Finalist | HRKatha Rising Star Leadership Awards 2025
Sujata Phukan has spent fourteen years in HR, but the people who have shaped her philosophy most, she says, are not necessarily the senior leaders she has reported to. They are the employees she has worked with.
Career conversations, difficult discussions and moments when someone has come to her uncertain about what comes next have gradually shaped the way she thinks about the function. Every people decision, in her view, touches something tangible: confidence, motivation, trust and the way someone feels about returning to work the next morning.
That awareness sits at the centre of how she operates. HR, she believes, is ultimately about holding two priorities in balance: what the business needs and what is fair to the person affected by the decision. Neither can consistently override the other without eventually weakening trust.
That balance between business judgement and people instinct is what earned Phukan a place among the finalists of the HRKatha Rising Star Leadership Awards 2025.
Leadership without the title
Phukan’s view of leadership has little to do with hierarchy.
It begins with ownership: being someone others can depend on, following through on commitments and caring about people consistently rather than only when circumstances demand it.
Her advice to professionals starting out is similarly practical. Stay curious. Ask questions. Speak up. Look for ways to improve what already exists.
The reasoning is simple. People often remember how they were treated more clearly than they remember someone’s designation. Trust and dependability, accumulated over time, create influence long before formal authority arrives.
By that measure, leadership is available to anyone willing to practise it.
Empathy with courage
Ask Phukan what capabilities will define the next generation of HR professionals and she identifies three.
The first is business acumen. The more deeply an HR professional understands how the organisation creates value, the more useful they can be to both employees and leaders. Operational credibility, in her view, is not optional.
The second is AI and digital fluency. Technology is already changing how HR works, and she believes professionals will need to explore these tools actively rather than wait for formal training to tell them what to use and how.
The third is what she calls empathy with courage.
It is also the one she considers most important.
Empathy alone, in her view, can become avoidance if it prevents difficult conversations. HR cannot always say yes. Sometimes it means challenging a leader.
Sometimes it means explaining an unpopular decision to an employee. Sometimes it means holding a position that neither side particularly wants to hear.
Doing what is fair, she argues, is not always the same as doing what is comfortable.
For Phukan, credibility comes from knowing the difference.
Making AI learning less intimidating
One initiative Phukan recalls with particular satisfaction began with a simple question: how do you help people become more comfortable with AI without making it feel like another mandatory training programme?
Her answer was to make the learning informal.
Instead of relying only on conventional modules, she introduced small challenges and simple activities that encouraged people to experiment with AI tools in their everyday work.
The response surprised her. Participation grew because people were curious, not because they were required to complete a programme.
The experience reinforced a broader lesson for her: learning does not always become more effective simply because it becomes more structured. Sometimes experimentation, peer conversation and the freedom to try something without fear of getting it wrong can create stronger adoption than formal instruction.
When HR cannot choose sides
Phukan is equally clear about HR’s role when employees and senior leaders disagree.
HR, she believes, cannot simply choose one side.
Its responsibility is to understand both positions well enough to ask better questions and help find a solution that neither party may have reached independently. That can mean telling leaders something they would rather not hear. It can also mean helping employees understand a decision they strongly disagree with.
What makes either conversation possible is credibility.
Both sides must believe the HR professional in front of them is being candid rather than political.
That instinct carries into how she approaches change more broadly. Earlier in her career, she assumed a well-designed solution would largely speak for itself. Experience taught her otherwise.
She now spends as much time building understanding and trust around a change as designing the intervention itself. A solution people do not understand, she has learnt, rarely becomes one they willingly adopt.
Storytelling as an HR skill
One capability Phukan values sits outside the traditional HR toolkit: storytelling.
Whether presenting an idea, influencing a stakeholder or helping a leader navigate change, she believes the ability to frame a clear narrative can determine whether an argument gets heard at all.
That becomes particularly important as HR takes on more strategic questions. Data may strengthen an argument, but numbers alone rarely create alignment.
Leaders still need to understand what the numbers mean, why they matter and what should happen next.
For Phukan, storytelling is therefore less about presentation and more about translation: turning complexity into something people can act on.
Quick Takes
Dinner with any HR leader, living or dead: Dave Ulrich. She would ask how HR can remain strategic as AI reshapes the profession without losing the human elements that make the function valuable.
On her reading list: AI in HR, leadership, employee experience and the future of work.
The skill outside HR that helps most: Storytelling.
Conflict style: Mediation.
Recognition or rewards: Recognition. A genuine acknowledgement, she believes, can stay with people longer than many formal reward programmes.
On hybrid and remote work: Both offer advantages and trade-offs. For Phukan, the more important question is whether people feel connected, supported and able to do their best work.
Why she is a Rising Star
Sujata Phukan’s strength lies less in any single initiative than in the consistency of the judgement behind them.
Across business partnering, employee conversations, change initiatives and AI adoption, the same philosophy appears repeatedly: understand the business, remain close to the employee experience and do not confuse empathy with avoidance.
Her phrase, ‘empathy with courage’, captures that approach particularly well. HR earns trust not by agreeing with everyone, but by being willing to tell people what they need to hear while still treating them with fairness and respect.
Her approach to AI learning offers a useful example. Rather than beginning with technology, she began with behaviour: how do you make people curious enough to experiment? The solution worked because it addressed the human barrier before the technical one.
Fourteen years into her career, Phukan still appears more interested in asking better questions than projecting certainty. That combination of business understanding, people instinct and the courage to hold difficult conversations is what makes her one of the emerging HR leaders worth watching.
Rising Stars is HRKatha’s editorial series profiling the next generation of HR leaders shaping the future of the profession. The series features winners and finalists of the HRKatha Rising Star Leadership Awards alongside emerging professionals whose work, ideas and leadership potential deserve wider recognition.