What Venus Williams Taught Us About Growing Your Game
On June 17, 2026, EZRA brought 150 senior HR and people leaders to New York for Grow Your Game: an event focused on what it really takes to lead, adapt, and grow when the rules keep changing. Venus Williams headlined on a day that served up conversations to leave people thinking differently about leadership and growth.
Our Mission
EZRA's Dana Ianuzziello opened with a story from her childhood — the kind that brings the room back to why the work matters.
"Coaches are the people who make their dreams spark and sing to us a little bit louder."
Six years in, that belief has been translated into action. EZRA has delivered over one million coaching sessions and touched the lives of more than 100,000 people. The goal hasn’t changed: a coach for everyone, everywhere.
Growth has never been harder to define
Chief Innovation Officer Sinead Keenan used her keynote to reframe a familiar question.
For years, we’ve been asked: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
But in a world where roles shift and paths blur, that question falls short.
What if instead we asked: “What do you want to do? And What problems do you want to solve?”
With 70% of today’s skills expected to change by 2030, EZRA Labs research highlights the four capabilities that will define who adapts to this new normal: curiosity (not just adopting new tools, but redesigning how work gets done), discernment (the kind of critical thinking AI cannot replicate — notably, Gen Z's top concern isn't job security, it’s cognitive decline), humility (leading beyond your own expertise), and connection (turning individual AI productivity into impact for the whole organization).
As Keenan put it: "Growth is not just an HR process. It is a condition for performance and for relevance."
The Inner Game: How Leaders Build Self-Awareness
The first panel, moderated by EZRA’s Leslie Caputo, focused on the work that never shows up on an org chart.
Audrey Clegg (Sanofi) traced her leadership philosophy back to her father, an amateur pilot who insisted she learn to land a plane at sixteen — because you never know when something might happen.
"My father might have taught me to always be ready for a crisis. But I think I taught myself how to turn a crisis into an opportunity." And if she ever doubted herself? Her coach gave her a simple exercise: take out your business card, read your title, underline it. "You own it — whether you're ready for it or not."
Margaret Heneghan (Aon) talked about reframing the weight of difficult work: "It's not that we have to do this. It's that we get to do this." While Neena Potenza (IKEA) spoke about realizing she had drifted from her purpose — performing for the ten people at the top instead of the thousands below. She moved back into a country role and now leads people strategy for 16,000 co-workers across IKEA US. Her takeaway: "We have a choice to make every day in terms of how we choose to show up. The magic is in the how."
The Outer Game: Designing Teams and Culture That Scale
The second panel, moderated by Maria Gonzalez, shifted the dialogue from personal leadership to organizational design.
Chrissie Leibman (PepsiCo) challenged the either/or thinking that holds L&D strategies back: "The biggest myth is that you have competing choices — build for scale or personalized experiences, ready for today or prepared for tomorrow. The unlock is in the harmony."
Meanwhile, Jamie Griffin (Shake Shack) provided one of the day's most quotable lines around culture: "We have a culture of being nice, and we're transitioning to a culture of being kind. Nice is: we're going to avoid discomfort but not leave you better than we found you."
Mike DiClaudio (KPMG) used the opportunity to push back on the myth of the all-star team: "Some of our worst performing teams are made up of individual high performers. Teams are comprised of humans, and humans are inherently required to balance."
Sunita Holzer (Verisk) captured how coaching can impact it all: "We have this phenomenon where people are saying — that EZRA thing, I want that too."
Venus, and What's Coming Next: The Gift of Coaching
Venus Williams closed the day in conversation with EZRA CEO Nick Goldberg.
She spoke about failure, preparation, and the quiet discipline behind every breakthrough.
The line that stayed with the room:
"The pathway to winning and greatness is honesty. You can fool yourself, you can pretend, you can bury it — but it's still there if you haven't cleaned it up."
The fireside also gave the room an early look at what EZRA is building next.
