We’re heading back to San Francisco to celebrate a decade of URx with the community that built it. Early Bird tickets for URx 2026 go on sale Dec 4 at 9 AM ET.
Heather Henderson
Early Career Talent Strategist & Author, Fernlight Books
Heather Henderson has spent the last 15 years working at the intersection of universities and the tech industry, partnering with students and early-career professionals as they launch their careers.
At companies including Google, Uber, Visa, and Accenture, she recruited and developed early-career engineers, designers, and consultants within fast-moving, technology-driven environments. Over time, she began to observe a pattern: it was not a lack of talent or ambition, but rising burnout, fragmented attention, and high performers becoming increasingly disconnected from their own growth.
That experience, combined with her background in human development and philosophy, led her to examine how modern technology and recruiting systems shape attention, identity, and long-term performance.
Today, her work focuses on designing human-centered early-career ecosystems in the AI era. Through speaking and writing, she helps organizations build systems that cultivate agency, cognitive resilience, and sustainable high performance.
You’re Not Losing Talent. You’re Losing Attention.
We have optimized nearly every part of early-career recruiting and onboarding except the human nervous system inside it. The result is a generation with powerful AI tools and increasingly fragmented attention. High performance paired with faster burnout. Personalized programs paired with declining retention. This is not a motivation crisis. It is an attention crisis. This session reframes attention as critical talent infrastructure. Not a soft skill, but a strategic asset. Attendees will gain a practical framework for designing early-career programs that build cognitive resilience, protect depth, and use AI as an amplifier rather than a crutch. In the AI era, retention starts with attention.