David Fairhurst
Chief People Officer, Senior Vice President
McDonald's Restaurants Ltd

David has enjoyed a rich and varied career in Human Resources.

Since joining Lucas Industries as a Graduate Trainee, he has built an HR department from scratch for Transport Development Group; was the youngest Group Manager at H J Heinz; and was European Director of Recruitment and Leadership Planning for SmithKline Beecham where he ran a large shared services department and took the company to “European Employer of Choice” in its sector. David moved to Tesco Stores in November 2000 as Group Resourcing Director and was quickly given the additional accountability of Corporate HR Director.

In May 2005 David joined McDonald’s Restaurants Ltd as Vice President of People, and in January 2007 was promoted to Senior Vice President, Chief People Officer – Northern Europe with responsibility for HR, Training, Education, and Customer Services.

David is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, a Fellow of the RSA, a Fellow of Lancaster University Business School, Vice Chairman of People 1st, an associate member of Investors in People’s Human Capital Management Standards board, and Chair of the Advisory Board to the Centre for Professional Personnel and Development (CPPD). He recently was appointed Fellow of Sunningdale Institute – a virtual academy of leading academics and other thought leaders created to advise and advance public service.

In July 2006 David was voted HR Director of the Year by readers of HR Magazine and in June 2007 he secured No.1 position in Personnel Today’s Top-40 HR Power Players list. In July 2007 he was given an honorary Doctorate in Business Administration by Manchester Metropolitan University Business School.

Philip Rogerson
Chairman
Carillion

Philip is currently Chairman of Carillion plc, Aggreko plc, THUS Group plc and Northgate plc. He is also a non-Executive Director of Davis Service Group plc, a Trustee of the charity Changing Faces and Chairman of the Construction and Business Services Leadership Group of the Prince’s Trust. He has undertaken a variety of non-executive roles over the last nine years. Prior to this he was a Director of BG plc (previously British Gas plc) for six years, firstly as Finance Director, then as Executive Director covering a wide range of business responsibilities, before being appointed Deputy Chairman with responsibility for major regulatory issues. Much of his earlier career was spent with ICI where he worked between 1978 and1992, latterly as General Manager, Finance with responsibility for the whole of the Group’s financing, taxation and accounting functions.

Martyn Lewis CBE
Broadcaster turned businessman
Chairman of Teliris

Over 32 years as a TV journalist, Martyn Lewis built up a reputation as one of Britain's best known TV anchormen and reporters before taking up a business career. He is now European Chairman and Co-Founder of Teliris (www.teliris.com), the global market leader in Telepresence, whose “VirtuaLive” communications systems, creating a real-time, high definition meeting experience across any number of global locations, are used by a rapidly growing number of global companies; and Chairman of NICE TV (www.nicetv.org), providing high quality bespoke news programmes for events, conferences and webcasts.

He is Chairman of YouthNet, the award-winning charity he founded in 1995 to create a comprehensive internet site signposting 16-24 year-olds to every conceivable opportunity or form of help they might need ( www.thesite.org ). It is now accessed by over half a million young people every month. YouthNet also provides the UK’s national volunteering database - www.do-it.org.uk, listing and regularly updating some 800,000 volunteering opportunities available across the UK.

He has been closely involved with the Hospice movement for over 20 years, and is a Vice-President of the three main national hospice charities – Help The Hospices, Marie Curie Cancer Care and Macmillan Cancer Relief – as well as many individual hospices. Other charity involvement includes : President of United Response, providing homes and work in the community for people with learning disabilities, a Trustee of the Windsor Leadership Trust, helping develop the leaders of tomorrow, and of Edutrust which is setting up Academies of excellence in a number of Britain’s inner cities. He is also a regular judge for the Lord Mayor’s Dragon Awards, honouring companies based in the City of London for their work in helping the community.

In 1994, Martyn made the news himself with two controversial and widely-debated speeches arguing for a shift in the agenda of TV news programmes to achieve a fairer balance between the positive and the negative, by reporting and analysing achievement just as much as failure and disaster.

He holds an honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Ulster and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. He was awarded a CBE in the Prime Minister’s Honours list of 1997.

Rt Hon Virginia Bottomley
Partner and Head of Board Practice
Odgers Ray & Berndtson

Virginia Bottomley chairs the Odgers Ray and Berndtson Board Practice. This conducts searches for Chairmen, CEOs and Non Executive Directors for plcs and private companies. She also chairs the Not-for-Profit Practice at Odgers Ray & Berndtson. Virginia has a wealth of experience from her responsibilities for over 30 years with a number of organisations in the commercial, voluntary and public sectors. She is Chancellor of the University of Hull, Pro Chancellor of the University of Surrey and Governor of the London School of Economics.

She is a member of the UK Advisory Council of the International Chamber of Commerce and of Cambridge University Judge Institute of Management Studies. She is President of Farnham Castle, the Centre for International Briefing and on the Council of The Ditchley Foundation.Virginia is a member of the Supervisory Board of Akzo Nobel NV and a Trustee of The Economist Newspaper.

Virginia was a member of the House of Commons from 1984 to 2005 serving successively as Secretary of State for Health and National Heritage (now Culture, Media and Sport). Virginia was appointed a Life Peer in 2005.Following her first degree, Virginia gained an MSc in Social Administration from the London School of Economics.

Rupert Pennant-Rea
Chairman
Henderson Global Investors
(former Deputy Governor of the Bank of England)

Rupert Pennant-Rea has had a varied career as economist, journalist, central banker and businessman. He was born and brought up in Zimbabwe, and has degrees in economics from Trinity College, Dublin and the University of Manchester.

He has been Editor of The Economist and Deputy Governor of the Bank of England. He is now chairman of Henderson Group plc. He is also on the board of Gold Fields Ltd, and various other public and private companies.

Richard Pym
Chairman
Halfords
(former CEO Alliance & Leicester)

Richard Pym is a chartered accountant and retired as Group Chief Executive of Alliance & Leicester plc in July 2007 after fifteen years at the firm. He was previously a director of The Burton Group plc and of Selfridges plc.

He is currently chairman of Halfords Group plc and a director of Old Mutual plc. He is also involved in private equity and is a commercial adviser to the National Trust.

Gill Rider
Head, Civil Service Capability Group
The Cabinet Office

As Head of the Civil Service Capability Group, I deal with the people, capability and leadership side of the Civil Service. As part my role, I sit on a number of the Civil Service Governance Groups, including the Civil Service Steering Board. I am also Head of Profession for HR, and chair the HR Leaders Council and am a member of the Senior Leadership Committee.

I have been in my current role since May 2006. Previously, I spent my career in Accenture spanning 27 years, running various parts of the world-wide business. In 2002 I was appointed Global Chief Leadership Officer –concentrating on Accenture’s organisation, change, HR and leadership development.

Will Dawkins
Managing Partner and Head of NED Practice
Odgers Ray & Berndtson

Will Dawkins is a partner in the Board Practice, based in London. He joined Odgers Ray & Berndtson in August 2004. Prior to entering executive search, he worked for 23 years in a variety of posts for the Financial Times, most recently as Foreign Editor and then Publishing Editor.

Will has wide experience of international business. For 12 years, he was a Financial Times foreign correspondent, with four-year postings in Tokyo, as bureau chief covering Japanese business, politics and industry; Paris, covering industry and technology; and Brussels, covering European Union trade, competition and industry policy. Before that, he covered venture capital and the development of the then Unlisted Securities Market in London. As Foreign Editor, he was responsible for the news agenda and pastoral care of 150 foreign correspondents, one of the largest international networks in the newspaper industry; and as Deputy Managing Editor, in charge of training and developing journalists. In these roles, he gained experience of hiring and managing talented people.

Will’s most recent role at the FT was to introduce a new publishing system into the editorial department. This involved the biggest change to IT systems since the arrival of electronic publishing in the 1980s. Will read English Literature at Trinity College, Cambridge. He then worked briefly in advertising with Haymarket Publishing, the magazine and events group, before training as a journalist with the former Westminster Press.

Stephen Williams
Company Secretary
Unilever

Steve Williams was born in London in 1948 and was educated at King's College, University of London where he gained a law degree. Following this he attended law school in London and was admitted as a solicitor and a member of the Law Society in April 1972.

In 1975 he joined the legal department of Imperial Chemical Industries and in 1985 he was appointed as one of two assistant company secretaries within the organisation.

He came to Unilever as joint secretary in January 1986 and in addition, was appointed general counsel in 1993. In September 2007, Steve relinquished his role as Joint Secretary following the decision to end that office. He is currently Chief Legal Officer and Group General Counsel and is responsible for the Global Legal Function, including patents and all intellectual property.

Outside Unilever, Steve is a member of the Company Law Committee of the Law Society and of the Companies Committee of the Confederation of British Industry.

He is on the board of Arriva plc and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Steve lives in London with his wife Susan and they have one son. His interests include contemporary art, professional football, pulp fiction and City life.

Bill Hester
Head of Consulting
DDI

Bill leads the assessment and consulting business for DDI UK. He is responsible for leading DDI’s UK-based executive assessment activities and consulting with global clients to design executive development solutions.

He is a chartered occupational psychologist and has worked as a senior consultant across a wide range of industries. His experience includes: the design and delivery of executive assessment, development interventions and selection processes; succession planning; high-potential identification/development; success profiling and competency analysis; senior-level resourcing; learning systems design and delivery; induction and acculturation; team building interventions; general leadership development; senior-level coaching; assessment validation; and the design and use of IT systems to support these activities.

Bill has consulted with a large number of international and blue-chip clients, including Maersk, Coca-Cola, GKN, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Barclays, Gillette, Nissan, Panasonic, Tesco, Siemens Business Services, Zurich Financial Services, Transport for London, British Airways, Emirates and Cisco Systems.

Before joining DDI, Bill managed senior recruitment for Andersen and worked at both an operational and strategic level to attract and retain experienced talent up to partner level. He has worked in the UK test publishing industry as a consultant and trainer, and also has expertise in psychometric assessment.

Bill has a Masters degree in occupational/industrial psychology and is an Associate Fellow with the British Psychological Society.

Martin Tiplady
Director of HR
Metropolitan Police

Martin Tiplady was appointed director of human resources of the Metropolitan Police Service in December 2001. Prior to that, he was group head of human resources (The Berkeley Group plc 1999 – 2001), director of human resources (Westminster Health Care Holdings Plc 1995 – 1999) and director of personnel (The Housing Corporation 1987 – 1995).

Martin Tiplady has a Diploma in Management Studies. He was educated in Chelmsford, Essex and grew up in local government, which he entered in 1969. He left local government in 1987 as Assistant Director of Social Services (LB Haringey).

He is a member of the Association of Chief Police Officers and is the Deputy Chair of the ACPO Workforce Modernisation and Development portfolio. He is a member of various HR think tanks and review bodies. In November 2004, he was named by The Daily Telegraph as ‘Personnel Director of the Year’. He is regularly named by the HR press as one of the most influential people in Human Resources.

Martin Tiplady is a Chartered Fellow of the CIPD. He was appointed a vice president of the CIPD in October 2006 and is also a business fellow at Roffey Park Business Institute. He is a member of the MBA Advisory Board for the University of Westminster.

Alan Bird
Partner and Head of Organisational Practice (London)
Bain & Co

Alan Bird is a partner at Bain & Company in London and heads up the UK Organisation practice.

Alan has over 20 years consulting experience spanning a wide range of industries and geographies. His particular focus has been on broad-scale transformation, culture change and organisation effectiveness, including a special interest in performance management and effective leadership and talent supply.

Alan has authored several articles on leadership supply and talent management for publications such as the European Business Journal, Forbes.com, Global Agenda and the Handbook of Business Strategy.

Alan earned an MBA with Distinction from INSEAD and an MA from Cambridge University.

Jo Dunne
Head of Strategic Talent Management
Tate & Lyle

Jo has over 20 years working experience within HR, the majority of which has been within the field of Learning and Development. During her career, Jo has worked for 15 years within the fast moving Telecommunications sector, rising to the role of Group Director of Management Development which incorporated the successful design and implementation of the approach to Talent Management globally.

Jo has also worked for a Global property company, headquartered in Australia, as Global Head of Learning and Development, focusing on Talent and Leadership development, as well as Succession Management.

Jo joined Tate & Lyle plc, during the summer of 2005 in the newly created role of Global Head of Strategic Talent Management. The role is crucial to Tate & Lyle’s growth strategy and vision of becoming ‘the world’s leading renewable ingredients business’. Talent Management and its related practices, is a new area for Tate & Lyle and therefore is a greenfield opportunity. Her key responsibilities are implementing Succession and Talent Management processes and establishing the Leadership Curriculum globally to drive change.

Jo has both a Bachelor and Masters degree in Psychology and is qualified as an Occupational Psychologist. She is a member of the Institute of Personnel and Development.

Jo is married and lives in Oxfordshire.

Toby Foggo
Head of Learning & Development
Telefónica O2 UK

Toby is Head of Talent Development at Telefónica O2 UK and a member of the company’s HR Leadership Team. He is responsible for the definition and implementation of the company’s management, leadership and talent development strategies with a particular focus on: people management capability; ‘general management’ capability; HIPO identification and development; leadership talent pipeline; cross-Directorate consistency; liaison and alignment with other Telefónica O2 operating businesses, Telefónica Europe and Telefónica Group. Toby has had a 17 year career in the human resources arena including 4½ years with O2 and previous appointments with Goldman Sachs, Sony, Thames Water and Manpower.

Arvinder Dhesi
Group Talent Management Director
Aviva

ARVINDER DHESI joined Aviva Plc in 2006 as the Group Talent Management Director based in London. In this role, he is responsible for the Aviva Leadership Academy and for shaping the overall talent strategy for Aviva (the world's fifth largest insurance group with 58,000 people serving 35 million customers worldwide). Previously, Arvinder spent 10 years at Mars Incorporated, in a variety of roles, in sales management and HR. Most recently, he was based in the US as the Organization and Management Development Director serving Mars businesses across the Americas. Arvinder began his career in retail banking in the UK.

Born in the UK, Arvinder is of Indian origin, literate and fluent in Punjabi with an unpolished grasp of several other Indian languages. He is married with three children, Alexander Vikram (7), Elinor Resham (5) and Lucas Pritam (3). Outside work, he enjoys spending time with his family, old books and old fountain pens. He is pitifully inept at sports, home improvements, car maintenance and most other things a man of his age should be at least conversant with.

Magnus Tegborg
Managing Director, Northern Europe
Harvey Nash

Magnus Tegborg is Managing Director of Harvey Nash Northern Europe. He is also part of the Global Executive Search & Leadership Services Management team. Magnus founded Alumni, Sweden’s leading Executive Search firm, 1990. Alumni have been part of Harvey Nash since spring 2007. As well as leading Alumni and Harvey Nash in the Nordics Magnus also delivers on searches for Chairmen, CEOs and Non Executive Directors for plcs, private companies and government organisations. He is also a trusted advisor in evaluating and developing company boards and top management teams in large Nordic corporations.

Magnus serves as a non executive board member for Stockholm Stadshus AB (City of Stockholm holding company) and he is deputy chairman for Fortum Värme. He also chairs several national Swedish juries’ for example to appoint Leader of the year and HR-director of the year. Magnus trained at officer’s school serving as Major in the Royal Swedish Army and has an MSc in Business Administration.

Lou Manzi
Global Head of Resourcing
GSK

Lou Manzi is Vice President, GSK Talent Solutions and has responsibility for overseeing the strategy and delivery of the global talent sourcing and recruitment functions at GlaxoSmithKline. He originally joined SmithKline Beckman Consumer Products as Manager, Government and Public Affairs in 1985. Prior to his current position, he was responsible for managing the Leadership and Succession Planning process at SmithKline Beecham.

During his tenure he has authored a variety of articles on recruitment metrics and how measures can operationally improve the recruitment function. He has chaired many presentations on customer care, recruitment efficiency and is known for his entrepreneurial and creative approach to talent acquisition. He is co-authoring a book entitled “Beyond Employer Branding”, which is scheduled to be published later this year. 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 Robert Michael Communications, Voorhees, NJ. He is also a past trustee of the Wilkes University Board of Directors.

Lou received his B.A. from St. Mary’s Seminary College and has done graduate work in the Executive Masters Program at the University of Pennsylvania. He has a commercial pilot license, is multi-engine, instrument and seaplane rated, pilots his own airplane and also enjoys gourmet cooking, ice hockey, water sports and photography. He and his wife, Pat, reside in Riverton and Long Beach Island, NJ, USA.

Lucy Adams
Group HR Director
Serco Plc

Lucy Adams was appointed HR Director, Serco Group in October 2003, is a member of the Global Management Board and recently became a member of the London Skills & Employment Board.

As HR Director, Lucy’s role is to create and drive the global people strategy and ensure that Serco has the leadership, capabilities and motivation to deliver its ambitious growth plans.

Lucy joined Serco in 1999, having worked previously in both the public sector and consultancy. She began her career with Serco leading and managing large scale change programmes within the rail and transport sectors, and was the HR/Change Director for one of the largest Divisions before taking the Group Role.

Tim Ellis
HR Director
United Biscuits

Tim began his career with Cadbury Schweppes in manufacturing following university, initially working within Cadbury Ltd as a production graduate then moving into HR following a year as a night shift production manager.

After 4 years there, Cadbury became part of the Premier Brands business following a management buy out by CS. This gave Tim opportunity to develop a broad range of HR skills.

After 3 years, Premier was bought by Hillsdown Holdings and whilst remaining in HR his role changed significantly within such a diverse business.

In 2000 Tim joined United Biscuits as HR controller at a time when the business was up for sale. He has remained with UB throughout 2 periods of private equity ownership. Having worked as UK HR Director and Business Change Director Tim has been able to actively influence the people agenda in UB and gain valuable commercial experience as part of the UK board.

Outside of work Tim is kept busy with his wife and 2 teenage children, but manages to find time to coach rugby and vocally spectate at London Wasps, his adopted club.

Andy Savage
VP Human Resources
Danaher Europe

Andy Savage is Vice President Human Resources, Danaher Europe and Global Vice President, Danaher Medical-Leica. Danaher, a leading industrial company, designs, manufactures and markets innovative products, services and technologies with strong brand names and significant market positions, with revenues of $12 billion in 2007. Leica is a premier global provider of high precision optical instruments, solutions and related consumables for life sciences and medical applications, including laboratory microscopes, pathology diagnostics products and surgical microscopes.

Before to joining Danaher, Andy was HR Director Europe for Timken Corp based in France and Romania. Prior to this he held senior HR positions with General Mills in Switzerland, General Electric Corp in the Netherlands and AXA in Ireland.

David Mason
Head of Corporate University
HBOS

Following a seventeen year career with Marks & Spencer, David joined the then Halifax Building Society in 1994. He held various Training Management roles before leading the Corporate Centre HR team. This led to a move into Business Banking as Director of HR and Executive Development. He then returned to Retail Banking where he was responsible for creating the first pan-Retail Leadership Development team. In August 2006 David became the first Head of HBOS-U (Corporate University) where he leads a team that delivers development to the top 3,000 leaders across the HBOS group.