AI Pacesetter: Seneca Polytechnic Transforms HR As Frontier Firm

What do you do when the funding that anchored your HR transformation disappears unexpectedly? For Seneca Polytechnic, a public college with 44,000 students in the greater Toronto area, the answer was redesigning the transformation itself. In this episode, we speak with Diana Mohan, Executive Director of Transformation and Change at Seneca Polytechnic — a 2026 HR Pacesetter Award winner — about how her team chose to continue forward rather than press pause when regulatory changes created a structural deficit across Canada’s higher education sector. Diana shares how Seneca’s HR team embraced AI to totally change how HR operates and scale HR services. Their approach began with listening, building trust and capability across the team, and empowering people at every level to create new AI use cases. The result has not only been more efficient service delivery and a better employee experience—it’s been a strategic shift to an insight-driven, advisory HR function. Diana Mohan is a transformation specialist and trusted advisor specializing in over a decade of organizational strategy, AI adoption, and the future of work. With a career spanning Deloitte, Kearney, and executive leadership roles, she has helped many organizations translate bold ideas into practical transformation programs, enabling leaders to navigate uncertainty, accelerate change, and prepare for what’s next. Additional Information New Research: How AI Transforms $400 Billion Of Corporate Learning US Workforce In 2035: A Few More Workers, A Lot More Output The Great Decoupling: How Workers Became Disconnected From Companies And AI Will Accelerate This Trend Get Galileo: How Seneca Transformed HR Chapters (00:00:00) - What Works: The Future of Work(00:00:41) - HR Pacesetter Award Winners: Diana Mouhand(00:01:52) - In the Know: The HR Team at Seneca Polytechnic(00:02:47) - How HR is on a transformation journey(00:05:13) - How Cognizant Went From Transformation to a Pivot(00:06:59) - How To Build Trust in AI at Seneca(00:12:19) - The HR org chart: AI Agents(00:16:10) - What Makes an HR Team Flexible in the Age of AI(00:18:10) - WSJD Live: The AI Transformation