Tamar Elkeles is an experienced chief learning & talent officer, chief human resources officer, and thought leader in the talent, learning, HR, and organization development field. Throughout her nearly 30-year career, she has had unique experiences with entrepreneurs and executives in startups as well as large enterprises. She has expertise managing global growth, scaling businesses, and leading international teams as well as an extensive background implementing best-in-class practices within technology companies.

Tamar was most recently the CHRO for XCOM Labs, a wireless technology company propelling the next mobile technology revolution. Previously, she was chief talent executive at Atlantic Bridge Capital, a global venture capital fund focused on technology investments. Prior to this role, Tamar was the chief people officer for Quixey, a Silicon Valley tech startup, and before that spent 25 years as the chief learning and talent officer at Qualcomm.

In her roles as CHRO, Tamar led all HR globally, including talent acquisition, talent development, compensation, benefits, HR systems, organization design, employee communications, and worldwide HR operations. In her long tenure as chief learning and talent officer, she helped grow Qualcomm into one of the most successful companies in the world. There she led the development of Qualcomm’s workforce, scaling the employee base from 700 to over 31,000 employees worldwide. Her scope of leadership included talent strategy, global learning, executive/leadership development, technical development, employee communications, change management, organization development, acquisition integration, organizational transformation, talent management, culture & engagement, emerging technologies, and mobile learning for Qualcomm’s global workforce. The Qualcomm Learning Center operated as a unique internal consulting function to the business, which provided innovative solutions that enabled business growth and strong financial results.

Under Tamar’s leadership, Qualcomm’s Learning Center consistently ranked in Training magazine’s list of Top Training Organizations. In 2002, they were best in class in telecommunications. In both 2000 and 1994, they were awarded the Organization of the Year Award from the Association for Talent Development for exceptional employee development programs. During Tamar’s nearly 25-year tenure at Qualcomm, The Qualcomm Learning Center earned several awards from ATD and was regularly named to the Chief Learning Officer (CLO) Magazine “Learning Elite”. In 2015, the Qualcomm Learning Center was named “Learning & Development Organization of the Year” by CLO Magazine.