Jonathan H. Westover
Educator, Futurist, Entrepreneur; TopVoice in Leadership, HR, & Innovation; Founder & CEO, Human Capital Innovations; Chief Workforce & Learning Officer, Future State University; Professor of Organizational Leadership and Change, Utah Valley UniversityHuman Capital Innovations
Skills
About
Dr. Jonathan H. Westover is a best-selling and award-winning author and podcaster, a TopVoice in HR, Innovation, Leadership, Culture, Future of Work, Diversity and Inclusion, Change Management, and Education (Thinkers360), ranked Top 30 in Organizational Culture and Management (Global Gurus), in the Top 200 Biggest Voices in Leadership (LeadersHum), and ScholarGPS ranks him the #9 scholar in the world for job satisfaction research. Jonathan is an educational evangelist, a philanthropist, an angel investor, and an entrepreneur. He is founder and CEO of Human Capital Innovations and head researcher with the Nexus Institute for Work and AI, the host/producer of multiple shows on the HCI Podcast Network, Chief Academic and Learning Officer of the HCI Academy, and Managing Editor of the Human Capital Leadership Review. As an OD/HR/Leadership consultant, he has worked with organizations across the globe. Current Professional Roles Academic: Jonathan is Chief Workforce & Learning Officer at Future State University, Professor of Organizational Leadership and Change at Utah Valley University, and Industry Impact Fellow in the Business Impact Lab. Additionally, he is a doctoral faculty at the University of Arizona (GC) and part of the Interdisciplinary Leadership Studies graduate program at Creighton University. Previously, he was Associate Dean and Director of HR undergrad and graduate academic programs at WGU and was UVU Chair of Organizational Leadership, Academic Director of the Center for Social Impact, Director of Academic Service-Learning in the Innovation Academy. Dr. Westover has been published widely in academic journals, books, and practitioner publications. At UVU he is also an affiliate faculty member in the MBA, MPA, and Integrated Studies programs and he has been a regular visiting faculty member in other international graduate business programs. Consulting: Jonathan is an experienced organizational leadership, people management, and organizational development consultant (Founder and CEO at Human Capital Innovations). For two decades, he has worked to help transform organizations across the globe. He is also the producer and host of the Human Capital Innovations (HCI) Podcast and Managing Editor of Human Capital Leadership Magazine. Previously, Jonathan was an external consultant with the firm Targeted Learning, and an internal consultant in the Human Resource Development office at Brigham Young University, in the corporate Organizational Development office at InterContinental Hotels, and in the corporate Organizational Development office at LG Electronics in Gumi, South Korea. Thought Leadership: Jonathan is a member of the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council, the Forbes Coaches Council, a Non-Resident Fellow in Social and Development Policy with the Nkafu Policy Institute (part of the Denis & Lenora Foretia Foundation), a member of the HR Certification Institute CEO Advisory Council and past member of the board of directors, member of the Humantelligence Scientific Advisory Board, Chair and Director of the Corporate Division of the Global Listening Centre, a CIPD Academic Fellow, and an Advance HE Senior Fellow. Jonathan has been published widely and quoted as a management expert in popular and professional media locally, nationally, and abroad (such as Forbes, The Economist, U.S. News and World Report, The Wall Street Journal, MSNBC, PBS, NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX, MarketWatch, HR.com, SHRM.org, HRCI.org, The Washington Post, and USA Today). Highlights of Past Academic and Professional Roles and Distinctions • President and Executive Board Member, Western Academy of Management (2023 - Present) • Visiting Academic at Harris Manchester College at the University of Oxford (2019) • Fulbright Scholar and AMINEF Senior Scholar at Atma Jaya Catholic University in Jakarta, Indonesia (2018) • Educational Development Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Teaching and Learning at the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada (2018) • Learning Innovation Research Fellow at the Institute of Teaching and Learning Innovation at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia (2017) • Visiting Scholar at the East-West Center in Washington (2017) • POSCO Fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii (2016) • Visiting Scholar in the Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. (2015) • Fulbright Scholar at Belarusian State University in Minsk, Belarus (2012) Education Jonathan received his Bachelor of Science degree in Sociology: Research and Analysis (with minors in management and Korean) from the College of Family, Home, and Social Sciences and his Master of Public Administration degree (emphases in Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management) from the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology (emphases in International Political Economy and Work and Organizations) from the College of Social and Behavioral Science at the University of Utah. He has also received graduate certificates in demography and higher education teaching from the University of Utah, as well as other certificates and specializations from universities like Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, and more.
Jonathan H. Westover
Published content
expert panel
Members of the Senior Executive HR Think Tank share practical strategies for creating leadership pipelines that uncover overlooked talent, reduce bias and develop future leaders through intentional systems rather than chance.Organizations have spent years discussing diversity in leadership, yet many continue to see the same patterns at the executive level. A McKinsey & Company Women in the Workplace study shows that progress remains uneven, with women and other underrepresented groups still facing barriers to advancement and career-building opportunities.Too often, succession planning begins only after leadership vacancies arise, limiting organizations to candidates who have already received the greatest visibility and access. Members of the Senior Executive HR Think Tank say stronger leadership pipelines require a different approach: examining the systems that identify, develop and advance talent long before promotion decisions are made. Their insights show that equitable pipelines are not about lowering standards, but about creating fairer pathways for talented people to demonstrate their potential.
expert panel
As AI reshapes daily work and engagement hits historic lows, members of the Senior Executive HR Think Tank explain why purpose—not perks or productivity alone—is emerging as the defining competitive advantage for organizations competing to attract, retain and inspire talent.Work is changing faster than most organizations can keep up with. Roles are shifting, AI is taking over entire categories of tasks, and employee engagement is stuck near record lows. Amid all this, one quieter question is emerging as the key difference-maker between organizations that keep their best people and those that lose them: Why does this work matter?Members of the Senior Executive HR Think Tank, a curated group of experts specializing in human resources, agree that purpose is no longer a soft concern to address after salary negotiations. It is becoming the new point of distinction once pay, benefits and flexibility become table stakes.The numbers back them up. Only 31% of employees in the U.S. and Canada region were actively engaged as of early 2026, according to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report. While engagement has many causes, leaders increasingly point to a lack of connection between day-to-day work and organizational purpose as one of the biggest contributors.
expert panel
When a merger or acquisition closes, the financial model is set—but the real work is just beginning. Members of the Senior Executive HR Think Tank share their strategies for protecting culture, retaining critical talent and building something stronger than either organization had before, from clinical talent audits and listening sessions to organizational network mapping and the deliberate design of a third culture.The deal closes. The press release goes out. The board is satisfied. And then, quietly, the talent begins to leave. According to EY research, 47% of employees depart within the first year of an acquisition and 75% are gone within three years; running at more than three times the normal voluntary turnover rate. The employees most likely to exit are the high performers with options—precisely the people the acquiring organization paid a premium to access. Culture and people, not financial models or operational synergies, are where most mergers either deliver their value or quietly forfeit it.Members of the Senior Executive HR Think Tank, a curated group of human resources leaders, executives and organizational strategists, have navigated acquisitions across industries and company sizes. Their strategies converge on a shared conviction: Integration cannot be an afterthought. The people decisions made in the first weeks of a transition determine whether the combined organization retains what made the deal valuable—or spends years rebuilding it.A study by Instill found that up to 60% of M&A failures after closing can be traced to cultural misalignment, and Bain & Company's research puts the proportion of acquirers facing significant cultural challenges at 75%. The financial cost is measurable too: Replacing a key employee can run between 50% and 200% of their annual salary, and that is before factoring in lost institutional knowledge, disrupted client relationships and the cascade of departures that often follows the first high-profile exit.
expert panel
Summer doesn't lower the bar—it reveals which leadership behaviors were already undermining morale and productivity all year. Members of the Senior Executive HR Think Tank share the one thing leaders should stop doing this summer: from micromanaging and overloading capacity to holding back vacation boundaries, running back-to-back meetings and waiting for the right season to fix what is already broken.Summer is supposed to be the season when things slow down a little. Longer days, lighter calendars, well-earned vacations. But for many employees, the experience is the opposite: the same meeting cadence, the same deadlines, the same expectations—delivered on top of school schedules, family commitments and the cumulative exhaustion of a year that never quite paused. The result is predictable. According to Eagle Hill Consulting's 2025 Workforce Burnout Survey, 55% of the U.S. workforce is currently experiencing burnout, while Gallup data puts global disengagement at levels that cost the world economy an estimated $8.8 trillion in lost productivity annually. Summer does not cause this. But it exposes it.Members of the Senior Executive HR Think Tank, a curated group of human resources leaders, executives and organizational strategists, were asked a deceptively simple question: What is the one thing leaders should stop doing during the summer if they want to improve employee morale and productivity? Their answers cut across micromanagement, capacity overload, meeting culture, performance surveillance and the leadership habit of waiting for the right moment to fix what is already not working.Taken together, their recommendations reveal something important: summer is not a special case that requires a seasonal workaround. It is an opportunity to practice the kind of leadership that should be standard year-round—and to stop the habits that erode trust, morale and performance regardless of the month.
expert panel
Individual industries no longer set workplace standards. The best ideas, boldest experiments and hardest lessons now come from across sectors. Members of the Senior Executive HR Think Tank explore how cross-industry collaboration is advancing innovation in talent, wellbeing, inclusion, workplace design and AI governance, and why organizations that share what they know will shape what "good" looks like for everyone.No single company, sector or trade association holds the patent on a great workplace. Yet for decades, organizations have largely set their standards by looking inward, benchmarking against competitors, replicating familiar practices and measuring “good” against what is typical in their own field. That era is ending. The forces reshaping work today, including AI adoption, skills shortages, flexible work expectations, mental health demands and inclusion imperatives, do not stop at industry lines. The strongest responses are emerging from unexpected cross-sector conversations.Members of the Senior Executive HR Think Tank, a curated group of human resources leaders, executives and organizational strategists, are closely tracking this shift. Their perspectives reveal a consistent theme: the organizations poised to attract top talent, build durable cultures and lead on the thorniest workforce issues are those that look beyond their own sector for models, benchmarks and partners.The urgency is real. SHRM's 2026 Talent Trends Report, based on a survey of more than 2,000 HR professionals, found that organizations across industries are confronting persistent recruitment difficulties, widening skills gaps and shifting workforce expectations driven by technological and strategic change. These challenges are not confined to any one sector and no single industry has solved them on its own. The question is no longer whether cross-industry collaboration matters. It is if organizations will move fast enough to benefit from it.
expert panel
When HR systems are built for compliance rather than reality, organizations pay a price that rarely shows up on a single line item. Members of the Senior Executive HR Think Tank examine the compounding financial, operational and cultural costs of misaligned HR systems—from shadow spreadsheets and workarounds to eroded trust, learned helplessness and the slow departure of your best people—and what leaders must do to close the gap.Every organization has an official version of how work gets done and a real one. The official version lives in the HRIS, the performance management platform, the onboarding workflow and the reporting dashboard. The real version lives in shared spreadsheets, group chats, informal approval chains and workarounds that employees have quietly perfected over the years. When those two versions diverge significantly, the cost is not a single budget line. It is a slow, compounding drain on productivity, trust, agility and talent retention that most organizations never fully account for.Members of the Senior Executive HR Think Tank, a curated group of human resources leaders, executives and organizational advisors, have seen this dynamic play out across industries, company sizes and technology generations. Their collective diagnosis is consistent: Misaligned HR systems do not just create friction—they actively undermine the cultures, capabilities and decisions that organizations depend on to grow.The scale of the problem is measurable. A 2025 Workday report on federal HR systems found that HR leaders dedicate nearly half their time—48%—to system workarounds, error correction, data reconciliation and manual tasks, costing an estimated $1 billion annually in lost productivity in the public sector alone. The private sector equivalent is harder to quantify but no less real. The question is not whether misalignment is expensive. It is whether leaders are willing to look honestly at the full bill.
Company details
Human Capital Innovations
Company bio
Maximize your personal and organizational potential with Human Capital Innovations, your source for personal, professional, and organizational growth and development. We provide consulting and coaching services that will give you and your organization the tools for success. In addition to 1-on-1 consultations, we regularly host workshops and seminars for organizational leaders. Additionally, Dr. Westover is an internationally sought-after speaker and organizational strategist.