Kate Kemp, Chief People Officer at Restaurant 365

Show Notes

Episode Summary

What does it take to build an AI-native HR culture?

In this episode of HR Voices, host Emily Fenech sits down with Kate Kemp, Chief People Officer at Restaurant365 the platform powering operations for major brands like McDonald’s, Taco Bell, and Wendy’s.

With past HR leadership roles at DocuSign and Airbnb, Kate brings a wealth of experience in people strategy at high-growth tech companies.

Kate shares how she’s preparing her teams for 2026 and beyond, emphasizing AI adoption, continuous learning, and a culture of curiosity over fear.

From implementing department-specific AI champions to launching hackathons that encourage cross-functional collaboration, Kate’s approach blends empowerment, experimentation, and empathy.

Whether you're just starting to explore AI or leading transformation at scale, this episode offers practical strategies for fostering a resilient, forward-thinking HR function.

Timestamps

• [00:45] – Meet Kate Kemp and her journey from Airbnb and DocuSign to Restaurant365

• [02:45] – Why embracing rapid change is the new HR superpower

• [04:42] – Building a growth mindset culture amid AI disruption

• [06:37] – Gamifying AI learning: empowering teams to pitch tools and test ideas

• [08:22] – Transforming recruiters into AI-savvy innovators

• [10:40] – The Champions Council: Scaling AI adoption across departments

• [12:45] – Designing “always-on” AI learning to avoid one-off training pitfalls

• [14:43] – Advice for HR leaders feeling behind on AI: start small, stay curious

Takeaways

• Foster a growth mindset by modeling curiosity and optimism around change

• Create AI champions to decentralize innovation and build internal expertise

• Encourage experimentation by inviting teams to test tools and pitch use cases

• Gamify learning to make AI adoption engaging, not overwhelming

• Build cross-functional alignment through collaborative forums and open dialogue

• Normalize the learning curve—no one’s “behind” if they’re paying attention and staying open

  
  

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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.

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Emily Fenech (00:35)
Welcome to HR Voices. I'm your host, Emily Finick, and today I get to chat with Kate Kemp, the Chief People Officer at Restaurant 365. Welcome, Kate.

Kate Kemp (00:45)
Hi, thanks so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Emily Fenech (00:47)
Yeah, we're so glad you're here. So Kate, Restaurant 365 is an all-in-one platform for restaurant management. It's trusted by Burger King, Taco Bell, KFC, Wendy's, McDonald's. It seems like most every major franchisee restaurant chain is running their business on your platform. And before that, you held HR leadership positions at DocuSign and Airbnb. So can you tell us what it's like being you and what it's like to lead people strategy at these huge...

rapidly scaling tech companies.

Kate Kemp (01:19)
Hi, that's a great question. So what it's like being me, I'd say there's never a dull day. And I think that's all of us, right? It's been such a fun journey and getting to work alongside with and for really brilliant, passionate people, I think is what makes the work that we do so fulfilling. And all of us are really here to solve problems for our employees who then support and solve problems for our customers. And to me, that's super powerful.

is being able to sort of unlock things for people via your work that removes friction in their day to day and helps them enjoy what they're doing and be better at their jobs so that they can in turn turn around and support customers and build products that people love and really bring joy and ease to people's lives in the broader community. So super fulfilling and never a dull day, as I said, never the same.

Emily Fenech (02:06)
Mm-hmm.

⁓

Right. That's a common thread with the HR leaders I speak to.

Kate Kemp (02:14)
Yeah. Yeah. You can always

be surprised, which is, which is fun, frankly, right? Yep.

Emily Fenech (02:19)
Yeah, I was

foolish enough to ask on one episode, like, what's your average day like? And they're like, that doesn't exist.

Kate Kemp (02:25)
Yeah, it doesn't. And

if it does, you're like, uh-oh, what's coming? Uh-oh, totally. Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah. You run, not walk to find out where's the quiet coming from. You got it. Yep, that's right.

Emily Fenech (02:28)
Yeah, it's like when a toddler goes quiet or something, you

Yeah.

Well, we're all starting 2026 planning, which I can't believe 2025 is wrapping up. And I just curious what's on your mind and what is the biggest challenge that your people and, you know, your employees, what's the biggest challenge you personally are facing and that your employees are facing as we roll into the new year.

Kate Kemp (02:45)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it's a great question. I think 2026 is a really interesting mashup of a couple of things. One, I think, is AI. And obviously, that's been part of the narrative for some time. And it's ramping up. And it's amping up. And there is such a mix of idea and concept and reality and practice around it. And I think we, in our line of work, have such an amazing opportunity because change is constant.

And really it's coming at us faster than it ever has before. So the folks who are really thriving in the age of AI are the ones who are looking at each of these shifts, not as really as disruption, as much as an opportunity. And I think I'm very fortunate to get to work alongside folks in an organization where there's a high tolerance for change and people view it as an exciting way to sort of level up in their roles and to test and iterate and fail fast.

really be more impactful using a lot of the resources that are coming via AI. But I'd say that constant of change is a really key part of building a healthy culture. And I'd say it starts at the individual level, right? How do we support a growth mindset within ourselves, for our teams, for the organization? Because really in the world today, all of the shifts that are happening, there's global shifts, the world is kind of crazy, AI is coming, constant innovation. can't...

just survive in change, you really have to embrace it. And so to me, it's fundamentally both a challenge and opportunity that the pace of change is accelerating. And so our opportunity to like learn and grow with it and have a really fun time while we stretch ourselves is that much faster as well.

Emily Fenech (04:31)
Yeah. So how are you supporting people to ensure that they are maintaining that growth mindset and they are embracing it? Is there any sort of programs or things that you're doing as a people leader to help with the change management?

Kate Kemp (04:42)
Great question. Yeah.

I mean, look, I think we're all of us are being asked not only to evolve what we're doing, but how we're doing it. And it's, it can feel sort of relentless, right? And so to your point, it's starting with ourselves and really making sure that we show up with the right energy, mindset, behaviors, and we really create an incredible experience for employees because we are sort of.

change agents and we're facing employees every day in our line of work. And so I think as long as employees see that from us and we ourselves are taking care of monitoring and investing in AI as sort of becoming AI native as a people team and function, employees are seeing that they feel supported and then they can show up at their best and sort of be modeling the same behaviors. I think it's HR, I think it's leaders as well, right? Where we're really leaders are embracing the change. They're

positioning as an opportunity, they are leaning into it and testing and iterating. And then really that enables us again to just solve problems, delight customers, drive innovation all at once.

Emily Fenech (05:41)
Yeah. So my next question was going to be, you know, what trend is impacting your team? It sounds like AI, just like AI. ⁓

Kate Kemp (05:47)
AI,

yeah, I think there's AI. And then I also just think with AI comes this expectation around efficiency, right? We're asking folks to kind of level up. And I think how we think about doing so with a lot of empathy, with a lot of clarity, great context setting, giving people the opportunity to grow, right? And encouraging it in really supported way.

And also being clear. And I think we're all trying to get more efficient. We're all trying to get lean. We don't want to be doing that from a place of fear. And so to me, it's enabling that transition, right? While holding a high bar and continuing to hold a high bar to motivate people and make use of the carrot versus stick in a time of change is super important, right? So that people are leaning, not leaning into it out of necessity, but a desire to change and grow.

Emily Fenech (06:25)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's awesome. Heather, you mentioned having like modeling it, the leadership team modeling it, the HR team itself becoming AI native. Is there any sort of people processes that you've had some success with automation or AI that you're excited about?

Kate Kemp (06:37)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, honestly, the use cases are endless. And for anyone who uses LinkedIn, I think every day you get a pitch for a new product or a new tool or a new system. so what our team has been doing is taking the calls and it's been fun because you learn a lot about the landscape really quickly. And we've also been encouraging people to go out and test things and almost pitch, right? To go out and find use cases for their roles, find use cases for.

Emily Fenech (06:47)
Thank

Kate Kemp (07:10)
specific bodies of work and come back and pitch that and think about how it fits into our workflows, into our tech stack. And then we kind of have collaborative conversations where we're encouraging the testing and we're encouraging the research. And it puts people in the chair of figuring out how to make their jobs easier, make the work that they're doing more efficient, and really then get them excited and engaged around using and deploying the things that we opt into.

And it keeps it top of mind, right? Because we're almost like gamifying it and making it a fun exploratory mission instead of a mandate, right? And so it just kind of pivots it. And again, then people find personalized ways to really use and deploy AI in their roles and making sure then that it's part of a collective conversation and that it's very cohesive in terms of supporting the employee experience. But people get jazzed instead of being told what to do and how to do it. They instead are like,

Emily Fenech (07:45)
Yeah.

Kate Kemp (08:05)
finding these eureka moments, whether it's in TA or in data analytics or really learning and experience, just, people get excited because they're getting to deliver value themselves.

Emily Fenech (08:17)
Yeah. And you're building like more savvy tech buyers in that process too. Cause I think if you encourage people to, I'm on the tech side of the house. And I think what we hear sometimes is a head scratcher of, know, you know, promises that have been made, you know, of what AI can and cannot do. And I think that you just get a real good meter of, yeah.

Kate Kemp (08:22)
Great point. Totally. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Barometer, totally. Yes,

yes. Yeah, and you also get like, you get, I mean, you're turning people who have been recruiters for 30 years into like AI savants, right? Or aspiring AI savants, right? Where they're like so excited to find a way to screen candidates this much more efficiently and they're like coming back and selling at them, you know what I mean? And so like just the passion around like how people think about their professional experience and like.

making that better with tools is just, I think it's like super rewarding and motivating to people, right? Cause who doesn't want to be better at their job, right? And who doesn't want to get out of the minutia or the mundane and get to focus more on the like really heady stuff and the stuff that really draws on their experience and their passion and their superpowers. So all in it's a win, but I think like we've been saying, it's change. And so how you get people along is like the success or the failure of any change, right?

Emily Fenech (09:30)
Mm-hmm.

Kate Kemp (09:36)
Yeah. Yep.

Emily Fenech (09:36)
Yeah. Yeah.

I love that. think I haven't heard that before. You know, I talk about AI a lot with HR leaders and the fact that you're sort of like, just take the call, just learn, you know, ⁓ make it fun. Yeah. I do that personally with, with like marketing tools, you know, I'm out there. I will, you know, if it's 20 minutes and I get to learn something that maybe haven't seen before, that sounds like an interesting use case. I feel like I'm always that much smarter, that much more aware of the market afterward. And I think that's just a really great place to be right now.

Kate Kemp (09:44)
Yeah, gamify it, make it fun. Yeah. Yeah.

Hmm?

to operate from. Totally. Yeah. Yeah.

Emily Fenech (10:06)
is yeah, it's hard to

tell me it's hard to tell me a revenue operations or marketing tool I haven't heard of, you know, That's right. That's Yeah, you're it's a balancing act between getting what they call it getting pitch slapped and actually getting value in there.

Kate Kemp (10:13)
There you go. I don't know though, like tomorrow, wait, check your inbox. You may be surprised. It's a bounce. Yeah. Pitch left

is so good. Yeah, totally. You're right. Yep. Yep.

Emily Fenech (10:27)
Yeah.

So of all the stuff that you have tried, we don't have to name names or you can if you want to, but any cool tools, experiments, automations that rise to the top as something that you're really excited about.

Kate Kemp (10:40)
Yeah, so here's, I'm going to like reframe it slightly. And we've been, we've been talking about how we're thinking about it with an HR and I'd say the same behaviors are showing up. was just chatting with one of our engineering leaders where they're doing the same for their teams. And I think there's a couple of really cool ways that we, in addition to just like encouraging people to test things out, we set up AI champions. So each department has one or two folks in the organization who self-selected in to essentially be the hub.

for the department. And so if people have AI use cases that they want to talk about, they chat with this person. If we have like, we have an enterprise AI tool that we're deploying and this person becomes the change agent in the organization and they can host round tables. can do so like to me, that's another way to get bottoms up and tops down kind of like engagement, right? And that way they're also.

Emily Fenech (11:26)
Yeah.

Kate Kemp (11:27)
in a spot where they can help sort of filter. Because obviously our head of IT would not have that much fun if every employee was like, hey, I found these 10 new tools. So we have these AI champions who are in the chair for their department because they're subject matter experts of the work. They have the relationships in their team. And then we meet with them bi-weekly. And we share best practice. And we chat. And we all get to nerd out and make decisions together. So that's one. Two, we're thinking about an AI hackathon where, again, people can submit their ideas.

we're going to have a reward for the person who has sort of the most effective business and customer impacting AI solution or use case to accelerate impact on their role. And so to me, it's like, again, just weaving it in, right? In addition to the standard, like it's now in our hiring profiles, it's going to become a performance expectation. It's going to be like all of that stuff. It's also just like, how do you weave it in so that people are thinking about it all the time, that they have places to go to talk about it and

It's showing up as well as native in Slack, in their email, in sales pitch calls. Like you kind of have to meet people where they are. And so we're just making sure to harmonize there. And so we're not adding to ideally, right? We're just augmenting, adjusting, tweaking to make it feel really frictionless and smooth, but continue to level up our tech stack, our technology, our investments as well.

Emily Fenech (12:45)
Yeah, I absolutely love that idea. It feels like, you know, you could hire someone to come in and teach everybody AI, but like, everyone's just going to zone out for that day. Yours is just more always on, like more of an always on approach to, you know, we're always learning and giving that person, whoever that champion is, like what a huge opportunity to shine within the organization, to be seen, to get recognition. And it really rewards that growth mindset that you want to drive and promote.

Kate Kemp (12:53)
Yeah.

100 % yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yep.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, totally. Yep, they get to model it. Yep.

Emily Fenech (13:17)
I love it. I

love that. We'll probably steal that idea at All Voices. We should have children.

Kate Kemp (13:22)
Please do,

please do. I love it. I think it's great. We call it the champions council and they come and talk all things AI and we, you know, we're able to quantify the impact of certain use cases and tools and like departments come together and try things out. And it just like makes it a really collaborative and open dialogue, right? Versus we're, you know, we're coding over here and we're, we're.

Emily Fenech (13:32)
Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Kate Kemp (13:46)
vibe coding and it just makes it something we all are like, tell me more, right? There are not as many HR professionals who light up like this because it's something that really applies to all of us, right? And so it's just, ⁓ it's something for the people, which I love.

Emily Fenech (13:56)
Mm-hmm.

I love that too. I also like the collaborative nature of that too. Like it's kind of hard to drive cross-functional collaboration all the time, but what I like about AI is, we've seen it our organization, you know, customer feedback being something that comes from everywhere. And we all get to now collaborate. have AI at the center of that, which I don't know, it just makes it feel a lot more like, we're all making this much. We're all making this together. Yeah.

Kate Kemp (14:14)
Hmm?

That's...

together. Totally, totally. Yeah,

it's huge. And it's organic to your point. Like it's not a, here is our goal. Everyone go do like, it's this really organic, like everyone's just opting into it. And so it works. It sticks. Yeah.

Emily Fenech (14:30)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Do you have any sort of final words of advice for our audience? know there's a lot of people out there who I do still hear people feel behind. I occasionally hear that. So for someone who maybe isn't quite there yet, I'm seeing it as an opportunity. Maybe they're just feeling a little bit overwhelmed or a little bit behind. Do you have any advice for someone like that?

Kate Kemp (14:43)
Okay, wait.

Yeah, I mean, look, we're all behind. Let's be real. mean, if any of us was like there, we would have built and sold our own AI company, right? So we're all learning together. And I don't think there's like a behind or in front. I think what makes you behind is if you're like doing the head in the sand thing that you mentioned, right? So like behind, like pull your head up. And if you're looking around, you're great. This is like such an amorphous new...

Emily Fenech (14:55)
You

Kate Kemp (15:19)
novel, ambiguous thing. And like, I don't think there's a behind or in front, right? So I'd say like, give yourself a break, give yourself some grace. Like it's, comes down to the same anchoring things as everyone, everything else, like manage your perception, manage your energy around it, right? Like think of it as just filling your cup, trying some things out, getting incrementally better every day. And when in doubt, just like go talk to Chad GPT and get some advice, right? Like.

Emily Fenech (15:47)
Yeah.

Kate Kemp (15:48)
or

Claude or whomever, whoever you consult with. Sort of kidding, but I think it's the solution and everything in between, right? So none of it, I don't think anyone has it figured out, right? Like I think that that's what's super fun about it is like, there's no right or wrong. There's no, I mean, there's obviously like using AI responsibly and there's, you know, the security around all of that, but it's, I do not in any way, shape or form.

Emily Fenech (15:52)
AI, the problem and solution.

Kate Kemp (16:13)
imagine myself as being ahead or even at the meeting, right? We're all just doing it. And I think as long as you approach it with the same levity and grace and curiosity as you do anything else, it's successful, right? Yeah. Good. Yeah.

Emily Fenech (16:24)
Yeah. I love that attitude. How encouraging. Well,

thank you, Kate. I really enjoyed our conversation.

Kate Kemp (16:31)
Good, me too, it was such a pleasure and all the best to you. It's been fun. Bye.