Speakers for 2019

As an Oracle ACE for Business Intelligence, Antony is one of Europe’s leading BI architects. His primary focus is on Oracle BI and related database and middleware products. These include BI Foundation, Exalytics, BI Applications, Spatial, Real-Time Decisions (RTD), Big Data Discovery, Data Mining, Endeca, SOA Suite and Oracle VM.

Antony is passionate about HR analytics and is an avid blogger in the field, demonstrating thought leadership across the world of analytics.

This year, Antony has been instrumental in the development of a new automation tool – Tallinn Machine Learning. Enabling users to quickly enter into predictive analytics on a large scale, it allows you to become proficient in machine learning.

With over 15 years’ experience working with Oracle BI and Data Warehousing, Tony is the Technical Director with BI specialists Peak Indicators.

Bruce Daisley is the EMEA Vice President of Twitter. He joined the company in 2012 having previously run YouTube UK at Google. He has also worked at Emap/Bauer and Capital Radio. Bruce runs the Apple number 1 Business Chart topping podcast Eat Sleep Work Repeat on work culture. In January 2019 Penguin Books published Bruce’s first book, The Joy of Work.

Caoimhe is the Chief People Officer at Moneysupermarket Group (FTSE: MONY). Prior to joining the Group in January 2018, Caoimhe spent four years on a start-up/scale-up adventure at SoundCloud, the Berlin-based audio platform, where she was the SVP of People, Places & Community – a broad remit which included employee experience along with overseeing the global team responsible for user-support. She previously worked in senior European HR roles at Google and before that spent the early part of her career with KPMG and Deloitte in Organisation & People consulting.

David McGoldrick is currently Human Resource Director at Comfort Keepers / Sodexo Ireland.

David has over 20 years of senior HR executive management experience, which spans across Retail, Manufacturing, Transport, Airlines, and HealthCare sectors. David has Worked companies ranging from The Carphone Warehouse, Ryanair to now Comfort Keepers / Sodexo.

He is highly accomplished in all areas of HR development and is mainly known for his practical and practical approach he takes to transformational leadership and engagement programmes.

David was ranked in the top 20 Global HR leader Global index in 2016, and is recognised internationally for his extensive multi-industry experience and has continuously contributed to the global discussion around defining the role of HR within the organisational sphere.

He has been over the last number of years refining new and innovate approach to leadership development, within evolving generational demographic trends and an ever-shrinking talent pool.

David is currently focused on the new challenges that organisations face, where within the ever-changing digital workplace, further complications are arising, by an emerging trend of looser employee affiliation to the organisation,  where now employee authenticity and mobility have replaced loyalty and advancement as benchmarks of status and success.

Debbie is a Chartered Marketer with 15 years’ experience in marketing, engagement and change communications.

Skilled in the design, development and delivery of award winning strategies to support sustainable growth and transformation within highly competitive markets.  Debbie’s passion lies in supporting organisations to embrace change and recruit, retain and develop their people.

Prior to joining the entertainment industry in 2002, Dee was Global Head of Talent Acquisition at Thomson Reuters and previously Head of HR at Virgin Retail for UK, Ireland and Northern Europe. Dee has extensive international experience designing and executing strategies within fast growth businesses.  Alongside this, Dee has significant expertise in driving and leading business change and transformations to deliver cost savings and profit growth. With over 60,000 employees across 100 countries, Dee was responsible for the Group strategy and all aspects of global talent sourcing at Thomson Reuters.  At Virgin Retail, Dee supported business growth from 10 to 330 stores.

Dee joined Warner Bros in 2002 as European HR Director for its theatrical business, just before it was acquired by Vue International. In 2003 Dee was then positioned as HR Director for a brand new venture in cinema exhibition – which today is well known as one of the world’s leading cinema operators. Vue International grew from 38 UK cinemas to 225 cinemas across ten countries with over 8,500 employees in under 15 years. Dee is part of the leadership team responsible for strategic decision making and driving company value, alongside developing and implementing the HR strategy to increase opportunities for commercial success by supporting business growth and creating a high performance culture.

Derek is a self-confessed ‘data guy’ who moved into the world of People Development in 2016. Prior to this he worked for RBS group. One piece of work, exploring the use of emoticons within customer webchats, saw his team beat CERN in an international award for Applied Analytics.

Earlier in his career, he worked in various functions across Sky, such as the Marketing group exploring areas such as how offer depth affects customer behaviour, consolidating staff performance data actionable views, and implementing cultural change to raise the quality of demand being asked from the stakeholder group to embed a culture of Data Driven Decisioning.

Since creating Sky’s Learning Insight Team, he has built a global network of L&D peers and regularly benchmarks the work of his team against that of global players. He is a strong advocate of translating techniques used in Marketing for many decades, such as a/b testing, segmentation, and personalisation, to L&D environments to drive engagement and demonstrably improve ROI.

Donna McGrath is the Head of Digital Learning at Royal Mail Group. She holds a degree in Psychology from Aston University, and is a Chartered Member of the CIPD, accredited coach and mentor.

Donna started her career in financial services working in a variety of HR roles before joining Royal Mail Group. Initially working in operations with a focus on diversity and culture she then moved into change management and engagement. Donna joined the Learning & Development team to take up a group wide role, managing an award winning executive leadership programme before moving to head up digital learning for the Group. Leading a small team excited by the opportunities of digital in learning, Donna curates and creates interesting & useful learning resources and supports communities to share and collaborate.

After her Ph.D in Physics, Claudia started her professional career as a consultant with McKinsey. She entered the HR world at Bahlsen, a premium cookie producing company. Today Claudia is responsible for the whole of HR development range at the Mast-Jägermeister SE, home of the world famous liqueur.

Her scientific approach lead to a HR development concept, which is based on findings from Positive Psychology and other related fields. Combining this with her profound HR experience she creates tools and processes which enhance the success of employees and the company.

Rita McGrath is a globally recognized thought leader who focuses on leading innovation and growth during times of uncertainty.  She works with Boards, CEOs and senior executives to help them think strategically, even in today’s rapidly changing and volatile environments.  She received the #1 achievement award in strategy from the prestigious management rankings group Thinkers50 and is consistently ranked in the Top10.  Her most recent book was the best-selling The End of Competitive Advantage. She has written 3 other books, including Discovery Driven Growth, cited by Clayton Christensen as describing one of the most important management ideas ever developed.  She is a regular speaker in exclusive events such as the Drucker Forum and various CEO Summits.  She is working on a new book about strategic inflection points.

McGrath has recently founded Valize, LLC, a new company focused on helping organizations get beyond innovation theater by unlocking the power of the Discovery Driven growth approach.

McGrath joined the faculty of Columbia Business School in 1993. Prior to life in academia, she was an IT director, worked in the political arena, and founded two startups. She received her Ph.D. from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and has degrees with honors from Barnard College and the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs. She is married and is proud to be the mother of two delightful grownups.

Follow Rita on Twitter: @rgmcgrath. For more information, visit RitaMcGrath.com.