Laura Close

Laura Close is the co-Founder and CBO of Included.ai, one of the first AI-native platforms for workforce analytics. Since the crash of the talent acquisition market, she has helped HR leaders move beyond legacy dashboards and data overload toward clear, actionable insights, positioning AI as a career-maker for the HR function. Included’s purpose built Agentic AI enables leaders to integrate over 3,000 pre-coded workforce metrics and transform analytics from passive monitoring into proactive, strategic decision-making with enterprise deployment in under five weeks, four times faster than industry incumbents.

Laura has earned her reputation as both a builder and a convener. On LinkedIn, her posts on AI adoption and HR leadership routinely go viral, growing her community to more than 12,000 HR executives and practitioners. She has become a trusted voice for CHROs, VPs, and people leaders navigating rapid change, championing a new model of leadership that is data fluent, politically savvy, and human-first.

A sought-after thought leader and podcast guest, Laura has been interviewed by Marketplace and the Wall Street Journal, flown to AWS re:Invent to speak on GenAI and workplace accessibility, and tapped by IBM for their 2025 Agentic AI track at SXSW, where she interviewed their CHRO. She also created and hosted the “HR Tech, What’s Working?” LinkedIn Live series, featuring leaders from Google, Microsoft, and more.