Employer Brand Management conference 2016

Prior to joining, Currencycloud was actually a client of Helen’s when she was communications director at its brand agency Corporate Edge. She was tempted over to the orange side in September 2015 to stoke and grow the company’s marketing engine and to lead the transformational journey it has been on over the last year. Her brief is to reimagine the way we take our brand to market and engage people with our story through multichannel marketing activities. As well as agency experience, Helen brings with her a wealth of B2B tech marketing experience from Colt Technology Services where she was director of brand and communications and further B2B and B2C experience from working at CIMA. When she is not in the office, Helen can usually be found on her bike or out running, or having rings run around her by her young daughter.

Simon was a brand manager first at Knorr (now Unilever) and then Colgate. He created the employer brand approach when he started leading a large team and saw the need for the same principles and disciplines in the attraction, engagement and retention of talented people. Simon was the founder of employer brand consultancy People in Business (PiB), which he left in 2012 having earlier sold the firm to an American group. He is now an independent specialist and believes that great employer brands are built from the inside out and that the process starts at the top. His work includes the people and cultural aspects of M&A.

Jonny joined Aviva as the group head of talent acquisition in January 2016 with responsibility for global recruitment. Prior to this he was head of talent acquisition at Thomson Reuters (IP&S) for three years where he established a central sourcing hub, resulting in record time to hire, quality of hire and agency hire of under 5%.  Jonny joined Thomson Reuters after six years at RBS, working in Group, their Corporate Bank and finally as Head of Resourcing at Coutts.

Helen is the employer brand manager at Dixons Carphone, Europe's leading specialist electrical and telecommunications retailer and services company, employing over 42,000 people in eleven countries. Starting out as employer brand manager on the Carphone Warehouse side of the business and having launched an award winning employer brand, she has now defined and launched a group employer brand for Dixons Carphone, a newly merged FTSE 100 business.She looks after all of Dixons Carphone’s recruitment attraction strategies including all social media activity in UK and Ireland.

Keeran has been global employer brand director at Unilever since April 2015. She is responsible for increasing its profile as an employer of choice through the company’s global careers site and key employer brand channels through a robust and authentic digital content strategy. Keeran also leads an employee advocacy project, LinkedIn Elevate, which has digitised Unilever’s workforce, allowing employees to ‘Show the World Their Unilever’ and act as brand ambassadors. Prior to Unilever, Keeran has worked closely with the likes of EY and IBM, among others, to amplify their employee offerings

Jean is an experienced children’s social care senior manager. She has worked in a variety of children’s social care settings during a career that spans nearly forty years. For the last seven years, Jean has specialised in supporting local authorities whose children’s services have been judged by Ofsted as having widespread systemic failings. Jean has a proven track record of success in supporting the improvement of these services, an important aspect of which is reputation management

Dawn joined Alnylam in early 2016 as senior director of human resource in Europe. Her time so far at Alnylam has been spent focusing on growing and building the Clinical Development, Regulatory Affairs, and Commercial teams across Europe. Previous to Alnylam, Dawn spent time at Pfizer where she supported all parts of the business Worldwide Research and Development, Global medical & development groups, and commercial regional teams in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Most recently, she had a global organizational capability and talent development role where she supported the development of senior leaders and matrix teams. Prior to Pfizer, Dawn spent time in HR consulting for the oil & gas industry, as well as the finance industry . Through consulting Dawn specialised in organization builds and change management. She has a BA in management and is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development FCIPD.

Matthew is an accomplished talent acquisition strategy leader with 20+ years of recruitment experience. He currently leads recruitment and employment branding for SAP, the world leader in enterprise applications in terms of software and software-related service revenue. His work there has earned him and his team a ERE Recruiting Excellence Award for Best Employment Brand 2015 and Most Strategic Use of Technology 2015; Recruiter Awards 2015 for Best Graduate Recruitment Strategy & Best Global/International Recruitment Strategy; Asia Recruitment Awards for Best Graduate Recruitment strategy, Employment brand, best careers site & diversity & inclusion; and Brandon Hall Gold Award for Employment Brand.

Naomi Jones joined SUEZ, one of the world’s largest water, recycling and waste management service providers, in 2008 at the age of 28, making her the youngest head of department to have ever joined the group globally.  Having cut her teeth in local government public affairs and regional corporate affairs and having worked across a number of sectors from retail and banking to waste management, she became a team leader at 23 when she realised her true passion lay in managing and developing people. She went on to work at FTI Consulting (then FD), one of the UK’s leading communications agencies and specialised in corporate communications and brand positioning. She is responsible for marketing and communications for the UK and Scandinavia and has been responsible for growing a small team to a medium sized department over the last eight years. Naomi is currently project managing the company’s rebrand in the UK, not just in communications terms but also overseeing the mobilisation of all assets.

Charu is the head of global employer marketing & talent attraction at Ferrero. Charu has experience in creating strategies, deploying technology, developing social media capabilities across a multitude of countries. Prior to Ferrero, Charu was global EVP lead, employer brand & digital projects manager at Primark where she created a business case for an EVP and employer brand to combat massive employee retention and recruitment challenges. Charu has also held talent attraction roles at Connect Group plc, Unilever, Baker Hughes and BP.

Jim led the British Airline Pilots’ Association (BALPA) between 2002 and 2014 following roles with the Inland Revenue Staff Federation and Public and Commercial Services Union. BALPA represents over 9,000 members comprising 80% of the UK’s commercial pilots and has agreements with 24 UK airlines. As general secretary, he was responsible for strategic leadership, negotiating improvements in pilot terms and conditions with employers, promoting members' professional interests with the regulator and politicians and representing the profession in the media. Jim was an active participant in the European Cockpit Association and global pilot body IFALPA. 

Kathryn Pritchard is group chief people officer of ODEON & UCI Cinemas Group, Europe’s largest cinema operator. In her role, Kathryn executes a strategy designed to transform and tap the capability of the “employee brand journey”. Kathryn has over 20 year’s experience in organisational life, and has a particular passion for creating cultures that make high performance a certainty. She has experience in both private and public sectors, the UK and globally and has built HR teams from scratch as well as coaching existing teams to high performance. She lists her professional interest as value creation, organisation, leadership and talent development and of course culture. She holds both an MBA and a masters in leadership coaching.

James is director of brand and strategy at COOK, the pioneering frozen food company. COOK makes and sells hand-prepared frozen meals and puddings through 85 shops nationwide, concessions in 350 other retailers and a thriving e-commerce platform. James joined COOK in 2010, prior to which he was a financial journalist and editor at various publications including the Wall Street Journal Europe. COOK is ranked 28th in the Sunday Times Best Companies To Work For list and is a certified B Corporation, part of a global movement promoting business as a force for good in society.

Rebecca Sinclair is VP of brand at Pearson, the world’s learning company. She led the launch of the new Pearson brand unveiled in January 2016 to reflect Pearson’s evolution from print publisher to digital learning company.  Prior to this, Rebecca led corporate affairs for Pearson in Asia based in Singapore and headed up global communications at Penguin Books.  Rebecca is experienced in leading global strategic and integrated communications programs with particular skills in branding, corporate reputation and change management and a passion for design, culture and social responsibility, particularly in the area of literacy.

Nimai has recently joined Diageo as their the global director for resourcing and talent engagement. His responsibilities cover all internal and external resourcing for the group including recruitment, marketing and employer branding. Throughout his career, Nimai has had a strong background in global marketing and building brands. Prior to his recent role at Capita’s Army recruiting project, Nimai worked for companies such as British Gas, Royal Dutch Shell and RBS with a focus on strengthening their employer brands and recruitment capabilities.

Kevin is head of resourcing and talent at the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Kevin joined the FCA at the end of 2015 as head of executive resourcing before moving into the broader resourcing and talent role in June 2016. Previously, he spent the past 13 years in recruitment and executive search, with 10 years in Tokyo before joining Odgers Berndtson in the UK.  

James is VP, HR, EMEA at Equinix, the world's largest interconnection data centre and colocation platform. Throughout his career, he has looked after private and public company communications, corporate affairs and government relations, commercial strategy, business development and sales. Before Equinix, James was chief commercial officer at TelecityGroup plc, a FTSE 250 European data centre services company. He has an MA in cultural history from Aberdeen University, and is an alumni of the Cambridge Judge Business School.