Before all of our Power Breakfast events, we invite the panelists to the Business Record office for a pre-event meeting to prepare for possible topics. We always leave that meeting wishing we could have invited our entire audience into the room. That sentiment has prompted us to host a series of what we are calling Power Roundtables, in which members from various industries discuss the trends, opportunities and challenges they are facing. This particular roundtable came about after a conversation with Drake University’s Shannon Cofield, who shared that the university had been hosting human resource executives from area businesses in order to identify key workforce skill gaps for the new Drake Executive Education Center. We gathered our own group of HR pros to replicate one of those conversations. Our conversation can be viewed on our website and we also asked our reporter Joe Gardyasz to write his key takeaways and observations from the discussion. We hope you enjoy.

The Panelists:
Kevin Elsberry – HR vice president, Mercy Medical Center – Des Moines
Kevin Pokorny – principal, Pokorny Consulting 
Beth Raymond –  senior vice president, human resources, Principal Financial Group
Christy Smith –  vice president of HR operations for Merit Resources 

Moderators: 
Chris Conetzkey – Editor, Business Record
Joe Gardyasz – Senior Staff Writer, Business Record