Burke Walker, Chief People Officer at Spring Venture Group

Show Notes

AI Readiness, Career Paths, and Ruthless Prioritization: Spring Venture Group’s CPO on Leading Through Change

Summary

How do you prepare people for AI, grow careers without forcing everyone into management, and reduce overwhelm in a world of endless priorities?

Burke Walker, Chief People Officer at Spring Venture Group—and veteran HR leader at Sprint, H&R Block, Applebee’s, and North American Savings Bank—shares practical playbooks for modern people leadership.

He explains why HR is a transferable craft across industries, how to demystify AI with education and trust-building, and why the direct leader is the single biggest driver of culture and engagement.

Burke details dual career paths that elevate high-impact individual contributors alongside managers, plus a simple effort-versus-impact lens for prioritizing the work that truly moves the needle.

Expect concrete, repeatable practices: company-wide AI upskilling, leadership development that equips managers to coach careers, and planning rhythms that favor doing fewer things, better.

Timestamps

[00:45] – Career journey: Sprint, H&R Block, Applebee’s, NASB, and landing at Spring Venture Group

[02:34] – What SVG does (Medicare enrollment) and why HR skills transfer across industries

[04:15] – Two big challenges: AI’s rise and the push for career progression

[05:06] – Preparing people for AI: education over fear, trust, and personal vs. enterprise tools

[09:21] – Culture starts with the direct leader: building managers who coach and communicate

[10:49] – Dual career paths: management tracks and high-impact individual contributors

[13:34] – Overwhelm at work: prioritization, effort vs. impact, and managing change load

[18:28] – Planning season tactics: quarterly resets, focus on the vital few, enhance before net-new

Takeaways

- Demystify AI: educate every employee, clarify use cases, and communicate how data and tools will be used to build trust.

- Train leaders to coach careers: invest in leadership development so managers can run effective talent and promotion conversations.

- Create dual career ladders: reward expert individual contributors as robustly as managers to keep growth non-linear and inclusive.

- Prioritize with an effort-impact lens: say no to good ideas that dilute focus; do fewer initiatives, done exceptionally well.

- Manage change saturation: limit concurrent rollouts, repeat key messages, and account for the time teams need to adopt.

- Run regular priority resets: monthly/quarterly reviews to narrow to the top 4–5 initiatives and optimize existing programs before starting new ones.

AllVoices brings all your employee relations work together in one place. No more jumping between spreadsheets, emails, and legacy systems just one place to document and manage reports, cases, investigations, and performance conversations.

It helps you run a more consistent process, takes busywork off your plate with AI, and makes it easier to spot trends early, so you can work proactively, not just put out fires.See a demo at ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.allvoices.co/

What is HR Voices?

HR Voices is a scenario-based podcast for People Leaders who’ve actually had to make the call.

Each episode brings experienced HR and People leaders into realistic, anonymized workplace scenarios—the kind you recognize immediately. Performance issues. Messy conflicts. Investigations that don’t fit neatly into a policy box. Instead of talking about their own companies, guests react to outside cases and walk through how they’d think it through in real time.

There are no right answers here. What you’ll hear is judgment: how seasoned leaders balance risk, fairness, legal reality, and humanity when the stakes are high and the path isn’t obvious.

HR Voices is for HR, People Ops, legal, and leaders who want to hear how other smart humans actually handle employee relations—without confidentiality breaches, hypotheticals that feel fake, or a lecture on “best practices.”

Emily Fenech (00:00)
Welcome to HR Voices. I'm your host, Emily Fennick. And today I get to chat with Burke Walker, who is the Chief People Officer at Spring Venture Group. Welcome, Burke. Thank you for being here.

Burke Walker (00:11)
Thank you, Emily. It's great to be here and appreciate the invite.

Emily Fenech (00:15)
Yeah,

you've got that awesome view of Kansas City there behind you and you have such an impressive Kansas City career. I was looking you up and learned that you've led people function at Sprint, H &R Block, Applebee's, North American Savings Bank, and now you're at Spring Venture. That's a lot of really well-known, really big companies. And wondered if you could tell us a little bit about you, your background, how you ended up at Spring Venture, and what you're up to as Chief People Officer there.

Burke Walker (00:44)
Yeah, yeah, happy to. Yeah, Kansas City's been home. Home since kindergarten. It's been great. Love Kansas City. Been very fortunate to work in some great organizations, great companies. So, a lot to love about Kansas City. And, you know, one of the great things about HR, I think, in general is...

I've been fortunate to be work in industries that are all different. If you think about some of the careers, it's been telecommunications, financial services, restaurant business, and now really healthcare, Medicare, and I can talk more about all that, but it's kind of been fun because HR is kind of a transferable skill set. So it's been fun to be in different industries too and to be able to learn.

Emily Fenech (01:02)
Mm-hmm.

Burke Walker (01:18)
So yeah, I started my career in HR, which, interesting enough, I never intended to be in HR. It was just one of those things where in undergrad, I had an internship at Sprint and I didn't initially do an internship with Sprint in HR. In my summer there, I got to know the HR person. The next year she said, why don't you come back as an HR intern the next summer for us? And I'm like, OK, that sounds fun with me. So I did the HR internship. And then as I finished on my undergrad, I

Debated with.

came to my desk to be a recruiter and I thought, okay, that sounds fun. And so as a recruiter, it's just taken off from there to the point I am in the role I am today as a chief people officer. So it's been an interesting career. I love it. I'm really happy with the career choice. I look forward to work.

Emily Fenech (01:51)
Yeah.

Burke Walker (02:03)
what we get to do. from that part of it, I'm really excited. Company wise, you mentioned Kansas City. It's been a great place from Sprint was huge. It now obviously T-Mobile, but it's changed, gave me a great foundation. H &R Block is a great company. Learned so much in my career, so much growth there. And then to the point I am here at Sprint Venture Group, which we do Medicare enrollment for a third party broker for Medicare enrollment.

Emily Fenech (02:04)
Okay.

Burke Walker (02:34)
So right now we're really in our busy season. This is our busy season because the annual enrollment period. But get to lead a great team here and a great organization.

Emily Fenech (02:43)
Yeah, when I was looking into Spring Venture, was like, man, I'm really lucky that Burke's talking to me right now, because I'm sure you have a lot of other things you could be doing. We just had our insurance meeting yesterday. So appreciate you being here. So when you think about what's interesting, as you mentioned, that HR is transferable, what's sort of been a common thread across all of these industries that you've worked at? Has there sort of been one or many?

Burke Walker (02:55)
Yeah.

Emily Fenech (03:07)
challenges or sort of things that you've, as you think back on your career, like people are people, right? What skill set has sort of carried you through? What's a common thread?

Burke Walker (03:18)
Well, I think one of the things that you, know, every business at the end of the day, the core is the people. I mean, the people are the core. And so it might be different skill sets, education, backgrounds, experiences you're hiring for, and who work there. But at the end of the day, employees just want nothing but a great work environment, a great culture. Career pathing is a big part of that. So a big passion of mine I really enjoy is talent.

the career life cycle of an employee and from the date that they start the recruiting process all the way through is just a passion and I find challenges and opportunities in that space. So the people are the common core behind that. Of course anytime you're leading people you always have challenges too and opportunities that come that way but it's the people at the end of the day.

Emily Fenech (04:06)
Yeah. Thinking about the past year, what has been sort of the number one challenge that you faced as a people leader?

Burke Walker (04:15)
Well, think, I mean, think there's several within that. Certainly the rise of AI is been an interesting component at the impact it has on the workplace and what it means. And I think we're just, you know, we're just starting in that phase. So I think everyone has some level of that in that involvement. What does that mean for, for people? But I also know one of the other passions is people just really want to grow their careers. What does it mean to get in there and how can I get promoted, get to the next level? How can I make more money? All those kinds of things. And so I had to try to

manage the talent workforce out of that is making sure we the right career paths, et cetera.

Emily Fenech (04:48)
Yeah, let's start with the first one. I'm curious how you or how people you admire are navigating that in terms of building a workforce that's ready for AI, that feels confident using it, that isn't afraid of it. What have you been doing with your workforce in terms of readiness?

Burke Walker (05:06)
I think a lot of it's education. think there is a lot of scariness when you hear the word AI because the most things associated with it is, AI is going to take over jobs.

The analogy, I don't know if it's completely a perfect analogy to be honest, but I think about it, know, there's so many inventions when you go back in time that people would always say, that's going to take away jobs, you know, I mean, just even the invention, you know, from a typewriter to a PC. And then the PC is like, well, we're going to have the Internet and the Internet is going to take everyone's jobs because you just won't need as much within that or whatever it might be. And I think A.I. is just another phase in that technology. People will figure out how to navigate it. They'll have to change skill sets.

But I think the number one thing is just educating yourself on AI and the various tools and resources out there and getting familiar and comfortable with it. And I think the more people can get comfortable with it, familiar with it, what it is, how we can actually aid and help your job and enhance your opportunities to be more productive, more effective in it, the better. I think if you choose to kind of ignore it and just say, oh no, I don't want to worry about AI, whatever it's going to be.

I think that's a big challenge. So I think staying educated on it, continue to enhance your skill set, and how AI can enhance your job is better. ⁓

Emily Fenech (06:18)
Yeah.

I'll add to that too, the trust factor, right? You mentioned fear, you know, people a little bit afraid of it, afraid of it taking their jobs. I was talking to Kyle Forrest at Deloitte. He does sort of like future work. And they just did a report that half of the employees who are given like enterprise tools to use to leverage AI will still use their own personal, know, LLMs and access because they don't

They don't trust their organization. They don't want them to have, they don't want them to know what their workflow is or their secret is or their prompts are. Yeah. They don't want to train the enterprise tools because of that fear that, how, what am I, why am going to use the tools you're giving me? If it's just training it to sort of like do my job, right. Which is fair, you know, sort of a fair concern. but then trust become, this is why I'm so excited for.

HR and people leaders in this moment is because now a big part of that becomes culture and trust and how, you know, yeah.

Burke Walker (07:19)
Yeah.

Yeah, how you build it. mean, think AI is one of those things. It's a scary, it's a scary thing because it just continues to progress and it no doubt is impacting jobs. So I mean, how do you kind of get the employee based understand the role of AI within there is not the end all be all and yet get comfortable with it, but understanding the nuances to it. I mean, you're exactly right. The fact that it is going to take jobs, does impact trust. You know, what information are they taking from me, et cetera? I mean, it's just that you're right.

whole world it's kind of a little scary but I think if you can educate yourself on it so you got to read you got to stay up to date on that the technology is moving so fast I think as an organization you have to be very careful in telling the story as to where you're going as an organization how AI can be utilized within there to benefit the better so I think you have to be communicated to your employees about it talking about it

For one thing we're really trying to do, we've started a little bit in this year, and 2026 is a big year for us. We're gonna educate, we've created this learning and development tool to educate everyone around the AIS.

tools that are out there today to get people familiar and comfortable with what it is and so all the employees will have an opportunity to go through that AI educational opportunity, the tools we have available today that can help them, more around just what's out there. So hopefully some of that will ease some of those tensions and fears but the reality is it's still here to stay and it's just going to be a part of our culture.

Emily Fenech (08:27)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah. The second challenge that you mentioned was career paths, career progression, right? I mean, that's common. You hear that a lot with not just people in HR, but anyone that's managing anyone this time of year, especially we'll hear, know, hey, I've been here for a certain amount of time. I'm ready for that promotion.

Sort of difficult thing for managers to navigate if they're unprepared, if they're new, if they haven't been trained to navigate those conversations. So talk me through what that challenge means to you and how you're addressing it.

Burke Walker (09:21)
Yeah, I think at the core of most things is the direct leader. mean, that's just if people, the question you get asked a lot of times is like, who owns culture? Where does it start? All those components of it. And I think the single biggest impact any employee can have in their experience, which then leads to their engagement culture, all those things, is the direct leader. And so we've tried to spend a lot of time in.

in leadership development. Leadership development programs, formal ones, individual direct coaching, that can then help them through these conversations. How do you have a talent conversation with someone? How do you have the career conversation with it? Understanding what they want, the business needs as well to go along with it. So a lot of ours is focused on the leadership development because at the end of the day, firm believer that the greatest level of experience, engagement, culture all starts with that direct leader.

So we spend a lot of time around leadership.

Emily Fenech (10:08)
for sure.

Burke Walker (10:13)
Because most people do want to grow their career and some faster than another. And so we have to be able to have answers and help coach through that. What does that look like for them to get to the next level?

Emily Fenech (10:23)
Yeah. Yeah. And also when that coaching happens is pretty important too. I think what some people have experienced or what I've heard, you know, is that you're an individual contributor. You're great at whatever it is that you do. The next step for you is management. And then you get into that role. You know what I mean? And that gets you, you don't want to learn.

Burke Walker (10:40)
Yeah.

Emily Fenech (10:43)
Experience is the best teacher, but you don't only want to learn from experience. I think it's good for organizations like yours to sort of prep people before they find themselves in the hot seat,

Burke Walker (10:49)
Yeah.

Well, for sure,

because I think it's always one of those the chicken egg egg analogy is like, well, everyone wants you got to have management experience to get into management. But until how do you get the experience unless you get into management? So you're like somewhere in there, you've got to give a little bit. and so that's why think these learning and development programs, understanding people's career paths and what they want to what they want to do, but also having paths that lead to a management path and an individual contributor path. And they can have both those paths.

Emily Fenech (10:55)
Right.

Great, great.

Burke Walker (11:18)
just really one path in my opinion, because there's some high level individual contributors that can make significant comp and certainly significant contributions to the organization that doesn't always have to go down the management path. And so I think a lot of that's just having those ongoing conversations with employees as to what they want out of their role.

Emily Fenech (11:29)
Yeah.

Burke Walker (11:35)
and what they want to get to. And some that's clearly management and those are a little bit easier and some others it may not be. And so it's the matter of just having those. So I mean we try to balance that out with formal, throughout the year, formal conversations on career paths, general talent reviews, as we talk about that ties into all those components that you would normally see, exit risk, succession planning, those kinds of components. And then also just having that interactive dialogue with the employee on what they want and how we can help achieve them.

to get there and then if they prepare themselves by trying to get better every day and what they do then you just have to have an opportunity that opens up and those two things together can help create that.

Emily Fenech (12:08)
Yeah, I admire that the non-traditional paths like things aren't so linear they don't have to be right.

Burke Walker (12:15)
I don't think they have to be and that's

I think if you do then you just kind of tie yourself into Well, we just always done it that way versus trying to get creative and we just know through the various Individuals and personalities that have come come there were the generations it's changed the way they think about it how long they think about the time they should be in a role to

side gigs to whatever else they want to do, right? There's all the generational gaps and the differences in how you think about it. So if you aren't adapting and evolving the way you think about career paths and what people really want, I think it just, you you're just not going to satisfy it or meet the need at the end of the day, I think.

Emily Fenech (12:48)
Yeah, yeah, well said. Well said. I'd love to shift it to your employees and think about the feedback loops that I'm sure you're a part of, right? What would you say your employees biggest struggle, complaint, or challenge has been? What are they thinking about as we go into the new year?

Burke Walker (13:08)
You know, think that one of biggest challenges we do engagement surveys, we try to do a left around table. We try to do all the things to have that voice of the employee. If you want to call it that, I think are really important to have that. And I think one of the biggest challenges that that I find our employees voice their opinion on is there's just so much to do. And how do you prioritize that? You know, it's kind of one those things where the analogy that the eyes are bigger than the stomach at the end of the day. And so you hear a lot of that.

Emily Fenech (13:11)
Yeah.

Burke Walker (13:34)
I just have so much to do. What's the prioritization? What are the most important things on my list to do? Because right now my list is so big. And so you'll hear that from the employees as well. How do we help prioritize those things? that I think is just always a challenge. I mean, I don't think that's unique, certainly to Spring Venture Group. I think most companies will always want to try to do more than less. And there's always really great ideas, but just not enough time or capacity to get it all done and do it well.

Emily Fenech (13:51)
Yeah.

Burke Walker (14:02)
So you have that choice of try to do more and do them all in an adequate way or try to do less and do them really well. And that's always a challenge.

Emily Fenech (14:10)
I'm a big fan of the

less.

Burke Walker (14:12)
I'm with you. hard though because you know I once I remember an old story back a previous company I worked at and we had this really great idea and me and my leader had worked really hard

this org design and we brought it to the CEO and the CEO was like, this is a great idea. We should do this tomorrow. And we're like, great, this is exciting. And then he said, but we're not going to. And you're like, wait, I thought you just said this was a great idea. And he said, because we have other things that we need to get done that we believe are a bigger priority. So although this is really good and I like it and we should eventually do it, we're just not gonna do it right now. And it was a good lesson for me of that there are really.

things out there. So someone brings you to the table of an idea that you like, you have to really, really make hard decisions on prioritization. Is this really the most important thing here? What's the level of employee and what's the level of effort to get it done? And what's the level of impact it will have in the organization? And if that's a high level of effort, a medium, low or medium level of impact, you kind of really have to push this off the side, even if they're really good.

Emily Fenech (15:06)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Burke Walker (15:15)
So I think it's

a struggle we all have, but.

Emily Fenech (15:18)
absolutely. Absolutely it is. And you reminded me of a time someone once had like a cocktail napkin drawing that was of, you know, one big bonfire, you know, and then like 10 little ones, you know, and it's like, which ones, you know, which one's gonna have the bigger impact? If you're spreading out all of your effort across trying to tend.

Burke Walker (15:33)
Yeah.

Emily Fenech (15:36)
to these 10 little miniature bonfires. Like you're never really gonna have the impact as this like tending to your one big focused effort, right? And I'm a visual person and it sounds silly, but that really stuck with me is that every time I find myself overextended or thinking about taking on something entirely new, it's like, am I just starting another little fire somewhere else that now I'm gonna have to tend to it and context switch between it? Cause that's another thing people don't think about when they're prioritizing their time is like,

It's not just the hour spent per initiative. It's also the time kind of spent getting your head right between them because you have the meetings associated with them and the tabs on your browser associated with them and the notion docs. You're just creating exponentially more, I don't know, it can get really chaotic in your brain really fast when you take it on too much. Yeah.

Burke Walker (16:28)
Well, it can. Yeah,

it can. And then the other part you often don't think about is then that once you implement those, the amount of change it puts on the people that you might be implementing that change with. Because then they have to process it too. So let alone it's on your mind, you're doing it. And then you don't always realize the level of change impact that's going to have when you roll it out.

Emily Fenech (16:38)
Right, right, right.

Burke Walker (16:49)
you start to do that task on top of it. And sometimes when you've been working on something for so long, you kind of get past that because you're like, I've been working on this for so long. But then you roll it out and you got to remember that whatever you roll out or you launch or whatever, it's new to those people. So then you've got that whole change to work through as well. And you're just piling on top of that stuff. So man.

Emily Fenech (17:05)
Yep. You're piling it on. And also you can't just

say something once. think every HR leader knows. Every manager slash HR leader knows this. Like you kind of have to say it and repeat it.

over and over again before you can really implement something, anything, whether that's to your customers, consumers, peers, like you got to really commit to it. And it's going to be hard for you to do that. it's again, try to have consistent communications on five different initiatives, people are going to, they're going to tone you out.

Burke Walker (17:35)
Yeah, no exactly. They can only handle so much

within all that but it you know it's one of those things where it's just throughout the year you set your initiatives maybe at the beginning of the year your priorities but then you know throughout the year that's just going to grow right.

find new things to do or enhance or make better so that list that you start with just does nothing usually but grow and and so you hear that I mean you hear that from employees quite a bit is to prioritization bandwidth just a lot to get done and how do you narrow that down

Emily Fenech (17:48)
Yeah.

Yeah, I'll turn that question back to you. mean, we're in planning season, right? Do you have any advice for our listeners who are probably taking on too much and are probably aware that that's what's currently happening, right? Any advice, like any frameworks or any mindset or anything that's helped you?

Burke Walker (18:28)
Yeah, I think that the big part of it is a really collaborative partnership with, you know, particularly with my HR LT team. So the leadership team in HR, when it speaks specifically about that, but even the broader HR team is really trying to keep a pulse on how they're feeling with those components of it in general. But then really coming back to the table and taking a hard look at, okay, what are we doing? And I'll come back to what is the real level of effort this would take to move the needle and the

think those two things, if you can start to outline those, really helps to kind of start to narrow some of those things down. Because again, you realize that this is going to take a lot of effort to get something done that just may not have the level of impact when you actually do it. And although it looks really great, when you start to try to break it down just a tad bit more, you start to realize, maybe that is a priority we should set off to the side and not do. And really focus on those that are going to have a significant impact. And I know every initiative we do,

or try to bring up has to come with that level of effort and level of impact explanation on it. So I think if you can pull back and spend some time really evaluating that and then periodically

for people could be monthly could be quarterly is to just take a hard look at what are all the things we have on our list to do and and really make sure we're prioritized on those and and really get to at least like whatever you can handle top four top five items and really say these are the priorities again easier said than done but ever since we as a team have really started to pull that list back because in the past we might look at that list and we just add and we just go and we don't necessarily stop and collaborate having dedicated time

to set aside to go let's really look at what we're working on and that all those other components has helped us at least.

Emily Fenech (20:04)
Yeah,

I've actually formalized it as a philosophy for our revenue team. When we talk about doing something net new, the instinct is pump the brakes. Is there something we're already doing that already has proven impact that we could optimize or squeeze more out of? We'll do that all day long before we'll start something new. know I mean? ⁓ yeah, try to really anchor.

Burke Walker (20:25)
Yeah, which is great, I think that's,

yeah, that makes a ton of sense. think when you say, we use the words enhance, but you've seen the kind of thing, is there anything we're looking to do that we can just enhance and make better versus starting new? And there's rare things out there when you say start new. mean, most things, you're not reinventing the wheel.

Emily Fenech (20:38)
Yeah.

Burke Walker (20:43)
cases you're typically you know you're just enhancing things or making it better in some cases in enhancing or making something better it can be way way better for productivity and everything else that started something totally new so but yeah

Emily Fenech (20:44)
That's right.

Yeah. Well,

it's been a great conversation. Do you have any sort of parting words of advice to our listeners?

Burke Walker (21:02)
Gosh, you know, I think there's there's a lot going on and I think at the end of the day if people can communicate well with their people and And really focus on getting back to the empathy and just how important people are in this changing world There's a lot going on politically. There's a lot going on with AI in this world. There's just a lot of change going on and

is to stay in touch with our people and connect with them at the end of the day. Empathy is one of those real good opportunities. so.

So I mean, that's some of the advice I always have, I think, and a challenging component of it. One other thing I always say is try to be a problem solver. People love to work with people that are just problem solvers. If you have an opportunity to challenge it, to do that. And so always looking for around the table people that can just help solve problems. So find the right people, surround yourself with great people, and typically great results will follow.

Emily Fenech (21:50)
That's awesome. Thank you so much, Brooke. It's been a joy talking with you today.

Burke Walker (21:54)
Well, thanks, Emily. It's been a joy to talk to you as well. So appreciate the time. All right. Thank you. You too.

Emily Fenech (21:58)
Yeah, take care.