Christina Schelling

Christina Schelling is a highly influential and inspiring executive known for her ability to build and deliver people strategies that drive innovation, embrace new technology, and harness the power of a strong corporate culture. Early in her career, she served as a Leadership Analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency, where she gained a unique perspective that now informs her approach as a talent and culture expert. Christina blends the art and science of human capital management and has become a trusted advisor to multiple Fortune 100 CEOs, C-suites, and boards across various industries. Currently, Christina serves as the Chief Talent and Diversity Officer at Verizon, a $140 billion telecommunications company. In this role, she leads a team of over 1,000 HR professionals, integrating data science, AI, and emerging technology to modernize the way the company attracts, engages, develops, rewards, and inspires its 120,000 employees, known as VTeamers. As a natural systems thinker and AI adopter, Christina pioneered a skills strategy powered by AI and machine learning to unlock internal mobility and create personalized career development paths for retail, corporate, and customer service employees. Christina anticipated leadership transitions at Verizon by introducing an industry-leading approach to succession planning. By leveraging AI and data science, she compared the skills, experiences, and qualifications of Verizon’s top executives with those of their peers and competitors. This approach not only built a richer leadership pipeline but also solved capability gaps and created a competitive advantage for the company. Her innovative "poachability" study helped Verizon understand the attractiveness and attrition risk of key successors, guiding financial incentives and retention measures. As a result, she supported strategic seat changes for eight of the nine direct reports to the CEO, offering a mix of developmental rotations, internal promotions, and external hires. In addition to these achievements, Christina has played a significant role in evolving Verizon’s corporate culture and aligning it with the company’s growth strategy. She introduced a new performance management system that increased differentiation in evaluations, redefined success measures, and provided more targeted compensation guidance. This shift raised expectations, motivated employees, and better rewarded performance. Christina also co-authored Verizon’s new culture operating system and helped launch a new brand purpose and set of principles, engaging employees, customers, community partners, and shareholders more effectively. Before joining Verizon, Christina was the Senior Vice President of Human Resources at The Estee Lauder Companies, where she managed through the COVID-19 crisis. She was responsible for the global return-to-office strategy for more than 80,000 employees across over 80 countries and oversaw $650 million in real estate operations. Prior to her time at Estee Lauder, Christina spent six years at Prudential Financial and seven years at American Express in various HR leadership roles. Her responsibilities included managing large-scale business transformations and global reorganizations, CEO and C-suite succession planning, and implementing forward-thinking talent and diversity programs. At both companies, Christina reinvented the Business Partner role to advance people and culture strategies in partnership with executive teams. Widely recognized for her expertise in talent management and culture, Christina has been featured in media outlets such as CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, and The Economist. In 2023, she received the prestigious Diversity Woman Latina Pioneer Award for her contributions to advancing diversity in the workplace. Passionate about education and inclusion, Christina serves on the Advisory Board for KIPP Charter Schools. Christina holds a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of Massachusetts and a master’s degree in Organizational Development from George Washington University.