NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE – March 30, 2026 – The Society of Workforce Planning Professionals (SWPP) has announced the five finalists for the 2026 Workforce Management Professional of the Year Award, which recognizes a workforce management professional who has shown outstanding leadership in the industry. The finalists are Luke Brown of Pinnacle Financial Partners, Scott Lawrence of Wyndham Hotels and Resorts, Michael Litnak of Barclays Bank, Jodi Maffitt of Enova International, and Brandi Tifft of AAA-The Auto Group.
“These five workforce management professionals are truly representative of the ‘best of the best’ in our industry,” said Vicki Herrell, SWPP Executive Director. “They have all demonstrated great leadership and ability in the field, as well as shown measurable results for their companies. We are pleased to present them as finalists for this distinguished award.” The winner of the award will be announced at the SWPP Annual Conference, which will be held in Nashville, Tennessee on April 27-29, 2026.
Below is a brief description of the five finalists and their accomplishments:
Luke Brown is the WFM Analyst Lead for Synovus, where he is part of a 5-person WFM team, operating 2 centers with 150 agents, handling 100,000 calls per month. He has been recognized by his peers and leadership for sustained excellence, earning several Synovus HERO nominations and awards for impact, collaboration, and dedication to team success. Luke has demonstrated exceptional ownership and leadership during complex operational
changes and various projects, ensuring continuity, accuracy, and stakeholder confidence across the WFM and Business Intelligence teams. He has rebuilt and enhanced critical tools such as schedule compliance and shrinkage reporting, adding self-correcting features to improve visibility and expandability to new lines of business.
Some of the major results attributable to Luke’s efforts have been measurable improvements in forecast accuracy, reporting quality, and staff planning. His staffing plans allowed the department to stay 13% under budget each month while average response times were maintained. He eliminated single points of failure through cross training, documentation, and mentorship, ensuring uninterrupted operations and organizational resilience.
Scott Lawrence is Director of Workforce Management for Wyndham Hotels and Resorts, where he manages a team of 19 people and the workforce planning for 11 centers with over 1600 agents that handle over 5 million calls per month. Scott began his career as a frontline agent over 25 years ago and has progressed through various leadership positions to his current role as Director.
Scott’s accomplishments include the development of a centralized workforce intelligence approach by designing automated executive reporting dashboards that integrate workforce, financial, and operational metrics into a single framework. He has built outbound staffing models and has partnered with Finance and Operations to improve budget forecasting, hiring triggers, and capacity planning to enable proactive workforce decisions.
Some of his measurable results include reducing manual reporting time for faster decision making, improved forecast-to-staff alignment, successful ramp adjustments across all 11 global sites, and full operational launch of outbound calling models. Specific financial results include a 22% year-over-year labor cost reduction, resulting in substantial staff savings as well as over $320,000 in licensing savings, with 2026 on track for further labor and licensing reductions. Last year’s scheduling optimization resulted in $320,000 in under-time savings and account/security audits resulted in another $100k savings and improved security posture.
Michael Litnak is the Head of Workforce Management for Barclays Bank, where he is part of a 70-person team managing 6 centers with 3200 agents, handling over 1.5M calls per month. He consistently demonstrates how WFM, when done well, can be a strategic enabler rather than a support function. It was this focus that earned Mike the Exceptional Achievement Award at Barclays.
Mike has streamlined and integrated workforce planning, hiring, and financial forecasting, embedding them into enterprise financial planning processes. He was instrumental in creating these outputs that now serve as foundational inputs for investment decisions, hiring strategies, and cost management discussions.
Under Mike’s leadership, the Forecasting and Analytics team has achieved 98% forecast accuracy using a Python-based forecasting model, reducing forecasting cycle time by 80%, providing speed, scalability, and analytical depth. His Capacity Planning team achieved 19% FTE savings between 2022-2025, resulting in a $47 million reduction in annual labor costs. This was done while protecting customer experience and service levels. He has succeeded at positioning WFM as a trusted advisor to operational executives to solve real business problems and anticipate future needs.
Jodi Maffitt is the WFM Department Manager for Enova International, where she oversees a 5-person team, providing for 550 agents over 3 centers, handling 600,000 calls per month. She is active in Operations Women in Leadership Program, and was awarded Enova’s “Customer First” Award last year for her efforts in improving associate retention through her efforts for better schedule flexibility.
Jodi had 2025 success in establishing and reaching operational and performance standards. She was challenged to explore technologies, enhance operational efficiency, identify system integration benefits, increase employee satisfaction, improve engagement, and reduce staff attrition.
Through Jodi’s efforts and leadership, the center achieved near record-low attrition. She has eliminated redundant processes, and positioned technology to empower agents and managers to make more informed scheduling decisions. She developed and implemented an offline scheduling workaround that enables managers to handle urgent scheduling issues, saving hundreds of hours of WFM effort each quarter. She has fine-tuned capacity planning, resulting in improved predictability, smaller new-hire classes, and a 50% reduction in call abandons and repeat callers.
Brandi Tifft is Manager of Interval Planning for AAA-The Auto Club Group, where she is part of a 35-person WFM team. She oversees routing and planning for several centers and 800-1000 agents, handling over 1 million calls per month.
Brandi’s key accomplishments include operational improvements through routing strategies and consistency in serving high-volume membership environments. She implemented and refined Bullseye Routing, defining ring orders and wait thresholds across multiple groups to improve flexibility in call handling. She was also instrumental in improving proactive retention outreach operations. Her expertise with Genesys Cloud ACW configuration
choices and tradeoffs reinforced consistent intra-day decisioning through real-time protocol playbooks and queue management guides.
Brandi’s design and management of outbound campaigns resulted in saving 50,000 primary and associate memberships, translating to over $1M in cost avoidance and revenue retention. She has also improved operational governance, resulting in improved agent experience, as well as repeatable real-time playbooks to ensure efficiency and service consistency.
The SWPP Board of Advisors selected the five finalists from nominations submitted on the SWPP website. The Workforce Management Professional of the Year award is chosen from the five finalists by the Board of Advisors and will be announced at the 2026 SWPP Annual Conference.
About SWPP
The Society of Workforce Planning Professionals (SWPP) is an organization devoted to facilitating education and networking opportunities among workforce planners across all industries. Membership in SWPP is available to all workforce planning professionals and other interested parties from consulting and vendor organizations. Both individual memberships and corporate membership options are available, with full benefits and costs
outlined on the organization’s website at www.swpp.org.
