Aidan manages a worldwide team of learning and development professionals, and he has direct responsibility for global delivery of learning and strategic development programs, vendor and partner management, financial and strategy management, and acquisition integration.

Andy is the Chief Operating Officer at The University of Sheffield, a world-leading University that is committed to the goal of changing the world for the better through the power of knowledge and application.

Responsible for leading the organisation’s Corporate Services, which includes responsibility for the HR service for its 8,300 staff. The University’s people strategy focuses on attraction, growth, and engagement of world-class talent, and has particularly emphasised the importance of personal health, happiness, and wellbeing in the workplace. His team has received external recognition for its creativity, including being the only University to appear in the Sunday Times Best Companies To Work For List for the past two-years.

Andy is happily married with two teenage children. When not at home or work he will most certainly be out swimming, cycling, or running. Andy made his triathlon debut in Leeds earlier this year and inexplicably plans to do more.

Cath is an international, business focused HR Leader with a proven track record of delivery in a variety of global, matrix organisations. She is passionate about bringing a real commercial focus to the people agenda and leading organisations and teams through transformational change.

Cath joined Avon in May 2016 as Vice President HR, Global Commercial Business. Avon is the company that for 130 years has stood for beauty, innovation, optimism and, above all, for empowering women. Avon has a diverse product  portfolio sold through six million independent Avon Beauty Entrepreneurs worldwide.

Cath has played a key role in the Avon turnaround and transformation journey, she led the development of a Commercial Blueprint to enable investment in new commercial capabilities, whilst right sizing the organization to deliver significant savings.

Prior to joining Avon, Cath worked for one of the world’s leading cereal and snacks companies Kellogg’s where she spent over ten years in both European and North America roles. She was VP, HR European Markets, and led the reorganisation of the European business following the acquisition of Pringles. Prior to this she was VP, Global Talent  and led the creation and execution of the first global employer brand, vision and purpose.

Cath also spent over ten years with Barclays Plc, a British multinational banking and financial services company, prior to becoming a successful external Human Resources Consultant specialising in organisational design, cultural change and Strategic Talent Management and Leadership Development.

Cath has a BSc(Hons) in Psychology and is a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and an alumni of Executive Programmes at Harvard and INSEAD Business Schools.

Dina has an extensive international experience in the whole talent management areas working on local, regional and corporate roles combining an innovative point of view with strategic, tactical and operational expertise and a deep knowledge of HR. She is skilled in the design, development and delivery of award winners HR strategies to support growth and transformation. Her purpose is to extend and amplify the cognitive and affective abilities to go beyond people’s potential, help them flourish and inspire them to look for new perspectives. She has developed her career around encouraging people to be guided by their own curiosity and choose what makes them happy.

Dr. Melissa K. Hungerford is VP, Global Talent Management and Inclusion for Avon Products, Inc.  Melissa has over 18 years of experience and a proven track record in designing and leading end-to-end talent management strategies with a focus on strengthening the leadership pipeline, creating an engaged and high performance culture and offering learning and OD solutions to support the business strategy.

Melissa has worked across a wide range of industries including retail with The Home Depot, pharmaceuticals with Bristol-Myers Squibb, lighting with Philips and fast moving consumer goods with The Coca-Cola Company and most recently with Coca-Cola European Partners, the largest Coca-Cola bottler in the world.  She is an American ex-pat with global work experience, having lived in Turkey, The Netherlands and the UK.

Early in her career, Melissa worked in management consulting with Personnel Decisions International (PDI) and across a diverse spectrum of counseling settings.  She earned her Ph.D. in Psychology with a specialty in organization development from Georgia State University.  Melissa resides in London with her husband and two children.

Ed O’Brien has been Head of Learning for Europe and Latin America in Ericsson since 2017.  With over 14 years of learning experience, Ed has been involved in driving transformation programs, delivering key strategic competence solutions and ensuring that he and his team act as coaches and partners to the business.

Prior to moving into the learning field, Ed has held Consulting and Product Management positions in Ericsson and Eir. Outside of learning, Ed is a keen runner and even running, there are many ways to learn!

Gordon is an extremely talented OD & HR professional. He has a knack of understanding people & organisations, to drive business results.  He builds lasting relationships and is skilful in developing teams to achieve high trust relationships and he passionate about helping people achieve their potential and maximise the return on investment for the people resource in any business.

Working across Europe, Asia, Australia and the USA, Gordon has spent the past 10 years driving HR excellence through Organisational Effectiveness and Talent and Development at Kellogg.  From coaching and team effectiveness, to organisational culture and business strategy, Gordon is passionate about bringing out the best in people and enabling team performance through individuals in order to drive extraordinary results. He currently is the Global Process owner for Leadership Development, Team Effectiveness and Executive coaching for Kellogg worldwide and runs the Kellogg Executive Development Program in conjunction with Harvard.

• 2016 HR Most Influential Practitioner – HR Magazine

Joel is Global Head of  Executive & Leadership Development for Nokia.  His team oversee Corporate Leadership Programs, Assessments and 360 Assessments, Executive Assessments, internal and external coaching.

Over the last 9 years he has overseen the centralization and design of corporate leadership programs, introduced new tools and methodologies for talent identification, managed a management appraisal for the Top 100, designed and launched Nokia’s new leadership framework and facilitated numerous CEO-level talent summits. Prior to this he was Global Head of Leadership & Talent Management at Nokia Siemens Networks. Before entering the Telecom industry, he had a similar role in the Pharmaceutical Industry for Novartis in the Consumer Health Division for CIBA Vision.

Kate Griffiths-Lambeth joined Charles Stanley as Group HR Director in May 2016 and was appointed to the Executive Committee in March the following year. She is the Company’s first female executive as well this being the commencement of HR having a seat at the table. Kate is a lawyer by initial training and a former derivatives dealer before choosing to transfer into HR. She has substantial experience in motivating teams and developing wealth and professional services businesses. Prior to Charles Stanley Kate was the Global Head of HR and an Executive Director of the Stonehage Fleming Group and she has led people at White & Case, RBS and Lloyds TSB. Kate is recognised as a transformation expert with an excellent track record for achieving results. She is effective at turning concepts into realities (she co-founded one of the first successful Fintechs) and she has assisted significant global organisations to streamline themselves resulting in cost and operational efficiencies. She enjoys bringing diverse businesses and people together.   Outside of work, Kate is a Governor for Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, a mentor for the Queen’s Young Leaders and an urban beekeeper. Most importantly she is a proud and devoted mother of two wonderful sons.

After fifteen years in front-line sales, I moved in to what was then called Capability Development since which time I’ve never looked back. I’ve worked in industries as varied as oil and gas and food manufacturing, I’ve worked for myself and now, I lead the Enablement function for Getty Images, an organisation that, relatively speaking, is still in its infancy. I’m lucky to work for a company whose goal is to move the world through the images we produce and I’m surrounded by people who are experts in their field.

My team are responsible for the end to end development of our sellers; from onboarding, through Sales skills and Sales leadership training to Product, Process and Systems. We’re less instructors than “suggesters” and facilitators. “Suggester” of different ways of doing the habitual that inspires these already skilled adult learners to tweak or change their behaviour and facilitator of simplification, removing barriers that get in the way people doing their best work

Linda is a highly experienced European HR Director with 20 years’ HR experience in the Food Industry. Linda started her career with Muller Dairy, the UK’s leading yogurt manufacturer.

Her next move was to Cargill, leading the European and Russian HR team for Cargill Meats Europe and spent time in Russia developing relationships and resource plans for the new build of a dedicated McDonald’s processing facility. Linda also worked closely with the McDonald’s Supply HR leadership team to develop joint people initiatives as part of the SAVES program.

In 2016 Linda moved to the HR Director role at John West Foods and became a member of the Executive Board. Here Linda delivered a number of talent and development programs including leadership development, Academy training and the integration of SWP into the business planning process at both a local and global level. Last year Linda took full Commercial HR responsibility for Thai Union Europe’s Northern European Operating Companies, expanding her remit to include branded seafood business in Norway, Germany and Russia.

Mervyn Dinnen is author of the book Exceptional Talent and an HR & talent analyst who advises recruitment and HR technology businesses on the emerging trends impacting hiring, retention and engagement. He is an International speaker and writer on HR and recruitment trends. He previously spent 20 years working with UK companies on recruitment and retention strategies.

Michael Spiers is the Chief People Officer for London City Airport which celebrates its 30th Anniversary in 2017 and is the only airport actually in London, serving  50 routes and close to 5 million passengers in 2016.

Previously Michael was the HR Director for the airport and prior to that he held several HR roles at Centrica including Head of HR for the corporate office as well as heading up HR for the Offshore Renewable and Nuclear parts of the business. He formatively spent many years at Sainsbury’s in a number of HR roles both in the retail and Trading functions. Michael has a Master’s degree in Chemistry from UKC as well as a Master degrees in HRM and Employment law. Michael has a passion for travel and will openly brag that in his current job he can make it from his desk to airplane door in 6 minutes (his current record!)