Astound Digital

Antoinette Niland Aglialoro is Chief People Officer at Astound Digital, leading global people strategy across talent, culture, and organizational effectiveness. A PHR-certified HR executive with experience leading global teams, she is known for building high-trust cultures that enable growth, resilience, and innovation.

Learning What Makes People Tick

I grew up in South Africa. When I immigrated to the United States for university, I found myself simultaneously serving as a resident advisor, captaining the women's tennis team, and chairing personnel for my sorority while waiting tables to put myself through school. On the surface, those roles could not look more different. However, every single job was a crash course on human nature. It was about figuring out what makes people tick, what they need, and balancing competing priorities. 

The lessons followed me into the corporate world. When I started my career in operations, my manager noticed that my instincts kept pulling toward projects that focused on the people element. Instead of redirecting me to spreadsheets, she fully supported me. That advocacy taught me the most enduring lesson of my career—being truly seen and shaped toward your strengths is one of the most transformative gifts a leader can provide.

Psychological Safety as an Operational Multiplier

The aspect of “psychological safety” drew me deeper into HR. This work puts you beside people during their highest highs and lowest lows. What keeps me excited is that you are constantly on the edge of something that has never been done before. Change can feel unsettling, but to me, it feels like an adventure. What can we build together that is extraordinary? That means aligning talent acquisition, performance, and growth into a culture that can thrive in the face of change.

Change and resilience are going to define not just our employees' experience, but the world's. To build an agile workforce, leaders must bring their people with them. Employees will not embrace change until they understand their role in it and its impact on them. Without that clarity, no strategy, however well-designed, will land.

“To build an agile workforce, leaders must bring their people with them. Employees will not embrace change until they understand their role in it and its impact on them.”

When I joined Astound Digital, I inherited a large global team. In my first few calls, nobody asked questions. Today, I can barely get off those calls on time because everyone is challenging me, and I would not have it any other way. This shift happened because we built mutual trust. My team operates with the absolute certainty that I will publicly advocate for them, even if we debate or disagree privately later.

My goal is to foster vulnerability-based trust to replace artificial harmony, which is the smiling and nodding in meetings while privately disagreeing offline. That is compliance, not culture, and it quietly corrodes organizations. Real trust means allowing people to air their fears, challenge ideas, and poke holes in plans without the fear of professional cost. Teams need to wrestle with ideas, not personalities. If our people cannot do that with each other, our clients certainly will.

This openness is the ultimate antidote to micromanagement, which stifles the everyday creativity required to innovate. In its place, we instill clarity of ownership. When an employee truly owns a project, they inherently care about its outcome.

That is why psychological safety is an operational multiplier. When people feel safe, they flag mistakes early, take creative risks, and actively contribute their expertise. They laugh, connect, and show up fully. It matters because we spend the majority of our lives working, and people need to like who they are around. When that connection disappears, a business gets derailed faster than it realizes.

Upholding this environment requires high emotional intelligence, clear boundaries, and a refusal to tolerate bad behavior. Employees notice what you accept and draw their own conclusions. In a high-performing organization, collective results must always come before ego.

In the Age of AI, Safety Is the Strategy

A safe work culture becomes even more urgent as automation grows. The conversation about AI tends to center on speed and efficiency, but it consistently misses the most important variable. AI does not function without institutional knowledge, and employees will not contribute if they believe doing so puts their job at risk.

Professional dread shuts down contribution. When employees are in a constant state of anxiety, wondering whether they are being set up to be replaced, they go quiet and protect what they know. The AI initiative leaders invest in will have nothing meaningful to feed on. We are significantly underestimating how much human adoption of new technology depends on how safe people feel with their employer. Agile, high-performing environments are not built through automation alone. They are built through motivated, trusted people.

The impact of trust extends far beyond technology adoption. The modern reality is that toxic cultures carry a massive cost to revenue and affect business outcomes. 

In a previous role during the post-Covid “Great Resignation” era, I was appointed to lead a $1.2 billion business line during an industry-wide attrition crisis of 30 percent. My leader gave me latitude to do what needed to be done. We chose to create a true listening space. When employees were overburdened, we acted. When people needed to feel heard, we made sure they were. We ended that period at 0 percent attrition. Other leaders kept asking how. The answer was always the same—we listened and followed through.

Cultivating Global Leadership Capabilities

My PHR credentials and strategic HR background marked my transition from an operator to a strategic leader. One of the hardest adjustments in this transition was learning to stop doing everything myself and start developing the people around you.

Leading global teams taught me that a single framework cannot fit everyone. Different laws, cultural realities, and geopolitical pressures shape us as human beings. That means we must meet each employee exactly where they are.

True empowerment, however, requires clear boundaries. One cannot be ambiguous with people about their roles. Give them radical ownership of what is theirs, then step back and let them run. When people see that they own their outcomes, accountability follows naturally.

This approach was modeled for me by leaders who invested in my potential and gave me room to grow. I strive to be that same catalyst for others. Trust is always the right place to start. Give it freely, until there is a real reason not to. People almost always rise to meet it.