Jon Lester

Vice President of HR Technology, Data & AI for IBM HR - responsibilities include end-to-end ownership, strategy and development of Cloud, AI, Data Science, Automation and Agentic technologies as well as the Digital HR (Future of Work) strategy for IBM. This portfolio also includes management of chatbots, RPA robots, Data Science, Data Analytics and the WatsonX portfolio for HR. All these technologies will continue to support transformation of the way work gets done across HR Delivery Centres, CoE's and HRBPs, as HR moves to a hybrid operating model and way of working. I recently completed a 3 year vision and strategy for the Future of Work, combining HR and IT models to change the IBMers work and how they engage with that work. AskHR continues as the single orchestrated engagement layer employees to complete HR tasks but has moved from a digital assistant to a digital agent.Recent presentations around the Future of Work in 2025 include HR Technologies, SAP Sapphire, IBM Think, Avature Upfront and Gartner HR Symposium; and articles published in The Times, Financial Times, Unleash, People Magazine and Business Insider.Previous roles in BM HR include the Director of Service Delivery Transformation which combined the use of automation/AI technologies to transform the way that works gets done across IBM HR's 6 delivery centres. I was also the Digital HR Strategy Lead, which enabled me to look across all elements of the technology landscape that IBM have in place and create a new strategy driving our move to a full cloud and AI landscape which will support our HR and wider organisation goals relating to the workforce. I also spent 10 years in IBM Consulting leading HR Transformations enabled by technology.