Heather Laychak

Heather Laychak has over 20 years of experience in human resources at for-profit and nonprofit companies across multiple industries, including aerospace and defense, academia, retail, entertainment, and health care. She is currently the vice president and chief people officer at Los Angeles–based The Aerospace Corporation, an independent, nonprofit corporation operating the only federally funded research and development center for national security in space, which performs objective technical analyses and assessments for a variety of government, civil, and commercial customers. Ms. Laychak serves as a strategic advisor to the CEO and executive leadership team, with responsibility for developing and executing the human resource strategy to enable the achievement of business, people, and organizational objectives . In this role, she has oversight for all areas of human resources, including talent acquisition, diversity, equity and inclusion, people learning and development, employee and labor relations, workforce planning and analytics, total rewards, people strategy and management, and organizational development. She also serves as the management liaison for the Compensation and Personnel Committee of the Board of Trustees, responsible for trustee, corporate officer, and company-wide compensation and benefits, executive incentive plan management, officer succession planning, and workforce engagement and culture.

Prior to joining The Aerospace Corporation, Ms. Laychak served as the senior director of talent management at Mattel, Inc., responsible for talent acquisition, talent management, and diversity and inclusion after supporting the global transformation of the Finance and Strategic Planning functions. Before joining Mattel, she held a number of strategic HR leadership positions at Northrop Grumman, including director of human resources for the Space Systems Division, director of organizational effectiveness for the Aerospace Systems Sector, and corporate director of talent acquisition, with accountability for the corporate headquarters move from Century City, California, to Falls Church, Virginia. During her tenure at Northrop Grumman, Ms. Laychak was a key contributor to business unit, sector, and company strategic planning, with significant involvement in business realignment, organization restructuring, and mergers. Before Northrop Grumman, she was vice president of human resources and academic dean for the School of Health Studies at Robert Morris University.

Ms. Laychak was a founding member of the American Red Cross Auxiliary Board in Chicago. She currently serves as a board member for the National Kidney Foundation, Southern California Chapter, and is a Salzburg Global Seminar Fellow.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Iowa and a master’s degree in counseling psychology from Loyola University. She also holds certifications in crisis management, change management, and organization design and has an active Top Secret/SCI security clearance.