  This is important because People Analytics does not exist in a vacuum; it requires budgets, people, technology, and internal champions within each organization. These realities can be daunting to new People Analytic professionals, and the Philadelphia Meetup chapter strives to provide real world guidance on how others have overcome various challenges.  Our participants regularly include professionals from corporations, academia, consulting firms and students who all eagerly take advantage of learning, sharing ideas, and networking.

Why do you think other people should start running their own HR and people analytics meetups?
If you do not have a People Analytics Meetup chapter in your city, we would encourage you to begin one.  There is a strong sense of camaraderie and support within the People Analytics community to make this an attainable goal.  You will find plenty of guidance, documentation, and available speakers to help you launch.  We are fans of the team approach toward managing Meetups and would gladly answer any questions you may have about beginning your own chapter.

Philadelphia People Analytic Meetups have been virtual due to COVID restrictions.  This allows us to open participation to people around the world.  Our January 2021 presentation had participants from 12 US States and 2 from EMEA.  Please feel free to register and attend any upcoming event if you find the topic interesting.