Oliver Sam is the Chief Human Resources Officer at VDart Group, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. With over two decades of global experience across eight major cities, he brings a strategic blend of business insights and deep expertise in human capital, culture transformation, and organizational development.

 At VDart, he has led enterprise-wide initiatives in talent strategy, leadership development, ESG, and social impact, embedding the company’s brand promise into the core employee, client, and partner experience. Oliver has played a pivotal role in driving business diversification and international market expansion. An alumnus of the Tuck School of Business Executive Education program, his leadership approach has been recognized in Harvard Business Review and NACRA case study and co-authored on culture and resilience with Emerald Publishing. In 2025, he was honored as CHRO of the Year by the PeopleFirst Excellence Awards and named HR Leader of the Year by the Financial Express HR Awards.

The CHRO as Brand Promise Custodian: Reimagining the Role from the Inside Out

Brand Promise has traditionally been seen in the domain of marketing and customer experience. It is what organizations articulate to the outside world, a commitment of what customers can consistently expect. In product companies, it might show up as performance, precision, or innovation. In service organizations, it could reflect reliability, agility, or trust. Yet when culture is not aligned with what is projected, the promise quickly becomes hollow.

What is often overlooked is that for a Brand Promise to be credible externally, it must first be experienced internally. A brand promise is not just a statement for customers, it is the organization’s highest expression of who it seeks to be, the sum of all it claims to stand for and strives to become. It is both a mirror of present culture and an indication of the future being built. When this internal reality and external message are misaligned, even the strongest marketing loses credibility. The lived experience of employees is the clearest reflection of this promise. Which is why safeguarding Brand Promise cannot rest only with marketing or customer experience.

This shift in thinking opens a far more strategic role for the Chief Human Resources Officer. Jen Colletta in her thought-provoking article, “What’s in a title? The rise and fall of Chief Human Resources Officer,” she writes about how HR leaders are becoming indispensable to shaping business resilience and purpose. The pandemic, geopolitical shifts, and the growing importance of stakeholder capitalism have all placed HR at the center of organizational transformation, leading to a reimagining and even rebranding of the title ‘CHRO’. In this context, it becomes essential to ask: can the CHRO also be the custodian of Brand Promise?

At VDart, purpose is embedded at the heart of how the business operates. But purpose alone doesn’t translate into action unless it is lived by every individual. That is where culture comes in, as the carrier of Brand Promise. At the center of that cultural ecosystem is the CHRO.

The Chief Human Resources Officer today goes far beyond managing talent or culture as independent functions. The role is about shaping and safeguarding the everyday experiences of people in the organization. The CHRO connects employee experience, culture, and strategy, not as parallel tracks but as the very architecture of how a brand is built and delivered.

It is a role that demands far more than traditional HR leadership. When employees deeply believe in what the organization stands for, they become its most authentic ambassadors. That is the shift at VDart. Central to this shift is the Credo, VDart’s value system, which defines the principles by which the organization operates. The Credo is not symbolic; it is operationalized. It is embedded into how decisions are made, how leaders behave, how people grow, and how success is measured.

For instance, SOAR, VDart’s mentoring and sponsorship program for women employees, is spearheaded by the Global Women’s Leadership Initiative (GWLI) with the CHRO as its executive sponsor. SOAR does not just develop women leaders. The program itself is anchored in the beliefs of providing equitable opportunity, resilience, and enablement. Similarly, VDart’s language development programs, well-being interventions, and manager enablement sessions are primarily culture-driven and not compliance-triggered. They exist because unless employees experience psychological safety, learning opportunities, and inclusion firsthand, the organization cannot deliver on its promise to customers and partners.

This level of internal alignment is critical. If Brand Promise is what the world sees, culture is what people live. The CHRO ensures that one is not disconnected from the other.

In the services industry, where employees are often the product, every conversation, every email, every solution deployed becomes a touchpoint that either reinforces or erodes trust in the brand. Ensuring that employees understand and embody Brand Promise is therefore fundamental to business.

Yet another example is PROPEL, a year-long mentoring program co-led by the CEO and the CHRO, where mid-level leaders are mentored by executive leaders. The program is dedicated to how managers can be Brand Promise or value ambassadors themselves, with emphasis on building trust within their teams, the significance of clear and upward feedback, all circling back to how values are demonstrated at the leadership level. Many of these leaders go on to helm strategic roles across the globe, carrying forward not just their capabilities but a grounded understanding of what it means to deliver Brand Promise both internally and externally.

Values are not just wall posters. They function as behavioral expectations. Performance conversations include how values are demonstrated. Leadership development programs use real scenarios to drive conversations about resilience, partnership, and integrity.

The Credo Awards, VDart’s values recognition program, are powered entirely by employee nominations. Recipients are chosen by their peers for exemplifying core values through their actions, both in how they support others and in how they contribute to the organization.

When employees experience the brand internally through inclusion, development, and purpose, they become the most authentic brand ambassadors. Beyond brand training, employees need brand alignment, and this is championed by the CHRO.

These practices have also translated into outcomes. The improvement in VDart's EcoVadis sustainability rating within a year, from Bronze to Silver, is testament to enabling a culture that values transparency, responsibility, and impact. Here too, the CHRO ensures that the systems, programs, and conversations that support those values are not only in place but working.

When Brand Promise is experienced through people first, the CHRO’s role in delivering on that promise becomes non-negotiable. Innovation cannot be promised to a client unless teams are empowered to experiment. Agility cannot be promised unless people are trained, equipped, and trusted to act. Resilience cannot be practiced unless internal structures support it.

At VDart, when the CHRO becomes a true custodian of Brand Promise, the benefits transcend from theory to practice making it real. Employees show up with greater clarity and commitment. Clients see consistency not just in delivery, but in values. And the organization builds a reputation that is grounded in lived experience, not branding.

One client-facing team member shared that stepping into a customer role felt natural because the brand had already been experienced internally. That alignment reduces friction, confusion, and inconsistency. It builds reputation organically.

Of course, this is not without challenges. This redefined role of the CHRO demands close partnership with other functions like marketing, operations, technology, and finance. It requires a seat at the table where business decisions are made, and it calls for a strong understanding of how culture drives strategy.

But it also opens new opportunities. When HR is positioned as the architect of the brand from the inside out, the narrative shifts. The conversation moves from HR being a support function to HR being a driver of value. And in that shift lies the future of the CHRO’s role.

For those looking to make their Brand Promise real, here are five ways to begin:

1. Start with Culture as a Brand Promise Enabler: Audit whether values are lived or just listed. Use data from engagement surveys, exit interviews, and culture audits to spot alignment gaps that impact the delivery of the Brand Promise.
2. Define Brand-Relevant Behaviors: Collaborate with cross-functional teams to codify what behaviors bring the Brand Promise to life. Make those behaviors part of hiring, feedback, and reward systems.
3. Make Culture Everyone’s Job in Delivering the Brand Promise: Build shared accountability. Create frameworks where managers and employees across functions are equally responsible for upholding and evolving the Brand Promise.
4. Leverage Storytelling to Reinforce Brand Promise: Use real stories to make abstract values come alive. Storytelling is not a campaign; it is cultural infrastructure that helps people understand and experience the Brand Promise in their daily work.
5. Measure What Matters for Brand Promise Alignment: Go beyond KPIs. Track how employees perceive alignment between what the company says and what it does. Use this insight to continuously evolve programs and policies that deliver the Brand Promise consistently.

All of this requires deep commitment to ensuring that the Brand Promise is not a message created by one team, but a reality experienced and delivered by all. That commitment begins at the top, and the CHRO holds a unique responsibility at the core of it, shaping culture, enabling alignment, and ensuring that what the organization promises externally is what its people live internally.