Speaking at Rising 2026: 6 Workday Leaders Share Why This Year Is Different

Workday Rising 2026 is just a few months away. With more than 400 sessions, keynotes, product demos, customer showcases, and hands-on labs, the event is designed to help teams put AI to work in practical, meaningful ways.

In addition to Workday Co-Founder, CEO, and Chair Aneel Bhusri; President, Product and Technology Gerrit Kazmaier; and Chief AI Officer Joel Hellermark, several leaders, customers, and partners will take the mic. Attendees will hear how AI agents are transforming HR, finance, and IT, informing better decisions, and delivering results. 

We asked a few notable speakers what they're most excited about this year. Here's what they told us.

1. ‘To connect and learn from a community of more than 20,000 forward thinking professionals’ – Max Wessel, SVP, Product

“Rising brings together the best and brightest minds from across the worlds of HR and finance,” Wessel said. “With so much transformation happening today, I couldn’t be more excited to share ideas with this community and learn from the incredible leaders who’ll be there. This is a unique opportunity to connect and learn from a community of more than 20,000 of the most forward thinking professionals in your community. What more could you ask for during this moment of transformation?”

2. ‘Showing the better way to enterprise AI’ – Gerrit Kazmaier, President, Product & Technology

"There is a persistent myth in our industry that you can just plug a generic AI model into your enterprise and magically transform your business. But simply connecting powerful language models to enterprise data without trusted guardrails risks creating lawless and unreliable agents,” Kazmair explained. 

“What I am most excited about for Workday Rising is showing over 30,000 attendees the better way to enterprise AI. Across more than 400 sessions, we will demonstrate exactly how this comes to life. Every attendee will see how Workday AI agents do real work. They’ll see how this technology liberates people to focus on driving meaningful impact in their own organizations. This is the shift from artificial intelligence to applied enterprise AI."

3. ‘Customer stories about all the progress they’ve made’ – Sheri Rhodes, EVP, Chief Customer Officer

“It’s always about the customers connecting,” said Sheri. “I love to hear the customer stories about all of the progress they’ve made with our solutions. And they give us balanced feedback, which is so important.”

4. ‘How we are going to open the aperture around AI’ – Rob Enslin, President, Chief Commercial Officer

“Rising is my favorite event of the year. It’s when we showcase what the future of Workday is going to look like—how we are going to open the aperture around AI, and what AI is going to do to help customers unlock value in their businesses,” Enslin said. 

“You get to spend real, quality time with the Workday employees and our customers, and see the best of Workday on show.”

5. ‘Our product roadmap has never been stronger’ – Lionel Liniger, Senior Vice President, North America Sales

“I can’t wait for Rising in Vegas this year. It’s going to be the biggest and the best one yet,” said Liniger. “I really believe this is our time. We can feel it from our customers. We can feel it from our partners. We can feel it internally. Our product roadmap has never been stronger. Our product teams are pumping out innovation at a speed we’ve never seen before.” 

“My favorite part about Rising is all of our customer communities coming together, sharing stories, and talking about the outcomes that they’re driving with Workday,” he added. “It’s absolutely unique to Workday, and there’s nothing like it.”

6. ‘Cool stuff to get your hands on’ – Gabe Monroy, CTO

“We have so much new product innovation that’s coming out in general availability,” said Monroy. “There will be lots of cool stuff to get your hands on and experiment with. Please join us at Rising to play around with new tech.”

Want to learn more about the event? Register on the Workday Rising website.