In this episode.

What if your strongest brand ambassadors aren’t your marketing team, but the people who experience your culture every day?

In this episode of Elevate, host Joy Fajardo sits down with Tanya Bevington, Head of Communications at IKEA Canada, to explore what happens when internal communications, culture, and brand aren’t treated as separate things, but as parts of the same experience.

For Tanya, that starts with a simple principle: coworkers come first. Across more than 7,000 coworkers in Canada, many of whom don’t sit behind a desk, IKEA has built a communications approach designed around how people actually work, connect, and consume information. And before a major campaign reaches customers, the work starts internally, making sure coworkers understand it, believe in it, and see the role they play in bringing it to life.

Together, Joy and Tanya discuss:

Why IKEA makes sure coworkers hear important company news before they hear it anywhere else.

How IKEA brought thousands of coworkers into its Bring Home to Life brand platform before taking it to market.

What the Cannes Gold-winning Secondhand Tax (SHT) campaign taught the team about trust, purpose, and taking meaningful brand risks.

How mental health training, wellness days, and listening to employees can strengthen culture and retention.

Why reaching a frontline workforce takes more than email, and how IKEA combines digital channels, leaders, face-to-face communication, and even TikTok-style content.

Why leaders across the organization need to see themselves as communicators.

What Tanya has learned about authenticity, vulnerability, and taking up space after more than 20 years in communications.

How AI can make communicators faster without replacing the human voice that makes communication believable.

At the heart of the conversation is a reminder that a brand isn’t only what customers see. It’s also what employees experience, what leaders reinforce, and what people are proud enough to carry with them.

If you work in internal communications, employee experience, HR, culture, or brand, this episode offers a practical look at what it takes to build trust from the people closest to your organization outward.

Most HR leaders build their careers in one or two industries. Khai Jones has built hers in five, and the thread connecting all of them isn't a framework or a methodology. It's a belief about what people actually need to grow.

In this episode of Elevate, host Joy Fajardo sits down with Khai Jones, incoming VP of Employee Experience at GoDaddy, to explore what it really means to grow people with intention, and what it costs when you don't.

Khai's career spans nearly 20 years and five very different industries: healthcare, manufacturing, global industrial tech, defence, and now tech. She built HR in places most people leaders never see, including nine years at Cummins, where spending time on the factory floor taught her that the people closest to the product are the ones who drive business success. That belief has followed her across 50+ countries and 18,000+ person organizations. And for 20 years, she's quietly run a foundation for at-risk youth alongside every role she's held.

In this conversation, Khai unpacks what intentional growth actually looks like in practice, both as an individual navigating a career and as a leader sponsoring others. She shares the concept of a personal board of directors, why authenticity on a team is the first thing that dies under pressure, and where she thinks human connection fits in a world increasingly shaped by AI.

You'll also hear how she thinks about evaluating EX technology: not just for what it can do today, but whether it can scale with you. This episode is for people leaders and HR professionals who want to lead with more intention, and who believe that growth only happens when someone truly sees you, invests in you, and means it.