Lynda Gratton is Professor of Management Practice at London Business School
Lynda is considered one of the world's authorities on people in organizations and has just been ranked 19th in the Times Business Thinkers of the World. Professor Gratton's book Living Strategy, originally published in 2000, has been translated into more than 15 languages and rated by US CEOs as one of the most important books of the year.
Her more recent book, The Democratic Enterprise, was described by Financial Times as a work of important scholarship. Her article "Integrating the Enterprise," which examined cooperative strategies, was awarded the MIT Sloan Management Review best article of the year in 2002. Her case study of BP's peer assist integration practices won the 2005 ECC best strategy case of the year award.
Her latest book, published in 2007 is Hot Spots - why some teams, workplaces and organizations buzz with energy and others don't – has just been named as one of the books of 2007. In 2005 Lynda was appointed the Director of the Lehman Centre Women in Business.
Angela O'Connor, Chief People Officer, National Policing Improvement Agency
Following a number of years in the private sector Angela has spent the majority of her career in the public sector. She has been in senior HR roles at three London local authorities. Her HR teams have been the recipients of numerous awards for Equality and Diversity, recruitment and innovative HR practices.
She was head hunted from Enfield to the Crown Prosecution Service in 2002 where she headed up a national HR team determined to ensure the CPS became a world class prosecuting authority. The CPS was recently named as one of the top 5 best employers in England.
She has been named as Personnel Director of the year 2005 at the Telegraph Business Awards, HR Director of the Year 2005 at the Personnel Today Awards and the HR Director of the Year 2007 at the HR Excellence Awards. She is a board director of Skills for Justice and a fellow of the CIPD.
Angela is currently the Past President of PPMA (The Public Sector People Managers Association), she was the first Civil Servant President in the organisation’s 30 year history 2006/2007.
Angela is now Chief People Officer at the NPIA (National Policing Improvement Agency) where she is head of profession for police HR staff in England and Wales and leads on Police Learning, Development Leadership, and People Strategy.
Andrew McEachern
Managing Director, HCM Goldman Sachs
He serves as a trustee of the Goldman Sachs UK
Retirement Plan and is a member of the European Diversity Committee. Andrew joined Goldman Sachs in January 2000 as an executive director heading up the Employee
Relations team.
He became a managing director in 2004. Prior to joining the firm, Andrew practiced as a solicitor from 1987 to 1999 both in private practice in London and Australia and then from 1991, as an in-house lawyer with the energy company, Shell. His last position before joining Goldman Sachs was as head of the Legal department for the Shell Companies in North East Asia based in Beijing covering PRC, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Korea.
Lou Manzi, Vice President, Global Recruitment, GlaxoSmithKline
Lou joined SmithKline Beecham Consumer Products as Manager, Government and Public Affairs in 1985. He is currently with GlaxoSmithKline Corporate Staffs and leads the Global Recruitment function. In addition, he has responsibility for coordinating all US Human Resources Shared Services initiatives.
Lou received his B.A. from St. Mary’s Seminary College and is currently enrolled in the Executive Masters Program of the University of Pennsylvania. He serves on a variety of Boards including the U.S. Army War College. Additionally, he is a Board Member of The Best Practices Institute, Waltham, Massachusetts; The Executive Grapevine, an organization comprised of professionals in Talent Management, London, England; and RMC Communications, Haddon Heights, NJ. He is also a past trustee of the Wilkes University Board of Directors.
Paul Maxin, Global Resourcing Director, Unilever
Paul Maxin’s 20 year recruitment career has been divided almost equally between the “sell” and the “buy” side. He is responsible for the design and delivery of a locally implemented global approach to resourcing policy, assessment and attraction.
Paul is both the recruitment SME and process owner globally for Unilever. He is actively engaged in their HR Transformation project which includes Unilever’s seven year contract with Accenture to handle its transactional HR services in over 100 countries.
Prior to joining Unilever, Paul spent nearly 8 years as a Senior Recruitment Manager at PricewaterhouseCoopers, where he was latterly responsible for international sourcing.
Richard Smelt, Group HR Director, Carphone Warehouse
Richard has a career at the sharp end of change management. A psychology graduate (Leeds), Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, and an MBA from London Business School, together with over 20 years experience of real change in businesses.
The career journey has led from the Prudential, involved in a programme to change the “man from the Pru”, to the repositioning of HFC, a consumer finance company, to Kingfisher working in the Electrical Retailing division (UK and France) to the downsizing and turnaround at Signet and three years at Normura’s Principal Finance Group.
Richard has worked at The Carphone Warehouse as Group HR Director since 2001 where the key challenge is growing the business in Europe and across new business streams.
Andrew Armes, Global Vice President, Talent Management and HR Strategy, Invensys PLC
Andrew was previously Head of Talent and Resourcing and Head of Career Development at AstraZeneca (the global pharmaceutical company).
Prior to that he held a mixture of generalist and specialist HR positions at Cable and Wireless, Standard Chartered Bank and Littlewoods Home Shopping Group where he started his career.
Job Mensink, Senior Director Recruitment Marketing Philips International
Job is responsible for the worldwide marketing of Philips as an attractive employer for talented individuals. Before joining the global Human Resources team, he worked in a range of strategy, marketing and innovation roles for Philips consumer and B2B businesses. Job is a passionate marketing teacher and guest lecturer at various institutes and universities. He studied Innovation Management at Delft University of Technology and Economics at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam and he has notably developed global standards of working for end-user driven innovation.
Peter Bedford, Head of Resourcing & Employment WSE, Nokia Siemens Networks
Peter joined Nokia Group in October 2004. As Director, Global Resourcing and Employment, he was accountable for workforce planning, recruitment, employer branding and employment issues, from policy through to implementation, across the 66,000 strong, 60 country Nokia world. More recently, he led the resourcing and employment integration activities as Nokia and Siemens merged their respective networks infrastructure businesses to create Nokia Siemens Networks and he currently fulfills both resourcing and business HR roles in the new entity. Peter was previously Head of Recruitment at the BBC, where he created the organisation’s first in-house recruitment consultancy, structured to deliver added value and cost efficiency to the hiring of some 10500 external and internal candidates each year, spanning the range from runners to executive committee directors. An electronic engineer by background, his earlier career included over 15 years building and managing executive recruitment businesses with PA Consulting Group, Norman Broadbent and Boyden. He is, unusually, both a Chartered Engineer and a Fellow of the IPD.
Adam Eaton, Director of group Management Development, Aviva Plc
Adam joined Aviva Plc in 2005 and is currently the Director of Group Management Development based in London. In this role, he is responsible for the Aviva Leadership Academy and for managing the overall talent strategy for Aviva (the world's fifth largest insurance group with 60,000 people serving 35 million customers worldwide). Previously, Adam spent 16 years in the British Army formally in the Brigade of Gurkhas and latterly in the Royal Anglian Regiment. His regimental service was punctuated with frequent periods in the Ministry of Defence. Adam began his career with Arthur Andersen in the UK.
Kate Griffiths-Lambeth, HR Director, White & Case LLP
A lawyer by initial training, Kate has operated within a broad range of industries. After a period in financial services as a derivatives trader, she transferred into recruitment in the late 1980’s, becoming a specialist financial services head-hunter. After working for a firm of renowned UK-based corporate psychologists, where she assisted with advising and restructuring some leading global banks and institutions, Kate returned to recruitment and mainstream HR. Kate was appointed Head of HR for Cards for Lloyds TSB in January 2004 and was promoted again in early 2005 to become the Head of Talent, Resourcing and MI for the UK retail Bank. Kate Joined White and Case in May 2007.
Kerensa Sheen, Corporate Functions and Global People Capability Director, Group HR, Vodafone Group Services Limited
Kerensa started her career working in a number of UK and European Commercial and HR roles in retail, cosmetics and fashion with L'Oreal, The Body Shop International and The Burton Group (Arcadia)- She joined PepsiCo in 1996 where, over a 9 year period, she held a variety of roles covering a geography that includes Eastern and Western Europe, Canada and the Asia Pacific region in the following roles: HR Director Eastern Europe for Snack Foods; International HR VP ,Tropicana and finally HRVP Western Europe, holding this position for 5 years and delivering great successes on strategic people issues such as Leadership, Organisation Redesign, Talent Management, Employee Relations and Gender Diversity.
Kerensa most recently worked for Heinz where she was the VP for HR Europe successfully leading the function through a transformation process that included the redesign and implementation of the European operating model and the introduction of an integrated approach towards performance and talent management,
Kerensa is currently responsible for the global capability agenda for Vodafone’s 60,000 people. Vodafone is the world’s leading mobile communications company and in the top 25 organisations in the world.
Martyn Worsley, Head of International Organisational Development, Bank of New York Mellon
Martyn has been at the Bank of New York Mellon since February 2007, where he is Head of International Organisational Development with a global remit covering 14,000 employees based outside of the US. Prior to this he has had a varied career in the financial services, telecoms and consultancy sectors where he started his career at Lloyds TSB Group shortly after their merger in 1997. Here he undertook assignments in branch banking and eCommerce, then working on global cultural change / organisation design initiatives before leading on the Groups talent management strategy. He left Lloyds TSB to join BT Group to work on people change and to lead on Employee Engagement, before working with BYT a talent consultancy and head hunting firm in the city. Martyn is a keen sportsman, having played and coached with the England Rugby Squads as well as taking part in various challenges such as the TransAtlantic Yacht Race.
Kate Kelly, Head of Employee Relations & Reward, Marks & Spencer
As part of the turnaround of M&S she has driven cultural and business change by transforming reward and employment policies to value customer service and performance, rather than length of service. She has also led the Company's successful changes to its final salary pension scheme. Prior to joining M&S, Kate was Director of Employee Relations at O2, where she also held senior HR business partner roles and led the HR demerger programme from BT. Kate began her career at BT in a variety of roles including HR, PR, and business development in Asia-Pacific, based in Indonesia.
Trevor Blackman, Head of Remuneration & Benefit, Royal Bank of Scotland
Trevor leads the team responsible for the development and implementation of Compensation and Benefits policy across the Royal Bank of Scotland group.
Prior to joining the RBSG in May 1994, he spent ten years working with Hay Management Consultants in their offices in London, Philadelphia and Glasgow.
Before his metamorphosis into a reward specialist, he spent time as a geography teacher, a trainee store manager with Marks & Spencer, a bacon buyer for J Sainsbury and a sales operations manager in Borneo. He holds an MA in anthropology from Cambridge University and is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Bankers in Scotland.
Rachel Dobson, Partner and Director of Support Services, Pannone LLP
Rachel is head of HR and is also responsible for facilities, professional standards and projects, managing a department of 30 people. Rachel joined Pannone LLP in 1992 as a trainee solicitor. After graduating from Oxford with a very useful degree in history, she had joined Marks and Spencer’s Commercial Management training scheme and stayed with them for 5 years, ultimately managing their Graduate Recruitment. She was working long hours, had no social life but did have a 2.5 hours commute and so decided on a career and location change.
Jim Lister, Partner, Pannone LLP
James joined Pannone LLP Employment Team in 1996 and became a Partner in 1998. He has extensive experience of all areas of employment law, but has particular interests in
data protection issues, collective consultation, executive termination and share options, re-organisations and redundancy programmes, restrictive covenants and unfair competition, equal opportunities, legal education and training.
Sharon Mattingly, Principal, Talent and Organisation Consulting Practice, Hewitt Associates
Sharon is a member of Hewitt UK’s senior leadership group for Talent and Organisation Consulting practice and has 20 years experience in Human Resources. She has worked with clients at senior management levels within global organisations to review the effectiveness of current organisation design, and how it aligns to business strategy and the challenges of globalization. She also works extensively in the area of corporate change, for example, start-ups in new geographies, acquisitions and mergers. This spans the range of activity from due diligence to post-merger integration.
Sharon holds an MA degree in English from Selwyn College, Cambridge University and is a member of the CIPD. Prior to joining Hewitt she worked for Shell as a HR Generalist.
Stephen Brooks, Director, PA Consulting
Stephen, is a member of PA’s Management Group in its People and Organisational Change practice. Drawing on over 25 years experience in the private and public sector, Stephen works with clients to help them realise the full potential of their people assets.
In recent years, his work has included developing an HR strategy and delivery structure for the Department of Work and Pensions, implementing an innovative e-learning approach for Jobcentre Plus, HR policy modernisation and streamlining for a large Government department, and creating culture change and a new performance management approach for a global bank.
Before joining PA, Stephen held a number of senior positions in HR management with Lehman Brothers, Deutsche Bank, General Electric and Bank of America. He was educated at Ruskin College and the University of Oxford and is a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.
Chris Bruce, Director of Marketing and Technology, Thomsons Online Benefits
Chris Bruce trained as a benefit consultant before co-founding thomsons online benefits, the consultancy most known for its work in flexible benefits and pensions. Clients include the Ministry of Defence where the consultancy has rolled out total reward statements for 215,000 employees and a global investment bank where it is in the process of implementing flexible benefits across 32 countries.
Helen Rosethorn, CEO, Bernard Hodes Group
A Durham graduate, Helen’s early career was in journalism and PR – including some time working within the European Commission, before landing in the world of HR and communications. She initially worked with Hay MSL – latterly part of TMP Worldwide – establishing and running operations in Leeds and Newcastle. Her communications background served her well when she was headhunted to lead Bernard Hodes Advertising, today the Bernard Hodes Group, into a Talent Solutions business, specialising in helping organisations find, engage and develop their people resource.
Helen has always been passionate about branding and her initial work on employer branding began when she was working on her MBA at Bradford Management School. Today as well as running Bernard Hodes Group and operating as a member of the Hodes Global Network Executive Board, she is a principal consultant within the Solutions Consultancy Team, finding time to write and speak on the evolution of employer branding and employee engagement. Employer branding projects Helen has played a lead role in include GSK, Novartis, Orange, Nokia, HBOS, Royal Mail and latterly Laing O’Rourke.
Penny Ferguson, CEO, Penny Ferguson Ltd
Penny is a highly experienced executive business coach, leadership trainer, motivational speaker and author. For 15 years she has been working with individuals from a wide range of industries and backgrounds including Skills for Justice, Barclays, Somerfield, Centrica and the Open University. Penny’s talent for taking her message from heads to hearts initiates the confidence and clarity of thought through which people can transform their worlds of work and their lives immeasurably. This is evident from the outstanding results achieved by many of the people who have attended her training programmes.
Ewan McCulloch H.R. Director, Staples UK Retail
Ewan’s background was initially in Banking and Finance, NatWest Bank and Nationwide Building Society, as a Retail Operator, Strategic and Corporate Planning, M&A activity, and Senior Executive roles in HR. He then made a successful move into Retail, first with the Comet Group plc and latterly with Staples UK Retail where he has now been for 2 years.
4 of his 6 years at Comet saw him focus on developing and implementing a radical and commercially focused Customer Experience Strategy that was rolled out across Comet’s Retail division and has now been extended to their Home Delivery and After Sales Service divisions.
Now with Staples, he and his team are tackling some enormous commercial challenges and along with his 6 fellow Board members the organisation is being turned around with a series of People Programmes at the heart of this change. He describes it as the best job he’s ever had.
Lynn Vaughan, Compensation and Benefits Director, Coca-Cola Enterprises Europe Group (CCE)
CCE is the world’s largest bottler of Coca-Cola beverages, across North America and Western Europe. CCE Europe Group operates 48 production facilities, sales and distribution centers throughout Great Britain, continental France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Monaco and employees approximately 10,700 employees.
Previously Lynn was the European Total Compensation Director for Kodak, based in Geneva, Switzerland. Before joining the corporate world, she spent the majority of her career as a compensation consultant with Towers Perrin and the Hay Group. An American, Lynn has lived and worked for over ten years in Saudi Arabia, Switzerland and the UK. She currently lives in London with her husband and two children.
