Emily Sweeny is a strategic Human Resources leader known for transforming organizations through people-centric strategies, operational excellence, and trusted business partnership. With deep experience across government contracting, highly regulated environments, and complex matrixed organizations, she excels at aligning HR strategy with business objectives to drive sustainable performance, culture transformation, and organizational clarity.
Most recently, Emily served as Chief of Staff to the CHRO at FINRA, where she acted as a strategic advisor and integrator across the Human Resources organization. She strengthened executive alignment, advanced enterprise-wide priorities, and ensured continuity of leadership operations. Her work included designing strategic communication for executive forums, enhancing cross-functional visibility, and enabling high-impact decision-making. She also championed culture-building initiatives and improved financial oversight processes, reinforcing operational discipline.
Prior to FINRA, Emily was HR Director for SAIC’s Civilian Business Unit, where she led workforce strategy, talent management, leadership development, and culture transformation. She leveraged analytics to guide strategic decisions, improve leadership diversity, advance organizational readiness, develop culture change programs, and influence major talent outcomes. Earlier, as HR Director at Foxhole Technology, she reshaped the HR infrastructure to support business growth, enhanced benefit options while driving cost savings through benefits optimization, and established scalable systems for compliance and learning.
Emily built her foundational expertise in progressive HR leadership roles at VSE Corporation, Avascent, The Arrowmaker Group, and the United Services Organizations (USO), where she led employee relations, benefits and compensation, labor relations, and compliance initiatives.
She holds an MBA from The George Washington University and a BA in English from Brooklyn College. A long-standing SHRM member and SHRM-SCP, Emily is recognized for her authenticity, strategic insight, and commitment to fostering cultures where people and organizations thrive.
