Change People Can Absorb: Curana Health’s CPO on AI, Compliance, and Product‑Minded HR

Summary

How do you lead a frontline care workforce through constant change—without burning them out?

Valentina Gissin, Chief People Officer at Curana Health, shares how her team improves care for seniors while helping 2,000+ providers embrace change, work smarter, and stay focused on patients.

She explains why the real limiter isn’t your roadmap—it’s how much change your organization can metabolize—and how she creates capacity by carving out paid time for providers to preview what’s coming and understand the “why.”

Valentina breaks down a pragmatic AI strategy that keeps clinicians in their “genius zone” with just‑in‑time guidance (not decisions), and reframes compliance as a design feature, not a blocker.

She also discusses the expanding remit of modern people teams—acting like business operators with P&L fluency—and how to navigate today’s messy HR tech market by thinking like a product leader and building before buying. Expect clear, field-tested tactics for change adoption, AI enablement, and resourcing people teams to do more with less.

Timestamps

[00:45] – Guest intro: Curana Health’s model, mission, and frontline provider workforce

[01:51] – The challenge: startup velocity, uncertainty, and reframing change for clinicians

[04:35] – Measuring “capacity for change”: time studies, prioritization, and creating flex

[05:58] – Creating paid time to absorb change and arming leaders with a clear “why”

[07:54] – Practical AI: keeping providers in their genius zone with just‑in‑time best practices

[10:50] – Compliance as a feature: HIPAA, “code as law,” and why digitization increases rigor

[12:49] – Doing more with less: CPO as business operator, KPIs, and nontraditional HR talent

[16:20] – HR tech strategy: build before you buy, product mindset, and what to look for in vendors

[19:45] – Parting advice: self‑care, curiosity, and designing from first principles

Takeaways

- Audit your org’s capacity for change; run time studies and pace initiatives to what teams can absorb.

- Create paid, protected time for employees to preview changes and internalize the “why.”

- Use AI to surface just‑in‑time guidance so experts spend more time on care, less on admin.

- Treat compliance as a design constraint and advantage—build rules into technology workflows.

- Evolve people teams into business operators: tie HR work to company KPIs and P&L outcomes.

- Think like a product leader: prototype AI automations, prefer built‑in features, and only buy tools that solve clearly defined problems.

Sponsor

AllVoices brings all your employee relations work together in one place. No more jumping between spreadsheets, emails, and legacy systems just one place to document and manage reports, cases, investigations, and performance conversations.

It helps you run a more consistent process, takes busywork off your plate with AI, and makes it easier to spot trends early, so you can work proactively, not just put out fires.See a demo at ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.allvoices.co/

Valentina Gissin, Chief People Officer at Curana Health

HR Voices

Valentina Gissin, Chief People Officer at Curana Health