Karla Wagner

Karla Wagner is Chief People Officer at Fenton, the social impact communications agency ranked #1 for nonprofit PR by O’Dwyer’s in 2026. A member of the executive leadership team, she develops people and organizational strategies that align talent, culture, business priorities and mission. Her career spans big-box and luxury retail, consumer and service businesses, global communications and social impact, giving her a distinctive perspective on leading people across industries and through periods of growth and change. At Fenton, she oversees talent strategy, organizational culture, employee engagement, leadership and workforce development, performance management, learning, and organizational change.

Connecting Talent Strategy to Business Priorities

Wagner places client service at the center of Fenton’s talent strategy. She helps employees understand why their work matters and how it contributes to client outcomes. Her approach develops communities of practitioners who care deeply about their work and act as stewards of impact.

To shape that strategy, Wagner considers how the agency operates and pursues profitability. Her close partnership with Fenton CEO Valarie De La Garza connects workforce priorities with the organization’s wider direction, enabling business performance and mission to advance together.

While Fenton’s mission and vision remain constant, Wagner keeps its approach to people management flexible. She listens to employees, uses workforce data to inform decisions and responds to changing human dynamics and client environments without losing sight of the agency’s core values.

That flexibility is particularly important in high-stakes social impact communications. Technical skills alone are not enough when advising nonprofits, foundations and purpose-driven organizations addressing complex issues. Employees also need judgment, empathy and the ability to navigate complexity.

“Strong performance management, feedback and development frameworks turn good intentions into consistent outcomes.”

Wagner develops these capabilities through performance management frameworks, real-time feedback and continuous learning. These systems enable employees to approach client work with rigor and humanity, demonstrating how the quality of thinking behind the work determines its wider impact.

She anchors Fenton’s performance expectations in its Principles of Excellence, which provide a shared definition of what great work looks like. Performance management, leadership development and daily decision-making reinforce accountability, curiosity, stewardship and commitment to client goals. Guided by the idea that excellence develops through repeated behavior, she treats its pursuit as both personal and professional.

Her approach also recognizes the value each employee brings to Fenton. Helping individuals maximize their productivity enables the agency to achieve its desired business outcomes.

Embedding DEI Into Agency Operations

Wagner builds on Fenton’s more than 40-year legacy of inclusion, respect and shared purpose. Rather than treating DEI as an initiative assigned to one function, she reinforces diversity, equity and inclusion as an ethos shared across the leadership team and embedded in the agency’s operations.

She strengthens that foundation by ensuring Fenton’s systems, leadership behaviors and employee experiences reflect its commitment to an inclusive workplace culture. Embedding these values into everyday processes prevents DEI from becoming a box-checking exercise.

This environment promotes employee engagement by helping people feel seen, heard and valued. Diverse perspectives are not merely welcomed at Fenton but expected.

Those perspectives also improve client work. Employees’ varied lived experiences inform smarter communications strategies and enable the agency to deliver better outcomes for nonprofit, foundation and advocacy clients.

“Effective HR leadership balances strategic rigor with genuine care for people, creating a workplace culture that strengthens performance and powers meaningful social impact.”

Wagner keeps Fenton’s internal culture aligned with the equity, inclusion and social responsibility guiding its external work. Continued investment in learning and dialogue gives teams space to engage meaningfully with complex social issues.

Investing in Leadership Development

Wagner formalized Fenton’s investment in employee learning and development by introducing the Fenton Learning Lab in 2023. The platform provides hundreds of training hours each year across leadership development, strategic communications, core professional skills and, most recently, artificial intelligence.

In 2025, Fenton deepened that investment by engaging a PhD-level instructional designer. Applying adult-learning science increased the rigor and effectiveness of the programming, with each program designed to produce real behavior change.

The leadership development program has produced a leadership team that is more intentional, adaptive and equipped to lead in complex environments. Treating learning and development as an operating system rather than a one-time event keeps leadership growth continuous. In 2027, Fenton plans to launch the platform externally so clients and partners across the social impact sector can benefit from the expertise supporting its teams.

Securing Alignment for Organizational Change

Earlier in her career, Wagner learned that moving quickly when something was not working was not enough. Although her decisions were directionally right, she did not always take the time to build shared understanding and support among the people affected. The experience taught her that setting a direction does not constitute leadership unless people are willing to follow it.

She now combines urgency with consultation. She recognizes that clarity and decisiveness are acts of care and that building consensus is equally important. Before implementing organizational change, she engages the right people, invites their input and explains what is changing and why. This change management approach creates shared ownership and produces stronger, more sustainable outcomes.

Guiding the Next Generation of HR Leaders

Wagner’s experience shapes her guidance for emerging HR leaders. They must remain connected to people and organizational purpose, translating an organization’s values into employees’ everyday experiences while supporting its business priorities.

She also emphasizes continued investment in personal and organizational learning because the pace of change makes static skill sets insufficient. Strong performance management, feedback and development frameworks turn good intentions into consistent outcomes.

As a reflective exercise, she encourages leaders to write a letter to their younger selves about acting courageously, staying connected to people and purpose, trusting the systems that have supported their progress and changing them when necessary. Identifying lessons gained through experience helps leaders apply them more deliberately to present decisions.

Her final guidance is to lead with both head and heart. Effective HR leadership balances strategic rigor with genuine care for people, creating a workplace culture that strengthens performance and powers meaningful social impact.