DISRUPTIVE HR was created by Lucy Adams who has held Board level HR roles for over 10 years, most recently at the BBC. Combing strategic and operational HR expertise with a fresh but practical approach, she aims to put the "human" back into Human Resources.

Mark De Smedt has served as Regional Head of Northern Europe at the Adecco Group since January 2016, leading also Germany, Austria and Switzerland as part of the same region as of July 1, 2017. Mark has a Degree in Commercial Engineering from the Free University of Brussels and has attended MBA programmes in Chicago, Harvard, INSEAD and the London Business School. In 2009, Mark joined Adecco as Country Manager for Belgium & Luxembourg. He was previously a founder of Professional Staffing specialist XPE Group, acquired by Adecco. Prior to this, he was responsible for Adecco’s Benelux operations between 2002 and 2007. Before Mark joined the staffing industry, he held various executive positions at Wang, Apple, Citibank, and Scoot in France, Spain and Belgium.

Pa Sinyan is a Partner at Gallup and the manager of the company’s Germany location. Pa leads Gallup’s Germany team in offering clients the most effective analytics and advice to improve their business outcomes. He works closely with executives to design and implement global solutions to help them transform their organization’s workplace culture and drive performance through organic growth. 

Sinyan has 10 years of experience consulting leadership teams on both organizational and C-Suite challenges in the manufacturing, financial services, retail and consumer goods industries. 

Before joining Gallup, Sinyan worked with the German Ministry of Economic Affairs where he provided economic advice for foreign direct investments. He also worked with the African Development Bank in Tunisia.  

Sinyan earned his master’s and a bachelor’s degree in international economics and finance from Universiteit van Tilburg in The Netherlands.  

Born and raised in The Gambia, Sinyan has lived in Germany, The Netherlands and Tunisia. He is fluent in English, German and Wolof, and has a basic understanding of Dutch. 

Rina Joosten-Rabou is an entrepreneur, board member and publicist. Prior to co-founding Seedlink, she founded HR consultancy International Top Talent in both China and Europe. Rina held various management positions at DSM, a global science-based company, where she focused on the commercialization process of R&D and innovation.

Rina is a regular speaker and writer on technology, human capital and entrepreneurship. She delivered a speech on ‘How A.I. changes the way we find careers’ at Tedx ShanghaiWomen. Rina has an MSc and MA degree from Groningen University in the Netherlands. She is married and has four children.

Jeffer London is Strategic Relationship Director at the Center for Creative Leadership and sits on the board of the International Association of Facilitators. He is the go-to-person for top teams who need better internal dynamics and innovative services that shape the human side of strategy. Jeffer writes about how to have more stimulating conversations at work, and designs projects that build leadership, innovation and engagement. See his blog on LinkedIn and thought leadership at www.ccl.org. 

Rohit’s team is responsible for hiring of Critical Capability roles in Philips EMEA. His team works on the hardest to fill roles and focusses on providing Talent Intelligence to develop sourcing strategy, build talent pipelines for positions that will help accelerate the transformation of Philips. Rohit plays an advisory role to management and internal stakeholders, and one of his main responsibilities is to ensure that the team has an eye on the future while paying attention to the needs of the present.

Andrew is the Founder & CEO of Edease. Edease is a technology startup that puts education at the forefront of talent engagement & acquisition. With an online platform providing interactive videos on the job relevant skills needed by enterprise across multiple sectors, Edease teaches the world about jobs!

Frank is the lead HR Business Partner for Google with teams in 19 countries. In this role, him and his team aim to be a sparring partner, sounding board and coach to their business leaders and people managers. He owns and facilitates the execution of core processes, such as talent- and performance reviews, and topics, such as the implementation of D&I measurements and HR initiatives. He also carries an overall responsibility, similar to one of a HR-Generalist, whenever it comes to matters relating to geographies; representing HR as a function in Regional Management meetings or Google as a legal entity. Frank has been voted to be amongst the leading HR practitioners by Haufe Umantis in 2015 as an advocate and ambassador of “new work”. Google is admired for its company culture, enabling it to foster innovation, attract high caliber talent and to create state-of-the-art people practices. Having operated in- and outside the Ulrich model as well as having worked in different industries, companies and countries, Frank understands the environment his peers work in and challenges they face.

Mia has been the HR Director at IBM since 2002, with an overall HR scope, and with strong business relationships.

Global HR Leader with extensive experience in international corporate environments. Leading design and development of innovative workforce experiences and solutions in multiple HR areas. Gianpaolo gained a wide expertise in Talent Management and L&D by covering diverse roles and responsibilities regionally and globally, functionally and enterprise-wide. Gianpaolo’s passion is re-defining the future of work in corporations - how talent is identified, leveraged, allocated and engaged, and how work is organized, measured and rewarded – and its implication on people, HR and ultimately the society. Curiosity, creativity, agility and the ability to make innovation happen are my recognized strengths.

Dr. Wolfgang Fassnacht heads the Global HR Organizations for HR and Operations at SAP. He and his team are responsible for all people related topics of these business areas. Between 2000 and 2008 he held various global roles at SAP in Product Management until moving from the business into HR. There he has been HR Director Germany for six years. Dr. Wolfgang Fassnacht holds a PhD in Economic History from the University of Freiburg, Germany, and he is a certified coach.

Gerard has extensive experience running complex global organisations with additional professional skills in retail, marketing and sales. His specialties include Leadership Development, Talent Management, large scale global reorganisations/strategic business turn around, building and shaping of agile organisation structures, offshoring and outsourcing and leading running/delivering results with truly global diverse teams. Downstream employs a talented and diverse global workforce, and remains committed to Goal Zero: zero harm to people or the environment from our operations, in line with our core business values.

HR professional with extensive experience in the sectors consultancy, oil&gas (Upstream), construction products, banking and pharmaceutical. Diverse HR function experience, such as spanning employee relations, recruitment, talent management, strategic workforce planning, organisational development. Managed important transformations (M&A activities, staffing/redundancy, culture change initiatives) during his career as HRBP

- Sandy Begbie is responsible for the Global People, Organisation & Culture Integration since the successful merger of Standard Life and Aberdeen Asset Management on 14 August 2017. He is also the Lead Executive for the Joint Venture Heng An Standard Life in China and the Asia business based in Hong Kong. Sandy joined Standard Life in May 2010 as the Group Transformation Director, during which time he invested in Oracle Fusion generating £8m in cash savings, a 17% reduction in HR costs and a 32% return on investment. Awarded ‘Most Influential HR Director in the UK 2016’ and ‘One of the 10 Most Influential HR Directors of the Decade in 2015’. He is the Chairman of Career Ready, Scottish Advisory Board (SAB) and also Chairs the new Regional Developing Young Workforce (DYW) group to tackle Edinburgh and Lothian youth unemployment. He was recently appointed as a NED to the Open University Board.

Peter is a senior HR leader with strong business acumen. He is currently HR Director for the European sales organization within Nokia Networks. At the start of his career Peter worked in the business doing project management and consulting. Later he took over leadership positions of services organizations for Nokia and through his work in Europe, Middle East and Africa he streamlined the organizations and turned teams into high performing customer centric teams. In 2009 Peter entered the world of HR first as a HR Director for parts of the software business, later as head of the Talent, leadership and Organizational development expertise worldwide and now as HR Director for Sales in Europe.

Jenny is responsible for delivery of HR support against the People Agenda as well as day to day HR related issues across a global team, spanning India, UK, Bermuda and Asia. She joined Fidelity in March 2011 as HR Generalist UK Business and Institutional Groups and moved to Technology HR in February 2012. Jenny joined the HR leadership team in March 2015, and CFO was added to her overall responsibilities in January 2016. Prior to that she spent over 10 years in Barclays as HR BP Global Markets (Trading, Barclays Capital), having previously been Head of Learning and Development for the UK covering Infrastructure, IBD and Global Markets. Jenny holds a masters in Human Resources and is a Master Chartered Member of the Institute of Personnel and Development. She has a keen interest in Psychometrics and Organisation Development.

Angelika leads employer branding, sourcing, recruiting and talent management across the Allianz Group. She will drives cross-functional and cross-country mobility and ensures that Allianz has the right pool of talent. Most recently she acted as Head of People Sourcing within Group HR, where she strongly supported the HR Transformation project.

Head of HR of an IBM company network across Europe passionate about implementing a smarter workforce strategy that delivers impact for our clients & makes IBM the employer-of-choice in the industry

John is Director of Human Resource for HPEs Northern Europe* geography. John is driven by a strong interest in creating a sus-tainable competitive advantage in fast moving international busi-ness environment to increase the value for the customer with a focus on culture, diversity, growing talents, accelerate perfor-mance and business development. He joined HPE 2009 and previously roles includes various HR management positions at country and region level at Ericsson, Panasonic and latest at EDS. John has planned and driven several international business transformations. At HPE he has worked as HRBP for almost all of the business units at General Western Europe level and most recently before this position held the posi-tion as Dir HRBP for the EMEA Global Account organization. John holds a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Sociology from The Stockholm University and a Technical College graduate diploma. He lives in Stockholm with his wife and two young daughters. Interests and focused experience areas: Talent Management, Per-formance acceleration, International employee relations, Program management, Development of Business, People and Organiza-tions. * Northern Europe GEO includes Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.

William Ingham has been Chief Officer, Organisation Change and HR at Visa since August 2016 and is responsible for setting the people and talent strategy for employees throughout Europe. 

Heike Fierek-Popp, Global Head Strategic Workforce Planning &Competence Management Heike Fierek-Popp is heading the Strategic Workforce Planning and Competence Management for Siemens. In this global responsibility she also drives the regular People Strategy discussions with the operating business. During her 18 years of professional experience she led a great variety of talent management projects in several functions and different businesses. In addition Heike is a certified professional business coach.

Luigi Maria Fierro joined ING Group in 2015 and his is currently Head of ING HR strategy and Innovation. During his journey in ING, in the Performance Management space, he has redesigned the Group new performance management framework and had ensured its full implementation with a transformation program covering 55.000 employees. Prior to join ING Luigi Maria has been working for 10 year in McKinsey and Co. serving several of the leading financial institutions in Europe, Middle East and North Africa. Thank to this experience Luigi Maria has developed a extensive experience on financial institutions sector that is combining, HR business and strategic perspective.

Ambros has a strong track record as a passionate leader in implementing and running Talent and Performance Management initiatives in an international corporate environment. He is experienced as a HR Business Partner and Management Consultant for international clients. His current job "Future Workforce Engineering" uses smart data to prepare the workforce of AXA Switzerland for future challenges. The team develops and initiates development actions and proves the feasibility of new ways to work.

Dagmar has worked in DTAG since 1996 in different segments and functions. During the last 20 years she managed different departments of the group as global Human Resources Development of T-Systems or global Sales HR Business Partner. She has been responsible for major transformation and integration projects, mergers and outsourcings. Since October 2016 Dagmar is heading the global talent & successionmanagement of the group. Previously she was working in the banking sector.

We Sell Sleep was founded with the simple purpose to make improvement of sleep more accessible and convenient for people. Two thirds of people suffer from poor sleep quality at some time in their life and this not only affects their performance at work but can also have detrimental impacts on their overall wellbeing. For most people sleep can be improved by a better understanding of sleep and simple changes to both their environment and routine. With 20 years experience in blue chip C-level roles (Customer Director B&Q, CFO Argos, CEO Tesco Direct, M and M Direct and ACHICA) the company's founder Steve Robinson is well placed to share these learnings with a corporate audience.

Joost Minnaar, Pim de Morree, Freek Ronner and Catelijne Bexkens, known as “The Corporate Rebels", are on a mission to make work more fun. They quit their frustrating, corporate jobs and set out to travel the globe to visit the world’s most inspiring organizations. While checking off their renowned Bucket List they share everything they learn. Featured in: NY Times, Forbes, HuffPost, Guardian, BBC. Listed as "Top 30 Emergent Management Thinkers" and nominated for Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea Award.

Ana Fonseca Nordang is the head of Executive and Leadership Development at Equinor. In this role, Ana is responsible for performance management, succession planning, talent and leadership development and diversity & inclusion. Ana is a proven international executive with extensive experience driving organisational change, and business improvement across several industries. Prior to taking on this role, Ana was responsible for HR strategy and organisation for Equinor Development and Production USA and played a leading role in integrate onshore operations to strengthen compliance and operational efficiencies across.

Thibaud, PhD in neuroscience, is a former researcher from the Brain and Spine institute in Paris, France. Previously startup founder in medtech, and science journalist, he is now working on the effect of hyper connection on the brain, and our relationship with new technologies as Research Director at Into the Tribe.

As a senior recruiter with over 13 years of international, cross-industry experience, I am currently working for a leader in the biotech/pharma sector. I strive to provide excellent customer service through finding the right person for the right role at the right time.I am an experienced and passionate HR professional who aims to create value for the business lines I recruit for at Thermo Fisher Scientific. Through understanding the needs of not only the company, but also the industry, I aim to provide excellent customer service by listening, understanding and communicating effectively.With a focus on recruitment, my solid international experience encompasses working in North America and Europe, and recruiting candidates across the globe.I am a multi-lingual, energetic, enthusiastic, hardworking and intellectually curious person with a thirst for knowledge. I am very comfortable at communicating with peers as well as senior management and have a knack for fostering lasting relationships with key stakeholders.

Chris Wakely is a multi-talented strategist, sales executive, and global thinker based in London; he leads the international business development for Benify, an innovative HR tech company based in Stockholm. With 20+ years of bringing smart compensation and benefits tech solutions to companies worldwide, Chris has helped clients maximize employees’ engagement while streamlining administration, reducing costs, and increasing governance. Chris often leads discussions about how to reach employees digitally and why motivating and inspiring them via their total reward and through a modern employee experience makes smart business sense. When not revolutionizing the world of HR, he cycles and spends quality time with his family: his wife Charlotte and their two very energetic boys.

Alraune is Head of Global HR Systems and Reporting at TUI AG since March 2018. With a background in Computer Science, Alraune’s 20+ year career has closely followed the evolution of the internet and digitization. She has had the opportunity to work with diverse teams across the world to reimagine the employee journey and create a digital-human experience at the workplace. She has been engaged in driving HR Technology and Operations automation initiatives for a wide range of multinational companies, from large banks to startups. An American, with roots in Europe and Asia, Alraune is deeply tuned in to the changing nature of the world of work, the digital workforce and the impact on society and culture. The role of technology and automation in creating a seamless digital-human experience is integral to our lives today. Alraune believes frictionless employee experience together with optimization of operations has a direct, measurable business impact and enables an employee to do their best work.

Head of Learning & Development for the regions Central East Europe and Benelux & the Nordics within Atos HR Centers of Excellence and Global Head of L&D for Technical Education within Atos. Additionally responsible for Performance Management in parts of the Region. I lead a global team that is responsible for People development in all Atos divisions within these regions. My core focus lies in setting the People development strategy, enabling and ensuring it's execution and delivering quality education to our workforce.

Kevin Fengler is International Senior Sales Manager at Talentwunder. Prior to joining Talentwunder, Kevin worked in Sales and Marketing at startups based in Spain and the UK. He graduated from Kingston University with a BA in International Business and a Masters in Event Management.

Head of People and Performance @ Gympass Europe (the new naming will (most likely) be VP of People and Performance) Duarte’s career was made in North America, Latin America and Europe, where he was mainly involved with talent acquisition, business development, talent and HR management, employer branding and performance management. Arriving at Gympass in late 2017, after 02 years as Director of Talent Acquisition for Walmart (USA) International division, his goals are to take the Gympass team to the next level regarding People and Performance Management and to bring Gympass to the forefront of engagement and talent attraction and development. Duarte is graduated in Psychology and has done Advanced Management Programmes at the Ashridge Business School and IMD Business School. He has also previously developed his career as a Director and Country Manager In Hays managing offices in Europe and Latin America.

Chris is Managing Director and co-founder of Thomsons and has been in the benefits industry for over 20 years. Driven by an entrepreneurial spirit and passion for all things DarwinTM, his main focus is on the development of new markets and engagement with global clients. He loves meeting with CHROs and reward leaders to support them in staying one step ahead of the rapidly changing benefits landscape.

Paul is a partner in our human resources practice. He specialises in the employment aspects of acquisitions and mergers, particularly TUPE, redundancies and re-organisations. Paul also has a special interest in advising on executive terminations, restrictive covenants and industrial relations issues. Paul is office location head for our Leeds office and has a strong focus on international growth. Paul is featured in Chambers Legal Directory and is ranked as an Eminent Practitioner who "leads the employment department and is well known for his prowess with regard to trade union relations and executive level disputes ". He is a member of the Employment Lawyers Association.

Tim Ackermann is a seasoned and passionate HR and Talent Acquisition expert with 20 years in various industries and regions at companies such as Deutsche Bank, Microsoft, Swarovski and Zalando. Recently Tim joined retailer Lidl as Head of Talent Acquisition & Experience to enable their international growth strategy while maintaining high levels of employee engagement. Outside of the corporate world, Tim teached HR Management at the International School of Management, Munich. Tim is a founding member of Queb e.V. the (German) Association for Quality Employer Branding and actively engaged in the harmonization of the European higher education with fibaa e.V.

Michal Gradshtein is an organizational psychologist and the founder and CEO of StarLinks. Michal focuses on networks – social and conceptual – to bring on a systems approach to organizations. StarLinks provides actionable people analytics directly to organizational members, and support their development of effective value-creation networks.

Mervyn Dinnen is the  author of the book Exceptional Talent (published by Kogan Page in 2017), an award winning recruitment and workplace blogger, and an international speaker and writer on HR, recruitment, employment trends and the future of work.

Dr Elke Eller has been a member of the Executive Board as the TUI Group’s HR and Labour Director since 15 October 2015.

Prior to joining TUI AG, Dr Eller held various positions at Volkswagen, being part of the Executive Board  at Volkswagen Financial Services AG from 2007 onwards. In 2012 she was appointed to the Management Board of Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles with responsibility for HR.  

Before moving to industry, Dr Eller was responsible for various management functions at the German Public Services and Transport Union (ÖTV), the National Executive of the German Metalworkers’ Union (IGM), the Otto Brenner Foundation and the Hans Böckler Foundation. During that period she gained many years of experience as a member of various Supervisory Boards, including the Supervisory Boards of ThyssenKrupp and Volkswagen.

Sharon teaches, researches and consults in Career/Competencies Architecture; HR Business Partnering; Leadership and Team development, particularly in Inter-Cultural Intelligence, Engagement, Polarity Management, Spiritual (SQ) Intelligence; Talent identification, Personal and Team Wellbeing.

Before Ashridge, Sharon spent 20 years as a Senior Manager/OD consultant/Learning Facilitator/Coach/Speaker. She started her career as HR Manager in the Motor Industry, then led Human Capacity Building in a large consulting company, after which she established a successful consulting practice (Impact Consulting) in South Africa. Clients have included Audi, BMW, Land Rover, De Beers, Anglo, Sage Life, University of Johannesburg and Sasol.

Sharon holds a MA in Industrial Psychology and a Management Advanced Programme Certificate. She is a Master Practitioner in NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) and a PNI practitioner (psychoneuroimmunology). She has established a track record as an inspirational speaker at conferences and is an accredited Laughter/Levity facilitator. She has co-published a book on resilience 'Diamonds in the Dust'

Since June 1st 2016 Michael Rubas is Senior Vice President HR Planning, IT & Operations at Deutsche Telekom AG and reports directly to the CHRO. He is also member of the supervisory board of the Deutsche Telekom Shared Services Europe GmbH.Within the Deutsche Telekom Group he started his career at T-Systems and held various management positions incl. Managing Director of ICT Services at T-Systems Switzerland and Senior Vice President Human Resources at T-Systems International.Before his career at Deutsche Telekom he worked as HR manager at debis Systemhaus. Michael started his professional career at Daimler AG as Consultant for Organizational Development. He recently finished a Master of Consulting & Coaching for Change at the HEC Paris & Said Business School Oxford.

As head of performance development at Equinor, Helen is responsible for performance development for Equinor’s 20,000 employees across 30 countries.  Her focus is on developing Equinor’s performance culture and career development opportunities to maximize the opportunity to grow and thrive in this volatile, complex business environment.  Prior to joining the corporate function, Helen had several business focused HR roles in Equinor.  Before joining Equinor in 2009, Helen was HR Manager for the four Tate.

With over 13 years working within recruitment and talent acquisition, Ben has a real passion for finding the best talent for your business. At Allegis Global Solutions (AGS) Ben consults to a range of businesses and industries on building and improving their talent attraction strategies, advising on not only how new technologies can aid their interaction with the growing passive talent markets, but also on how to provide the best candidate experience. Having worked as an external and internal recruitment manager, Ben understands how roles are aligned and where changes can be made to ensure their time is effectively used in the ever changing talent landscape. Additionally, Ben is an extremely passionate advocate of AGS’ diversity and inclusion initiatives, supporting the business to drive our D&I Council’s initiatives both in our EMEA region and globally.

As Director Sales New Business, Jutta Perfahl-Strilka is responsible in the entire new customer business of XING E-Recruiting for Germany, Austria and Switzerland. She leads the Competence Center for the NewBiz Sales department in Vienna, which currently consists of eight sales teams in the areas of Employer Branding, Active Sourcing, Social Media Job Ads and Referral Management. This center is supported by the Sales Academy founded by her. In her function at the Vienna location, she serves as the main contact person for the Austrian market. Before joining XING in June 2015, Jutta Perfahl-Strilka was responsible for the repositioning of the independent representation of interests for three years as General Secretary of the "Verband Österreichs Personaldienstleister ". Prior to that, she spent several years at Manpower as Director Sales Key Accounts, Business Development Manager and Sales & Operation Manager for Austria-wide sales and recruiting at around 23 cost centers with different emphases. Jutta Perfahl-Strilka graduated in commercial sciences at the Universities of Innsbruck and Linz.

Ritu Mohanka is Vice President of Strategy & Business Development, responsible for EMEA. Prior to Glint, Ritu was Managing Director, Europe at Kenexa (acquired by IBM in 2012), leading the Workforce Surveys business. Ritu holds an MBA an MSc in Marketing and has lived and worked in Paris, Munich, Vienna and originally hails from Kolkata India. She’s personally led and delivered many key projects for the largest international clients across a wide range of sectors from Financial Services to Pharma, Industrials and Retail, linking results to overall strategic business goals to drive performance improvement.