Laura Dannels

Dr. Laura Dannels is CHRO for the University of California, San Francisco, where she leads enterprise people and culture strategy across both the UCSF campus and UCSF Health, supporting a workforce of more than 40,000 employees across one of the nation’s premier academic health enterprises.

An enterprise HR executive with nearly two decades of experience, Dr. Dannels has led workforce and culture strategy for multi-billion-dollar organizations across healthcare, academia, energy, and professional services. She partners closely with CEOs and executive teams to align talent strategy with business priorities, modernize people systems, and strengthen leadership capability from the front line to the C-suite.

A central focus of her work is applying AI, technology, and automation across HR functions to improve the employee and leader experience. She has led large-scale digital HR transformations, including ERP implementations, and has applied AI across HR functions. Her approach emphasizes responsible adoption, strong governance, and human-centered design to ensure technology reinforces leadership effectiveness and organizational culture.

 Prior to UCSF, Dr. Dannels served as Chief Talent Officer for Wellstar Health System, where she helped scale the organization from approximately $2 billion to $8 billion. She also served on Wellstar’s Catalyst Venture Investment Advisory Committee, evaluating emerging technologies focused on improving the healthcare workforce experience.

Laura is a frequent national speaker, and her work has been recognized by Forbes, Fortune, Great Place to Work, Becker’s Healthcare, ACHE, Fair360, the Obama Administration, and with the Tony Hsieh Award.

Dr. Dannels holds a PhD from Pepperdine University, an MBA from the University of Houston, is SHRM-SCP certified, a certified executive coach through UC Berkeley, and serves as an HR Venture Advisor with SemperVirens Venture Capital.