In this special live episode of the Future Proof HR podcast, recorded on the floor at Transform 2026 in Las Vegas, Thomas Kunjappu sat down with Laura Brittingham, SVP of People at Prove, for a candid conversation about what AI actually looks like in practice for a scaling HR team and what it means for the function's strategic future.

Prove is a leading provider of identity verification and authentication solutions, trusted by 19 of the top 20 US banks and 1,500 top brands globally. Laura joined less than a year ago with no background in identity, and she's been using that fresh perspective to rethink how HR can drive clarity, speed, and scale across the business.

They got into how Laura is using AI to compress a months-long org design effort into seconds, why her mission this year is to make every employee an expert on Prove's products and industry, and why HR leaders who lean into building with agentic tools will define what the function looks like next.

Topics Discussed:

• Using AI to build a company-wide remit directory and bring clarity to 200 unique job titles
• Why faster processing opens up space for strategic thinking, not just task completion
• The case for AI-powered L&D content to make every employee a product and industry expert
• Why the answer to "replace headcount with AI" is to 10x impact instead
• HR is a strategic arm of the business, not just a compliance and payroll function
• What it means to turn HR teams into builders using agentic tools

Additional Resources:

• Cleary's AI-powered HR Chatbot
• Future Proof HR Community
• Connect with Laura Brittingham on LinkedIn

And we are live again at Transform HR talking

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about future proof in HR.

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So here we are with Laura

Brittingham, the SVP of People at

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Laura Brittingham: Prove

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Thomas Kunjappu: And tell us a

little bit about what Prove does.

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Laura Brittingham: Yeah, so Prove

is a leading provider of identity

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verification and authentication solutions.

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Verifying real people, businesses,

and agents in real time.

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To create more secure and

frictionless digital interactions.

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We're trusted by 19 out of

the top 20 US banks and 1,500

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top brands across the globe.

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And we're trusted by them because

we help them create smoother

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onboarding experiences, reduce

fraud, and grow in a predictable way.

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Thomas Kunjappu: So let's figure

out how you can prove yourself.

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for everyone out there about

how you're future proofing, the

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organization as well as HR itself.

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So tell me a little bit about any

kind of AI initiative that you've

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taken on at the organization?

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Laura Brittingham: We were joking that I

thought about canceling this a bunch of

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times because I sit in these audiences

here and I feel like we're using it

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for fairly basic stuff right now.

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Our major use case today is

increasing processing power.

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Initiative, right now we're creating

a remit directory for the company.

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And we have JD's, we have this little

description here, we have this like

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table comparing different roles and

just using AI to plug all that stuff in

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and say okay, take all of these inputs

and make it into a nice succinct remit.

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And describe it for me.

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What would take hours of time, just

like reading through all of those things

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and processing it is done in seconds.

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And now I can take a strategic step of

saying, okay, now I'm looking at all

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these remits and what overlaps, what

should this role be doing versus how

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it's described today in the business?

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And it speeds up these projects

that used to take months and

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months to get out the door.

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So that's like really

where we're using it today.

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Another one that we haven't started

yet, but my mission for this year is to

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make every Prover and expert improve.

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So that means being an expert in

our products, being an expert in

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our business, our industry, the

competitive landscape, our culture.

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I've been at the company for a

little bit under a year, and I

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have no background in identity.

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Even for me, it's a little tough, right?

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Like we have this, we talk about

internally it takes people at least

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nine months to like really get

familiar with the space and what we do.

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And I think AI could be a really great

use case for even just developing

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content and saying okay, go out there

and collect all this information and

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now make it succinct and digestible

for our employees to kind of ramp up.

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Thomas Kunjappu: I love this.

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There's two different like use cases

I wanna dig into both 'cause it's

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very interesting and different.

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So on the first one, did I get that right?

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So you're really talking about

the talent acquisition funnel.

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So where you're at the point of creating

the job descriptions or like the remits

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or is it more about project based

roles, which is more about someone,

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the tail end of the sales process.

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Laura Brittingham: I think this happens

a lot in scaling companies, right?

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You start really small, you have a bunch

of people who are really scrappy and they

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get their hands in everything, and they're

willing to do whatever it takes to help.

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A company to be successful and then all

of a sudden you're 400 people and there's

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overlap between roles and there's people

like calling this role that thing because

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that's what they decided to call it.

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And what does that actually mean?

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What does this person actually do?

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We have I think 200 unique titles

across the business, like what

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does each of these roles do?

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Should we consolidate some?

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So it's really a project about

figuring out where those lines are.

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I think for me, culturally, it's so

important that people have autonomy

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and ownership, but how can you take

real ownership if you don't know that

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you are truly the owner of this thing?

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You're not sure if that person over

there is doing it or that person,

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like where are the lines playing?

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Thomas Kunjappu: And you have

a lot of coordination costs.

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If for any given project or a percentage

of them people are competing or

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trying to figure out who to, how do

we not step on each other's feet?

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So it's almost like a flavor of a

career laddering or I know but you

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can't do a career ladder without knowing

what the titles and the ladders are.

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But that first step, almost

understanding the landscape today.

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You're leveraging AI to dramatically

get faster at Saying here are

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the 200 different things and

here's like the overlap for that.

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So what...

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Laura Brittingham: Is like, let's

get clarity first and figure out

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what the actual landscape looks like.

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Thomas Kunjappu: So what's been

the impact of that of that for

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your team and even more broadly,

like your internal stakeholders.

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'Cause I imagine that it's starting

up those conversations with managers

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like in a faster way, right?

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Laura Brittingham: So we

haven't rolled it out yet.

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It's still like we're in the process

of creating all of the remits still.

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But the impact for me has been, I

literally would've been spending

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months building out this project,

or someone on my team would've been.

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And now it literally takes seconds.

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Plug in all these different

inputs and have a remit built out.

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So the time back and the time

being able to be more strategic

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about it is really impactful.

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And I think the impact that I hope

to make with the project generally

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is that we create a lot more clarity

across the business and the people

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can just run with their jobs, right?

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Like we can understand and who

to go to for what and really

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define that across the board.

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Thomas Kunjappu: I love that.

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And I think an underlying at an

abstraction layer higher than that

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outcome, I think I'm seeing across

like HR teams is you may have never

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done this project, or if you did,

you're paying consultants, or it's

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gonna be a full-time job for someone

on the team for three months.

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And then you're saying,

is this a priority?

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Or maybe next year, or let's

do it in this hacky way.

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Or we'll just focus on this one function

and try to get them straight and next

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year we'll figure out like the rest.

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So just like speeds up execution

of course, but also even your

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aperture for appetite to just do

things that you maybe consider

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maybe not possible before.

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Laura Brittingham: Yeah,

it's really interesting.

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There was a session yesterday where

the question was posed about what

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would you do if your CEO's coming to

you and asking you to cut 50% of the

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headcount and replace it with AI stuff?

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And my reaction is there's so

much that we could be doing.

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There's so much like if you are able to

take a lot of the admin work, really speed

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people up by using AI, think about how

much more the company could be achieving

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and how much if you're putting these

people on strategic initiatives and really

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thinking about how to push the company

forward and interesting new ways, how

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much benefit that has for the company.

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So like, don't jump straight

to cutting a bunch of heads.

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Think about how do we implement

this stuff to get even more like

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10x the impact of the business.

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Instead of just let's keep the impact

of the business by cutting a bunch

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of people and replacing it with AI.

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Thomas Kunjappu: But it's

a great thought exercise.

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'Cause it is almost like to debate that

like with yourself without it actually

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happening to you and having a proactive

plan in place for like where you want to

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go with not just your team, but also how

you're enabling the entire organization.

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It's interesting.

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And actually that goes a little bit to

your second project, which is you're

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enabling the entire organization to

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be experts at the company almost.

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So it's like this big L&D project

that like you're, pushing for.

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So that's interesting.

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And then that plus all

of the learnings here.

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What are you excited about?

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Maybe I can just put it all

together for the future.

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what do you see is like next in terms

of just AI transformation for your team?

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Laura Brittingham: I think especially

being here we're so excited to

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just keep leaning in even more.

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I think for me, I'm noticing the

biggest gap is I wanna learn how

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to make agents and how to build

my own tools and stuff like that.

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So I feel like there's just

so much possibility of what HR

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teams can do using these tools.

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So I'm super excited about that.

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And I think by using some, like helping it

to reduce processing power or take up some

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of that processing power and open up...

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the space to really experiment.

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I mean, I think another interesting

thing that I'm taking away from this

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week is so many people talking about you

need to create space for your team to

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be able to experiment with this stuff.

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And I think using AI to help you

process and speed up on some of these

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like tasks where you just have to

think really critically about things.

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That in itself, like that's a

pretty simple way you write good

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prompts, you plug it into Gemini

or ChatGPT, whatever you're using.

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And that in itself can help open up space

in your calendar to be experimenting

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with the more complicated things.

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Thomas Kunjappu: That transformation,

that you're talking about, and we always

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talk about future-proofing HR, that

seems like it's like a direct answer

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to that It seems like you're also like

turning your team into builders, right?

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And yourself into...

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you're like solving problems with agentic.

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That's a hot word that's

happening everywhere.

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All over the conference and

certainly a big part of like what

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I see and like doing my day job.

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So if that's like the future then, what

do you think about the HR function itself?

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Kind of going back to your question

about that terrible question from

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the CEO and like that kind of state.

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How do you see the...

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like you and like the HR team

evolving into the future?

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When you say room for more strategic

stuff, what are those things that you

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feel like the function can make a bigger

impact on the overall organization?

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Laura Brittingham: I've always felt

like companies who are more successful

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are thinking about HR strategically

and thinking about that function.

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As a strategic arm of the company, right?

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If your HR is just there to check

the boxes and run payroll and

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stuff like that you're not really

leveraging it as well as you could be.

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And so I think the more space

we open up for these people

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to be strategic, the better.

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People at the end of the day, like you

can't, maybe there's a future where

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there's a company completely run by

AI and there's no humans, but I don't

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really think that is gonna happen.

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I think you're still gonna

have humans in the mix.

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And at the end of the day, humans are

gonna be the best people to understand

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humans and have that interface.

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And being strategic about how you

leverage humans and you engage them and

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you take care of them is so important.

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That's the stuff that we do

best when we're strategic.

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Thomas Kunjappu: Absolutely.

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Thank you for sharing that.

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Before we wrap up, I have to ask if

there's any tactical, reactive or

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administrative task that with a magic

wand you and your team handles today that

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you could just wipe away assuming it's

possible with AI, what comes to mind?

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Laura Brittingham: Oh my gosh.

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Like a million things.

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I could give you a laundry list.

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I I see some of the vendors here

already doing this, but like

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employment verification, like you

get a million emails from people.

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I think for me, a frustrating one is

often when people are having problems

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with like their healthcare stuff and

it's just so frustrating to navigate.

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Like you call this rep and they

give you one answer and that rep

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and they give you another answer.

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And like navigating all of that.

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And I feel like as HR people, like

we care about people so much, so

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we're like stepping in and we're

trying to do the work for them.

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And I feel like making that more seamless

and easier for people would be so amazing.

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I often see in teams that we're the

support where like if everything's

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going well, no one notices because

we're keeping the wheels on the bus.

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And so I think there's

just so much opportunity...

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Thomas Kunjappu: but it can

also be thankless, right?

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Yeah.

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It's kind this hidden work.

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Totally in the shadows,

but it needs to happen.

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If you want to have ultimately

impact employee engagement and

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performance to some degree.

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The benefits one is a

very interesting one.

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Like everyone boasts about the

incredible benefits that they

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offer and then when you're at the

point of claim or need to use it...

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Laura Brittingham:

Healthcare system is so...

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Thomas Kunjappu: Yeah, and that's a

broader conversation which we can...

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Laura Brittingham: another

like half an hour that

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Thomas Kunjappu: We can talk

about that and the HR team can

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impact it only like you can impact

like a piece of that corner.

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But that's about it.

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So thank you for sharing a

couple of these examples.

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If people wanna stay connected with

you or follow your journey as you're

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doing all of this, how can they do that?

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Laura Brittingham: I'm on

LinkedIn, Laura Brittingham

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That's really the main

way to catch up with me.

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Thomas Kunjappu: Okay.

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Well, thank you for taking a

moment to talk about future

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proofing HR here at Transform 2026.

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Thanks for joining us on this

episode of Future Proof HR.

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See you next time as we keep our pulse on

how we can all thrive in the age of AI.