From Design to HR: People-First Culture, Co-Leadership, and AI in HR

Show Notes

Summary

What happens when a designer leads HR? Michael Bodziner, Co–Chief Human Resources Officer at Gensler—the global architecture and design firm with 56 offices and 6,400 people—shares how a 40-year career from intern to studio director to CHRO shaped a people-first approach that boosts retention and performance. Michael explains how he translated retail customer-experience thinking into an employee-experience playbook, why “don’t let fear be the deciding factor” guided his leap into HR, and how focusing on strengths—“aces and spaces”—builds higher-performing teams. He details the shift from transactional HR to strategic partnership, Gensler’s co-leadership model (including his pairing with co-CHRO Larissa Gray to balance culture with compliance), and how that structure sustained the firm through COVID. Michael also offers a pragmatic view on AI: use it to automate the busywork so HR can spend time coaching leaders, improving the team member experience, and retaining top talent. Expect candid lessons on designing culture at scale, knowing your people deeply, and making courageous career moves.

Timestamps

[00:45] – Guest intro: 40-year journey from intern to co-CHRO at a global firm

[03:38] – From designer to studio director: putting people first and reducing turnover

[06:01] – The Starbucks ask: moving into HR—and “don’t let fear be the deciding factor”

[09:57] – Rebuilding HR around the team member experience to compete for talent

[12:42] – Taking the CHRO role weeks before COVID and leading people strategy

[13:11] – Co-leadership at Gensler: pairing culture with compliance (with co-CHRO Larissa Gray)

[18:37] – “Aces and spaces”: strengths-led development and managers who truly know their people

[24:23] – Practical AI: automating transactions so HR can be a strategic partner

Takeaways

- Map the employee experience like a customer journey to improve engagement and retention.

- Adopt co-leadership to balance external growth with internal culture, and strategy with compliance.

- Coach managers to know each person’s aspirations and align work to strengths.

- Build teams around “aces and spaces”—pair strengths to cover gaps and raise performance.

- Use AI to handle transactional HR (e.g., routine comms, admin) and free time for strategic work.

- Make courageous career moves—don’t let fear be the deciding factor.

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.”

Rebecca Taylor (00:18)
Hello and welcome to HR Voices. I'm your host, Rebecca Taylor, and I'm here with Michael Bodziner. He's the co-chief human resources officer at Gensler. Michael, welcome. Thank you for being here.

Michael Bodziner (00:29)
Rebecca, thank you. I'm honored to be here with you today.

Rebecca Taylor (00:32)
I am particularly excited to chat with you because I see when I was looking at your background before we started this conversation, I see that you've been at Gensler for 40 something years and that's not something that you see very often just in any type of capacity. So I'm hoping that you're willing to go on this little bit of a journey with me and that we could talk a little bit about you, your role now, but importantly kind of how you got here. Like how did you...

end up where you are now? What were the paths that you took along the way? I'm starting with a big, broad, open question.

Michael Bodziner (01:04)
I love this question. So thank you for asking it. And the first thing I'll say is that I am one of many people that have been at Gensler for decades. as unique as it may sound, we are an incredible firm. I obviously am bragging. That's why I've been here as long as I have, along with many other colleagues that have been here 20, 25, 30, 35, 40 and more years. anyway, thank you for asking that. Yeah, I started at Gensler as a summer intern.

Rebecca Taylor (01:20)
You should brag.

Michael Bodziner (01:33)
In the summer, I'm going to date myself, but the summer of 1985, when I was studying interior architecture design at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. And all my professors referenced Gensler as the benchmark of architecture design firms. So when I got that summer internship, it was the first of many magic moments that I would begin to experience on my journey here at Gensler. I loved it. I knew after the first week I was in this internship.

that I love the firm. wasn't a student up to realize it was the culture that was resonating so strongly, but it was just amazing. So at the end of the summer, I had to go back to school for my final semester reluctantly, but of course I had to finish school. And I was so fortunate my last week of school, I got a call, ironically from the HR director saying, Michael, you know you finished school on Friday. Can you start permanently with us on Monday? So I think my internship was my interview process, right?

Yeah, and so for 28 plus years, I was a design practitioner. I had a brief career when I got my first degree, my liberal arts degree in art history in retail. And when I came to Gensler, another magic moment was the firm started focusing on building their retail design practice. And my boss, my director knew that I had experience on the client side of retail, right?

Rebecca Taylor (02:32)
So cool.

Michael Bodziner (02:56)
And so she said, come join me and the whole team to build the retail design practice at Gensler. I didn't even know what that meant, but of course I said yes. And over the years, along with many other people, we've built a very robust retail design practice here at the firm. And somewhere along the way, I was asked to be a studio director. We're organized in studios here at Gensler. By the way, we're a global architecture design firm. We have 56 offices globally.

and we're about 6,400 people. We're very large for our industry and what we do. Yeah. So I became a studio director and I knew at that point, if I was gonna be a studio director, I wanted to be the best studio director I could be. And for me, that meant looking after the people, the 40 something people that were in my studio that reported to me. I wanted to be there for them and help them navigate their careers at Gensler.

Rebecca Taylor (03:27)
Wow.

Yeah.

Mm.

Michael Bodziner (03:52)
And I had so much to share at that point, know, successes, missteps, lots of experience, life, and you know, this culture that I love so much about the firm. And so that was a big shift I had to make consciously in my role to get out of the weeds of having the burden of the project deliverables and to be more of a project director, a client relationship leader, a business developer.

Rebecca Taylor (03:56)
Life. Work life. Yeah.

Michael Bodziner (04:19)
so that I could have the bandwidth to put my people first, to spend time with my people, to get to know them. What are their aspirations? Where are they struggling? What are they loving about their emotional connection to the Gensler brand that they work for? What did they love about it? And where were they having challenges with the way we do things? And I had great success, very little turnover.

Rebecca Taylor (04:23)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Michael Bodziner (04:43)
So flash forward, this is probably 12 years ago. I say it was a day like any other. I'm sitting at my desk. The phone rings. It's my boss. And he said to me with no emotion in his voice whatsoever, hey, it looks like you're free for about the next hour, hour and a half. Come take a walk with me down to Starbucks. There's something I really want to talk to you about. I was in sense I was in...

Rebecca Taylor (05:04)
That's not scary. Maybe it's just my...

I would have been terrified. ⁓

Michael Bodziner (05:07)
I was terrified,

terrified. knew a client had complained, somebody in the studio, I was in trouble. And at respect, yeah.

Rebecca Taylor (05:11)
Haha.

Yeah, an hour and a half to off campus, as I like to say. It's like, ⁓

no, we're not even, we're going all rogue over here.

Michael Bodziner (05:22)
That's

right, and out of the glass fishbowl, where everybody, I'm making this up, everybody can see me have an emotional breakdown when he gives me critical feedback that I couldn't handle, okay? Hamsters on the wheel, trying to figure it all out. Totally.

Rebecca Taylor (05:29)
Yup.

Yep. yeah. Yep. Isn't it great how we sabotage ourselves too? We just always assume

the worst thing. We're like, obviously this person hates me and this is going to be the worst thing ever. But that's rarely the case.

Michael Bodziner (05:42)
Yeah.

It's human to be insecure, no matter how old you are, no matter how much experience, whatever. So we walk the two short San Francisco city blocks from the office to Starbucks. sit down and Scott says to me, I know you're going to think this is coming out of left field, but I'd like you to seriously consider taking the Northwest region. We're organized in regions. The Northwest region HR director role. Okay.

Rebecca Taylor (06:09)
Okay.

Michael Bodziner (06:09)
Total

180 from the role that I was in as a designer, right?

Rebecca Taylor (06:13)
Yeah.

And how long did it take for that to sink in in that conversation going from this is going to be really, like really bad to wait, wait, what? How long did it take for that flip?

Michael Bodziner (06:27)
Well, I promise this next part of my story is true and I'm not making it up for the sake of it being great on a podcast. Three weeks earlier, I had a reading with a medium who predicted this was gonna happen.

Rebecca Taylor (06:31)
Hahaha

No way, okay. I could sidebar this whole conversation just on that, but I won't for now.

Michael Bodziner (06:44)
Okay, so she said

to me in the reading, there changes coming to you professionally, someone in your organization is going to vacate a role, and you're going to be asked to fill it. It's going to be similar what to what you do, but very different. You're going to think you can't do it, but you can actually do it very well. The ball will be in your court. And I love this next line. Don't let fear be the deciding factor. And I give that advice.

Rebecca Taylor (07:10)
That's gonna be the caption

for this episode.

Michael Bodziner (07:13)
Don't let fear be the deciding factor. I'm not a huge risk taker. And so as Scott is explaining to me why he's choosing me to step into HR that I had no professional training or experience in, just being in the trenches of leading people, right? And loving the firm and the culture and having been at the firm for 28 years at that point. Yeah, yeah. And I was right. And so I even tell a lot of our, you know,

Rebecca Taylor (07:30)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's incredible.

Michael Bodziner (07:42)
new hires, when I'm giving them just advice and orientation or whatever, don't let fear be the deciding factor. Go for it. Trust your gut. know? Yeah.

Rebecca Taylor (07:51)
Love that. Yeah, I think that's

so such a good takeaway too, because how easily can we just sort of put up roadblocks that aren't even real for ourselves to we just the self doubt creeps in so easily. I think it's there's I mean, I'm not a psychologist, so I can't psychologize. But you know, there's there's the instinct part or the the part of our brain that wants us to keep with what we know and what's familiar, because that's what's safe. Change is dangerous. The unknown is dangerous. And

Michael Bodziner (08:01)
Totally.

Yeah.

Yes.

Rebecca Taylor (08:19)
since we're

no longer out there getting hunted by bears, we get afraid of things like career changes the same way as if we were being chased by bears. So I think that's really great advice and it's really, really brave of you to take that, to take that up and to run with it.

Michael Bodziner (08:24)
Yes. Yes.

Well,

at the same time that it was really scary, it was exciting as well. It's that thing in the pit of your stomach that says, have to do this. I was looking for a change. I wasn't going to leave Gensler. And I trusted the firm at this point that whatever the opportunity was going to be, it was going to show itself. And that I needed to have my eyes open to see those opportunities.

Rebecca Taylor (08:35)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Michael Bodziner (08:56)
and

to have the open mindedness to pursue the ones that felt right for me at any given time. And this one felt right. I had a zillion questions. I was worried about my reputation, where my peers were going to accept me in this role of HR director for a region when, you know, anyway, I must have been.

Rebecca Taylor (09:04)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, they know you

as something different and it's like this identity shift between what you were and what you are now and how do I interact with you differently in the same and especially when you're going into a field like HR where it can sometimes be, it can sometimes feel very closed off from the rest of the organization just because of the nature of the work.

Michael Bodziner (09:36)
Yes.

Yes. Well, as a studio director at the firm, I knew what we weren't getting from our HR team. And it got me excited to get into the role and to make some changes because I had run a business unit for the firm and relied on our wonderful HR professionals that preceded me. But because when I was a practitioner, my focus was focusing on the customer experience when designing a retail prototype store.

Rebecca Taylor (09:44)
Mm-hmm.

Mmm.

Michael Bodziner (10:04)
I turned that internally to focus on the employee experience or what we call the team member experience. We don't like the word employee. It sounds so corporate, right? And so that's how I approached this when I jumped in to the role. And ironically, being based in San Francisco and Silicon Valley is in our backyard, tech was taking a lot of our talent. Our voluntary turnover was very high. And the first thing I wanted to do was to look at where were the issues and how could I help solve it.

Rebecca Taylor (10:08)
Mm.

Yeah, I a little corporate.

Mmm.

Yeah.

Michael Bodziner (10:34)
so that we were retaining the talent that we needed. We are a people first organization and culture, right? We're not an assembly line, we don't create widgets. Our people are our greatest asset. That's where the ingenuity, the innovation, the creativity, the thought leadership comes from. So attracting and retaining the best talent we can get is what we're all about at the firm, right?

Rebecca Taylor (10:58)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Michael Bodziner (10:59)
So

that was something I wanted to tackle. So we worked with an outside consultant for a year and articulated and created a people first philosophy for the firm. And I started piloting just some little things that were making a difference in our people feeling that the firm saw them and heard them and cared about them in ways that maybe HR previously was more focused on operations and compliance and policy and not prioritizing

Rebecca Taylor (11:10)
Mm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Michael Bodziner (11:29)
the team member experience, which is how I wanted to lead HR with my team in the Northwest region. And I had great success and it went viral across the firm. And in 2020, I was asked by our CEOs to step into a CHRO role and lead a firm. And of course, what, eight weeks, 12 weeks later, there was a global pandemic and I'm on the front line leading our people strategies. Talk about imposter syndrome, you know.

Rebecca Taylor (11:45)
I know that one's always hard to say. ⁓

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And yeah, and that was when it was, I'm sure, imposter syndrome and also just there was so much uncertainty at that time with how long is it going to be like this? You know, how deep do we go in these policies? Because is it going to be two weeks? Is it going to be two years? You know, there's the uncertainty and fear of that climate and that time combined with the new role that you're onwarding and the imposter syndrome. That's like the perfect storm of resilience building, I think.

Michael Bodziner (12:06)
⁓ Yeah.

Exactly, exactly. But I'm so fortunate to work with amazing colleagues here at the firm. And of course, I didn't do any of this on my own and we had great success safely getting our people home and, you know, IT getting all of our documents and everything up in the cloud so people could, you know, the rest is sort of history. But anyway, that's what led me to this to this role of CHRO.

Rebecca Taylor (12:42)
Yeah.

Michael Bodziner (12:48)
And I'm in a co-leadership role now. This co-leadership model is very typical here at Gensler. We have co-CEOs and co-regional managing principals and co-office directors and co-studio directors. But I realized shortly after I was in the role that for a firm like ours, it's bigger than one person to be a CHRO. And I actually requested a co. And I was so lucky, my co, Larissa Gray, shout out to Larissa. Larissa was our

Rebecca Taylor (13:09)
Yeah.

La Rissa!

Michael Bodziner (13:18)
global director of compliance. has a legal background, which of course I don't. And we are just the perfect partnership to lead our people strategies for the firm. Yeah. Yeah.

Rebecca Taylor (13:21)
Mm, yeah.

think that's such a cool approach too, because that's the thing about HR is that it's such a big role because you're responsible for every single employee. You have just as much span of control in a lot of ways as the CEO in a way that no other type of leader at the organization can say. Everyone else has marketing and sales and design and whatever it is, but HR is all encompassing. And the role in and of itself can get really complicated because to your point,

Michael Bodziner (13:52)
Yes.

Rebecca Taylor (13:56)
There's the compliance, there's the benefits, the payroll. And then there's the more team member experience side of it where how do we create a people first culture? How do we work together? How do we thrive? And it's actually kind of funny that you're saying this, that this is sort of how that role came up because I've always said that I feel like HR needs to be, you can't be good at all of those things to run. And everyone kind of has their specialty, right? But if you're owning all of it,

Michael Bodziner (14:19)
No way.

Yeah.

Rebecca Taylor (14:25)
I think it's really,

really smart to balance it like that.

Michael Bodziner (14:28)
Yeah, absolutely. And that reminds me, you when I was first talking to Scott about taking this role, I said, I don't know anything about immigration and, you know, visas and green cards and I don't know that much about compensation and benefits. And he said, you've got experts to rely on for that. That's not why I want you in this role. And that took so much pressure off of me to have to be the expert at all those things. Because like you said,

Rebecca Taylor (14:42)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Bodziner (14:54)
And we say this at Gensler, we all have aces and spaces, right? We all have our strengths and we all have our soft spots. And when we're in a partnership or a team, if we can team up with people that complement our spaces and our aces can complement our teammates' spaces, that's how you get a strong functioning team.

Rebecca Taylor (14:58)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Spaces,

Yeah.

Michael Bodziner (15:18)
That's what we built in terms of our HR organization at Gensler. And we're always striving to keep elevating to be a true business partner to the practice and get out of the transactional reputation, but get more into that strategic partner reputation and code. Yeah.

Rebecca Taylor (15:27)
Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah. Yeah.

I think that's so, it's so refreshing to hear that to be completely candid because the last, I don't know, it even started before COVID. I think I've kind of seen this trend from when Silicon Valley really started to explode. Then it's had sort of ripple effects across different industries at different times. But there's been so much more pressure to do more with less and try to cram as much into one person's expertise. And you see the rise of

you know, the player coach model where a manager is also responsible for their own portfolio of work in addition to managing their own people. you know how it goes. People are going to lean into what's more comfortable and dealing with people's not as comfortable as just, I just have to get this project done. So one gets neglected, which is the most important part of it. I mean, I'm from HR, so I'm biased. I think that people are the most important part of it. So it's just really refreshing to hear that there are organizations out there that aren't

Michael Bodziner (16:09)
Yes.

Yeah. Yeah.

Rebecca Taylor (16:29)
looking at that model where everything has to be shoved under one person who has to be good at everything.

Michael Bodziner (16:33)
Exactly, exactly. In this co-leadership model I keep talking about, it's great because one of the leaders can be focused on the external, on the market, on business development, on clients, on ⁓ just being visible out there, and the other can be more internally focused on our people. Like you said, instead of expecting one person to do all of that and keep all the balls in the air, it's impossible. It's a ridiculous expectation.

Rebecca Taylor (16:42)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Michael Bodziner (17:03)
Yeah.

Rebecca Taylor (17:03)
Yeah. And it's something that a lot of HR people are kind of suffering with. mean, I'm sure it happens in other, you know, in other professions, too. I just try to speak about the ones that I know. So I'm not speaking on behalf of anybody who might feel differently. But I know a lot of what I hear from HR folks is that they are expected to kind of know how to do everything and to do everything and have so few resources. the theme that's really kind of been resonating a lot for me in your story is just the level of support. ⁓

Michael Bodziner (17:31)
Mm.

Rebecca Taylor (17:31)
that allowed you to take advantage of your own skillset and your own strengths. Just because I think that there's a lot to be said about being able to live in your strengths and in your aces, as you say. And psychologically, I know that's also better for people's well-being and mental health too. When you're developing someone, you want to develop their strengths to be stronger. There's always going to be room to fill the gaps in skill development, right? But if you spend more of your development focused on

Michael Bodziner (17:45)
Yes.

Rebecca Taylor (18:01)
fixing all the things that aren't right, you're just going to be burning people out and you're not going to be running a functional development organization or people organization or anything. But I could, that's my soapbox for the day.

Michael Bodziner (18:12)
Rebecca, you are preaching my sermon. I love it.

I love it, really. It's true. It's really true. Because when you think about when you are doing what you love to do, work doesn't feel like work. know, your work product, your experience is so much better than trying to be put as a round peg in a square hole, right? I will never be a left-brain mathematical

Rebecca Taylor (18:25)
Yeah.

Yeah.

guess.

Michael Bodziner (18:39)
analytical person. And if anybody's ever expecting me to be that, will, excuse me, but I will suck at my job. Right. But Scott also, and this is what I keep, you know, telling our leaders, you got to know your people really well. You need to know what are their aces? What do they love to do? What are they looking for in their relationship with their employer with Gensler in this case? You know, where do they want their career to go? What kind of projects do they want to work on? What kind of clients do they want to work on?

Rebecca Taylor (18:40)
Me neither.

Yeah, same. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Michael Bodziner (19:09)
What colleagues do they want to work with? The more you know about those individuals and what drives them, the better equipped we are to help guide them into roles and on projects that are going to allow them to celebrate and do what they love to do. And then our clients are going to benefit because what they're getting is so much better. Danny Meyer, the restaurateur in New York has written a book called Setting the Table. I can't recommend it enough to HR folks. Have you read the book? Yeah.

Rebecca Taylor (19:21)
Yeah. Yes.

Yeah.

Yes. I know that's book. I'll back that up. I agree. Yeah. Yes,

I have. Yeah.

Michael Bodziner (19:40)
He believes what I believe, and I'm sure you do too, and many people listening, that when our people feel well taken care of, right, our employees, when they feel that they're being paid adequately, they have great health benefits, they're doing what they love to do, they're respected, whether you're a line cook, as he would say, or a hostess, or a waiter, or whatever. When people are doing what they love to do, they're happy and they're engaged, and the customers in his restaurants, the diners benefit from that.

Well, we feel the same way internally at Gensler. Our clients benefit when our people are engaged and happy and doing what they love to do and growing and feel that somebody has their back. Yeah.

Rebecca Taylor (20:18)
Yeah,

yeah, it's so funny because it's hard to find those cultures that actually mean what they say. Because that's the hard part is there's a lot of organizations that will say that they're people forward. And then when it comes down to how they really make decisions and how they operate, it's just not the same level of standard that you're talking about. And it's something I've actually seen it.

You know, in working with the team at All Voices, I'm new to taking over the podcast. I'm still meeting so many new members of the team. And the thing that has been sort of continuous, I've known, I've known the company for a while. I've known the key folks that I work with day to day for a while. But even as I meet more people, that it's a very similar type of culture. It's very much a, you know, you have an idea, try something like we'll support you. We'll see if it works. And there's a lot of trust in the organization too. And that's kind of when you, when you're in an environment where you're able to work with your

when you're able to leverage your aces and find the spaces for others to come in, that's when you really find true teamwork because you don't have someone saying, I'll just take this all from start to finish because that's what I'm expected to do. It's, hey, I'll do this part of this project because this is where I'm really good. This is where I need your partnership and help. And then you have collaboration, you have teamwork, you have all the things that actually allow a company to win.

Michael Bodziner (21:33)
Yeah, exactly. know, in HR, obviously, we deal with a lot of different personalities and experiences and people from different backgrounds and family, you know, situations that inform who they are as adults in the workplace, right? So much of our time can be consumed with, know, employee relations issues and conflict and what have you. I think it's really important. And we know that our HR people are held at a different standard, right?

Rebecca Taylor (22:01)
Yes.

Yeah.

Michael Bodziner (22:02)
But I think

it's important that we are always working on ourselves, right? And evolving and trying to have insight into what's making us feel insecure or threatened at a certain point and to try to evolve beyond that so that we can be our best and represent, ⁓ you know, examples of it's okay to have, you know, soft spots and weaknesses, but I'm really great at this and that's where I'm excelling.

Rebecca Taylor (22:06)
Yes, I agree.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Michael Bodziner (22:31)
And I'm not going to feel threatened when somebody comes in that's better at something than I am to partner with me on whatever that is. Yeah.

Rebecca Taylor (22:38)
Yeah,

that could be a fun exercise for anyone who's listening to this is really think about what are your aces? know, because we talk a lot about on this podcast, especially about how we're sort of in this moment with AI and everything that's sort of affecting HR. We're sort of in this moment where we're all learning out loud and no one really knows anything, right? Because as soon as you think you know something, it's changed or it's evolved.

We're sort of in this space of, you know, everyone is kind of on a level playing field in some ways where no one really knows what they're doing. It's just kind of how you're learning it how you're growing it. And so there are a lot of HR people that are spiraling and kind of feeling like, you know, I'm trying to keep up with AI, I'm trying to do this. And it's almost a good reflection point to sort of say, let's just pause for a second. Let's ground this in things that we can say for certain. What are you really good at? Let's make sure that we're focusing on that. And we're not just...

Michael Bodziner (23:11)
Yeah.

Rebecca Taylor (23:31)
you know, spiraling over all the things that we don't know because those two things can complement each other. When you find something you're really good at, it's like, how can I use that to help me be, you know, grow a skill that maybe I'm struggling to grow?

Michael Bodziner (23:41)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Rebecca Taylor (23:44)
this.

Well, I know we're just at time. I could talk to you all day. know. I know. Do have any closing thoughts you want to share with everybody who's listening?

Michael Bodziner (23:47)
⁓ my god, that's crazy!

I just have such admiration for anyone that has chosen a career in human resources. And I just want to encourage everyone to do what you do best, know, for the conversation we've been having and to keep elevating no matter where your HR organization is currently within your company. Keep striving for HR to be a true business partner, a strategic business partner. Yes, there are transactional

Rebecca Taylor (23:59)
you too.

Michael Bodziner (24:22)
things that have to happen all the time. I know we didn't get into AI and that's fine, I'm no expert. But in our firm, we're looking at AI as we're exploring AI and we're getting, know, workshops and whatever. We're not looking at it to replace jobs, right? We're looking at it to handle a lot of the transactional stuff. And in HR, we want AI to do the transactional stuff so we can free our people to upskill and to grow and to be more strategic and to have more time to explore.

Rebecca Taylor (24:27)
Hahaha

Yes. ⁓

Michael Bodziner (24:51)
all of those things that are gonna make the Team Mibra experience the most rewarding and personal that it can be for everyone coming to work every day at Gensler. So I encourage all of you out there, if you can, to focus on that going forward if you're not already. Yeah?

Rebecca Taylor (25:04)
Yes,

yes. If I knew how to do this, I would insert an applaud sound bite here for, because I feel like there's going to be a lot of just celebration for that right now, because I love that. Maybe, maybe, maybe AI can do it. Maybe I could say, hey, AI, insert.

Michael Bodziner (25:13)
Maybe your tech crew can do that for you. ⁓ exactly. This went so fast,

Rebecca. Thank you. I can't believe it's already over.

Rebecca Taylor (25:24)
This did, I know. Thank you so much, Michael, for being here. And thank everybody for listening. And I hope everybody has a great rest of your day. And thank you all. Bye.

Michael Bodziner (25:33)
Bye.