Natalie Rothman

Natalie Rothman is the Chief Human Resources Officer at The Hershey Company, a $12B global business with operations across North America, Europe, and Asia, where she leads the company's people strategy, C-Suite succession planning, and serves as management lead for the compensation committee. She is a three-time CHRO and public company board member with over 25 years of experience spanning consumer products, foodservice, beauty, retail, and automotive industries. A self-described people person who grew up in a family dedicated to service — her brother is a fire captain and EMT, her father a physician — Natalie discovered her calling in HR during graduate school at American University, where a labor relations class revealed that she could combine her passion for business with making people's lives better. Her leadership philosophy was forged at PepsiCo, where she spent over a decade and embraced the company's servant leadership model — an "upside-down triangle" focused on the front line — going on route rides with truck drivers, merchandising in stores, and working shoulder to shoulder with hourly team members in manufacturing plants. Prior to Hershey, she served as Chief People Officer at Inspire Brands, the parent company of Arby's, Dunkin', Buffalo Wild Wings, Baskin-Robbins, Jimmy John's, and SONIC, where she oversaw people strategy for 32,000 locations and over 300,000 team members, drove internal mobility rates close to 70%, and helped direct more than $20 million in philanthropic giving including eradicating school lunch debt across four Atlanta-area school districts. At Hershey, Natalie co-sponsors the Digital Mindset initiative alongside the CTO, an enterprise-wide effort to drive adoption of AI and automation. A recognized thought leader on the future of the hourly workforce, she authored the foreword for a book on humanizing hourly work. Natalie currently chairs the Compensation Committee at Udemy and serves on the advisory boards of Emory Goizueta Business School and New Mountain Capital, and holds a J.D. from Brooklyn Law School and an M.A. from American University.