Bradford Wilkins is a strategic Chief People Officer with a history of success developing integrated “People” functions from scratch in fast-paced, growing global companies.
He was most recently the VP, People for Collibra, a tech unicorn that provides enterprise data intelligence products for enterprise customers across the world.
Prior to joining Collibra, Brad was the Chief People Officer for Altisource (NASDAQ: ASPS) where he built the People Solutions function globally for ~7,500 employees in North America, Europe, India, Uruguay and the Philippines. He joined Altisource after serving as the Vice President, Talent Management and HR Services (Chief People Officer) at Adcap Network Systems. While there, the company was recognized two years in a row as the #1 Overall Best Place to Work in Atlanta by the “Best and Brightest” and was named a top three company in the U.S. overall for its hiring practices by TheLadders.com.
Brad was named the “2019 HR Rising Star” in Atlanta by the Atlanta Business Chronicle, one of the Top 25 HR “Game Changers” Under 40 globally by Workforce Magazine, one of the Top 100 Millennial Leaders globally in “Back to Human” and the #1 Recruiter in the U.S. by TheLadders.com and the SHRM-Atlanta Pegasus Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement in HR. He has been a featured speaker for LinkedIn, Hacking HR, the Talent Management Alliance, The Ladders, Workforce Live, TLNT, ALI, Conference Board and featured in multiple publications including an interview in Forbes, contributing to the book “Back to Human” and several articles in Talent Management Magazine.
Brad received his degree from the University of Maryland- College Park and currently lives in Atlanta with wife Marissa, a physician at Emory Hospital, their son Jonah and a newly arrived baby girl. His passionate hobbies include basketball, theater, travel and food.
More from Brad…
Brad’s life experiences have shaped the way he works in the HR world. He tells us how continuous improvement was instilled in him and how to easily fit it into your day.
“I always joke that experience is just you’ve made more mistakes and you’ve indexed more pattern recognition. So, by putting yourself in an environment where — I was just talking to someone earlier today about this concept of fearlessness — where you can take risks where you can go out on a limb, we can know it’s okay to fall down. It’s okay to make the same mistake once. Twice? Okay, are you optimizing? Are you iterating? Are using data?
I learned that better prior from referees who a lot of people don’t know the NBA referees, they watch every game they do after it’s over. They critique every single play that they called or didn’t call, they watch their positioning, the way they present their numbers. I mean, the amount of intense scrutiny and so I’ve actually applied a lot of those principles to HR. So if I’m giving a training, I’ll go watch the video, and I’ll watch my body language, I’ll watch, hey, was there a more condensed way to say this? Was there a more clear way to say this, what’s the body language of the people who I’m presenting to, etc. I think [it’s] just continuous learning. And again, that’s reading, that’s listening to podcasts.
When I talk to entry-level people, I always am surprised how many of them just go home and watch Netflix, or most of the time they watch sports and like you’re driving the car and you’re listening to music. Now on my when I used to commute in the morning, it was a book on tape or a podcast. The way home was sports radio or a great podcast like this one where I could just relax. So again, I’m not saying every minute of every day has to be learning, but there’s so much wasted time that people are spent not absorbing and then finding the pattern recognition around there.”
