Beatriz Coningham - Chief People Officer, Pan American Development Foundation - HR on a Mission

In this episode, Beatriz discusses:

- The different HR challenges of working in a not-for-profit “mission-driven” company’

- Why traditional Performance Management has run its course;

- How she sees HR as similar to customer service’

- The special challenges of remote and hybrid work in an international organization;

- What a fully virtual office should contain;

- The importance of researching what actually works;

- And much more!


Beatriz Coningham is  Chief People Officer at the Pan American Development Foundation. She has lived, studied, traveled and worked in different countries in Latin America, North America, Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Her educational background includes English and Portuguese languages and literature, teaching English as a foreign language, psychology, and human resource development. Beatriz started her professional life as a teacher of English as a foreign language in Brazil, where she grew up. While living in the state of Mato Grosso, she cofounded and led a private language school, which offered her deep exposure to entrepreneurship and local capacity building. Her experiences in recruiting, training and developing teams led her to gradually transition into organizational development and human resources. In 2003, she moved to Washington, DC to pursue a doctorate degree in Human Resource Development at the George Washington University. Since then, she has worked in the non-profit sector in healthcare and international development. Beatriz is known for her dynamic and versatile leadership style, as well as her ability to work effectively in multicultural environments. Her passion is to create human resources functions that are vital to the organization through leveraging technology, great customer service, simplification and continuous improvement.