Maria Black

Company: ADP
Title: President & CEO
Industry: Technology
Notable in 2024: Black pivoted ADP's focus to embrace the generative AI boom, launching a new conversational AI interface that dramatically reduced the number of employee support calls.

Maria Black has always had to adapt. That started at an early age when she journeyed as an 8-year-old immigrant from Sweden to the U.S. It continues today at the helm of ADP, one of the largest providers of human resources and payroll services in the world.

ADP pays as many as one in six American workers, and the roles of those workers are set to change significantly with the rise of AI. With AI, as well as other forms of automation and hybrid work, reshaping industries, her focus isn't just on operational efficiency but on making work more personal and human-centric, especially in an industry where generative AI is forcing its way in.

"It's what we've been waiting for," she said in an interview at the Collision Conference in 2023. "To finally get all of the HR data and technology usage for our practitioners, for our end users, clients and employees and candidly for the world of work. It is pretty awesome," Black said.

Employees are not all as confident, with 85% of workers saying AI will impact their job in the next 2-3 years, and more than half thinking AI will replace some or most of their functions. But Black says automation as part of jobs will become the norm for future generations, and it won't eliminate human roles. "The younger generations will never know work without AI," she said in an appearance on CNBC's "Squawk Box."

Her confidence may date all the way back to her childhood experience with adaptation, moving from Sweden to Pittsburgh, where she had to learn English from scratch and embraced change head-on. That adaptability became her strength, she said in an interview with Biz Journals. She graduated high school early, and then got her first job selling ski lift tickets, and hasn't looked back since.

Her ADP journey has been a long one as well, joining the company in 1996 as a sales associate in Small Business Services, and learning the business from the ground up, as she climbed the ranks to CEO of a firm that works with over one million clients. Now, she leads ADP's modernization efforts, including the ADP Assist AI platform, ensuring that technology empowers businesses and employees.