Speakers

As Chief Human Resources Officer, reporting directly to Mayor Jim Strickland since 2016, Alex is the architect of the City's 21st Century talent management, total rewards, HRIS, and diversity practices which helped move the City from a Glassdoor overall rating of 2.5 out of 5 in 2015 to 3.5 out of 5 in 2019.

Her work has been featured in numerous publications, including Forbes, American City and County Magazine, Governing Magazine, and CNBC, for modernizing government through culture change, technology, and unique programs.

In 2017, the City of Memphis became a trailblazer by offering a private health insurance exchange for retirees and being the first municipality to offer a student loan contribution program. Also, in 2018, the City was the most significant national public sector entity to move to HR cloud-based technology. She and her team received national recognition in Workforce Magazine for this achievement. 

Alex regularly serves as a guest panelist and conference presenter for national and global audiences. She has been a featured participant in the Netflix series Real Talk: Blacks in HR and a panelist at Hacking HR; Hope Global Forum; Aspen Institute, National League of Cities, and SXSW. She was also a keynote speaker for the TN Society of Human Resource Management and Public Sector Network. Also, she was recently named on Social Micole's #HRforall Most Inclusive HR Influencer List.

A firm believer in community service, Alex serves on the advisory council for 3SixtyInsights and the advisory board for Government Executive Media Group's RouteFifty. She also serves on the board of directors for First8 Memphis, a non-profit committed to universal pre-k education in Memphis, and the Soulsville Foundation.

She holds a Bachelor's degree in Economics from Duke University and a Master's degree in Human Resources and Industrial Relations from the University of Minnesota. Alex currently lives in Memphis with her two daughters.

Amy is a government administration strategist with two decades of executive leadership experience, including serving as the Deputy Secretary for the Wisconsin Department of Corrections and directing numerous public programs for Milwaukee County. Secretary-designee Pechacek has managed benefit administration, health and life safety functions, community development, criminal justice and juvenile detention reform, and other complex program services for multimillion-member constituencies. For the past decade she has been involved in public policy creation and implementation, and acted in advisory roles for various practice areas associated with local and large-scale governmental administration, specializing in crisis management for compliance related damage mitigation and program recovery. Amy began her career as a licensed private detective focused on fraud investigations, and has traveled the country extensively working undercover.

She received her master's degree in public policy and public administration from Northwestern University and her undergraduate degree from UW-Madison in sociology and criminal justice. Amy is also a graduate of the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service's Senior Executive Institute at the University of Virginia.

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