So Drama

In this episode, we're joined by Anthony Onesto, who has seen HR through multiple transformations, from the early internet to mobile to social. Now as Principal of AI and People Solutions at Living HR, he's on a mission to convince HR that the AI wave belongs to them...but he also once built an HR policy chatbot that crashed and burned, and was an aspiring actor before he left the stage behind for the noble work of Human Resources.

So...lots to talk about.

We get into what trust and psychological safety have to do with whether AI rollouts succeed, why discernment is a critical HR skill that theater people practice constantly, and what changes when you treat a workforce more like a repertory group.

Along the way, Anthony talks about his HB Studios days in New York, his stint as an extra on Law & Order, his comic book project Ella the Engineer, and why resilience is the skill he thinks we're devaluing.

We also touch on things like:
🤝 Trust and psychological safety as the one factor that predicted AI transformation success
🤷 Why theater people are so good at the question AI adoption keeps skipping
🔥 A change management hot take about silence vs complaint
🔄 How re-skilling and re-deploying your team during layoffs is kinda like staffing a repertory company
🎉 The case for having a "cast party" after every product launch
🔔 A personal tale of an altar boy and a missed cue,

Anthony may not have fulfilled his dream of becoming a movie star, but he wants HR in the writers' room as the next chapter of the AI story gets told, and I have to say I agree. Time to stop wondering what we could have been and start becoming who we are.

Find him at AnthonyOnesto.com, and check out Ella the Engineer at https://www.theellaproject.com

In this episode, SVP People Jen Paxton explores the parallels between team building and ensemble-oriented leadership, the power of good feedback, and how chaos in theater teaches resilience in business.

Jen also shares how she returned to performing after a 10-year hiatus (and how she ended up performing with her whole family!), what keeps her coming back to the stage while continuing to hold a demanding People Leadership role, and why both worlds are really about logistics, communication, and making other people look good.

Highlights include:
🎭 Broadway dreams and HR schemes, from post-rehearsal notes to feedback resiliency
💡 HR leadership looks a lot like backstage leadership: constant juggling, quick decisions, and no two days feeling the same
👶 Unexpected network effects: how a preschool connection helped Jen return to theater after a 10-year break
🎶 Why performing in Pirates of Penzance, Guys and Dolls, My Fair Lady, and Fiddler on the Roof taught her to stay adaptable under pressure
🧠 Why clarity matters in auditions, hiring, and candidate fit — and what happens when leaders don’t know what they’re really looking for

Jen is a People leader with a creative heart and agility for days, who knows that the best teams are built with a collaborative form of competitiveness, not an ego-driven or individualistic desire to win. It takes many different roles to make things work, onstage and in the office.

Find Jen on LinkedIn and stay tuned for our next episode!

When it comes to the "theater kid to HR pro" persona, T. Tara Turk-Haynes spends equal time in both worlds. She's a playwright with an off-off-Broadway credit, a Van Lier Fellowship at New York Theatre Workshop, and a Lipkin Playwriting Award, and she's also spent decades doing transformative HR and DEI work in corporate spaces. For a long time, even as she juggled between them, she kept those worlds mentally separate. This episode is about why she stopped.

We get into what playwriting teaches you about how to be successful in HR: how to sit with rejection without internalizing it, how to give feedback that people can hear instead of one that makes them defensive, and how to read a room well enough to know when the story you're telling isn't landing. Tara also opens up about the specific tax of doing this work as a Black woman - in both theater and corporate America and how she's learned to fight those battles without becoming a character written by other people.

Highlights include:

🎭 Why playwriting builds a thicker skin than almost any other professional training
💡 The power of the reframe: "I am not for everyone AND everyone is not for me."
🪞Show, don't tell: what bad theater and bad leadership have in common
🤝 The "one slot" problem: how gatekeeping in theater mirrors gatekeeping in HR
📚 Why impact outlives title, and what that means for how you measure your own success

Tara's not asking anyone to burn it all down. She's asking them to get specific, get strategic, and stop mistaking volume for effectiveness - actions speak louder than words.

Find her at equityactivations.com or as T. Tara Turk-Haynes all over the internet (except TikTok; we're done with that).

🤩 Get ready, superstars, because Episode 2 of So Drama is LIVE and it's an unhinged, slightly chaotic, educational, and emotional rollercoaster. Of course it is, because it's Brittany Storie and I discussing:

- HR onstage

- HR as pit orchestra

- HR's backstage personality

- The musical SIX (with appropriate shoutouts to Milly Parker) and how each of Henry VIII's wives is a different HR Archetype. It's a full on Ted Talk, and Brittany came PREPARED.

We laughed. We cried. We laughed till we cried. We learned lessons about history and theater and work. And we remembered why any of this matters in the first place: diversity is only as good as the way you utilize your team's diverse skills, experiences, perspectives. Theater kids know that it takes a lot of different people to tell a story, from conception to reception. Good HR leaders know how to develop an org that plays to people's strengths. The skills, they are transferrable.

Take a listen.

Oh, and click here to get Brittany's Spotify playlist inspired by this episode.

Kate Sargent joins So Drama for our first episode, where we cover everything from the magic of recruiting to adventures with beard glue, from learning to "yes and" to coaching executives, and from making home movies to writing your own story.