The Great Leadership Disconnect: Why HR and Business Drift Apart - And How to Bring Them Back Together

Serkan Deveci is a senior leader at Google with two decades of global experience, leveraging a rare and solid combination of leadership roles in both global Sales and strategic HR to drive business success. His career has provided him with a unique perspective, as he hasn't just observed the disconnect between business imperatives and people leadership; he has operated with distinction on both sides of that executive table.

This dual experience (carrying a P&L and shaping commercial strategy in Sales; guiding workforce planning and defining culture as an HR leader) has given him a deep, firsthand understanding of what it truly takes to align talent with tangible business outcomes. Having led complex, large-scale businesses and substantial sales teams, he brings a commercial acumen to the world of people strategy. His global experience spans EMEA, APAC, the US, and LATAM, giving him a broad view of how these dynamics play out in different cultural and market contexts.

Serkan is a globally recognized keynote speaker, delivering engaging talks on the Future of Work, Leadership Effectiveness, Employee Engagement, and AI in HR. His academic background, including a BA in Economics from Galatasaray University, an MSc in Neuroscience and Psychology from King's College London, and his current PhD research in Psychology at Warwick University, on leadership and its effects on organizational outcomes, provides a robust, evidence-based foundation for his work.

Serkan has successfully bridged the gap he seeks to close for others. He writes as a practitioner (of both sides -- Business Leadership and HR Leadership), who has lived the challenges and developed the solutions he now offers to a new generation of leaders.