Chief People Officer - People & Culture Leadership
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Visionary, commercial & authentic as a Head of People, with 15+ years of HR leadership experience across competitive B2B, SaaS, data, FinTech, consulting, private equity, SMEs & international corporate sectors.
Partners with executives & C-suite teams to create and drive the ‘people agenda’. Champions inclusive, positive cultures to attract & retain talent. Develops people strategies aligned to evolving business needs.
Experienced in leveraging capabilities across Employee Wellbeing, Organisational Design, Employee Relations (ER), L&D, HRIS, Salary Benchmarking, and use of HR metrics to enable decision making.
Strong coaching skills, stakeholder management, communications, and interpersonal skills, delivering HR best practice to meet evolving business needs, and enabling the business to achieve optimum results.
Pragmatic, data informed, problem solving, and an agent for change, passionate about driving positive working cultures and environments, excited to work in dynamic and continually improving environments.
Positions the people function to deliver value & strengthen strategic alignment with the wider business.
Director Apr 2023 to Present
Complete ownership for Human Resources (HR) and the people agenda for clients of the business. Specialism in full lifecycle HR review and provision of consulting expertise.
Business restructuring planning and execution, driving cost-reduction focused and synergy-led restructuring processes for the business. Spearheaded delivery of cost reductions ranging from £750k to £5m per year.
Engages as a Consultant within a ‘boutique’ consultancy, working primarily with SMEs, start-ups and scale-up ventures, focusing on HR and business operational improvement projects, including restructures, culture creation and HR auditing. Supports diverse clients including Funding Xchange, IT World & Bright Software.
Provision of management support & HR training on process and execution, supporting restructuring activity.
Undertook an audit of existing strategy and operations, with an emphasis on talent attraction, recruitment, onboarding, retention, development, offboarding and advocate leavers.
Took the lead in operational efficiency identification and execution spanning HR and Operations Teams, realising a significant bandwidth creation for the team, and hiring / recruitment cost avoidance of £300k+.
Successfully mentored and coached HR Leaders and Effective Leadership Teams, as well as engaging as a PE-backed Chief People Officer.
Chief Administration Officer Feb 2022 to Apr 2023
Business leadership and administration, engaging in a dual role as Chief Administrative Officer / Chief HR Officer within a recently merged reorganisation, engaging as part of the Group Executive Leadership Team.
Day-to-day operational leadership across a business unit with 300 employees and a further 300 offshore resources, business unit budgetary management and optimisation of around $50m. Monitored KPI metrics.
Spearheaded group communications & engagement for the post-merger / M&A integration workstreams.
Chief HR Officer May 2018 to Apr 2023
Strategic partner to CEO and Senior Leadership Team (SLT) during three rounds of Private Equity (P/E) investment. Instrumental in supporting rapid business growth from $21m - $75m t/o from 2016 – 2022.
Executive leadership, driving the HR and people agenda during the transition from ‘Founder-led’ to P/E Investment cycles & subsequent M&A, with growth from just 50 employees to around 300 talented people.
Defined, articulated and executed a commercially-aligned HR strategy, promoting a high-performance culture, organisational development, learning & development (L&D), EDI, and employee engagement (EE).
Collaboratively engaged with the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) during change management & transition.
Effectively and persuasively advocated for employee needs, whilst delivering and demonstrating true value.
Leadership, management and motivation of a ‘best in class’ HR team and function, comprising of 7 people.
Supported both corporate growth and cost management, leading a team of 5 support staff spanning office management, communications, travel, events and CSR. Mentoring and coaching, supporting talented staff.
Ensured up-to-date HR policies & procedures were clearly articulated to staff in the UK, USA & Asia Pacific.
Successfully supported the CTO in upskilling the tech team to an offshore solution, impacting 50+ staff.
Instrumental in M&A activities, including the TUPE transfers of a key UK acquisition and a UK integration.
Head of HR & Corporate Services Sep 2014 to May 2018
Responsible for all elements of Human Resources (HR) and Corporate Services, tasked with establishing a new support function aimed at enabling continued business growth. Reported directly to the Chief Executive.
Took ownership for the people agenda within the business, positively impacting between 80-200 employees.
Leadership, management and motivation of a multi-functional team of staff, including mentoring & coaching.
End-to-end project lifecycle management & delivery, encompassing planning, scope, budget, risk & issues.
Cambridge University – Judge Business School People and Organisational Effectiveness, 2024
Euromoney Learning Chief Operating Officer Course, 2023
CIPD Qualifications CIPD Certificate in HR Management, 2017
Pragmatic Marketing Stage 2 Qualified, 2017
Association for Project Management APMP Practitioner Qualification, 2015
Cambridge University International Diploma in Business Management, 2008
University of Central Lancashire MA in International Business, 2004
University of Central Lancashire BA (Hons) in Business and Marketing, 2003
