LISTEN: https://www.thepozcast.com/516
Lucia Guillory: The CPO With a PhD in People: Lucia Guillory on Honesty, Belonging & Benefits That Actually Matter (LIVE @ Transform 2026)
Recorded live at Transform 2026, this episode features Lucia Guillory, Chief People Officer at Virta Health — a company on a mission to reverse metabolic disease, starting with diabetes and now extending into groundbreaking pancreatic cancer treatment research.
Lucia brings a uniquely rigorous perspective to the people function: she holds a PhD in organizational behavior, has been studying human connection since childhood, and came into HR with a clear mandate to drive organizational change. Lucia's backstory is one of the most compelling in the series. She is dyslexic and has ADHD, and traces her lifelong fascination with people — and her drive to understand belonging — directly to the experience of feeling isolated as a kid. That foundation shapes everything about how she thinks about culture, transparency, and what employees actually need from their organizations.
Her answer to what's most broken in bad cultures is simple and sharp: a lack of honesty. The conversation covers Virta Health's fully remote model and what it actually takes to do remote right (output over hours, trust, clear communication — and absolutely no 3 AM emails). Lucia digs into the company's deliberate approach to benefits, anchored around knowing your population: Virta's workforce skews female and in their 30s, which is exactly why fertility benefits through Carrot are central to their total rewards strategy. She also introduces a powerful framework for measuring the ROI of qualitative benefits — tracking engagement as a proxy for the peace of mind that good benefits provide. And she closes with a genuinely optimistic take on AI: the automation of transactional management is forcing leaders to show up with meaning and connection, and that's a good thing.
Connect: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luciaguillory/
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