The Workplace Inspirathon ’23

Ulrika has been speaking, facilitating and developing people who lead others in various roles for the past 25 years.  Today, her work is concentrated in three areas: building a growing business in Asia; developing individual leaders through mentoring and active learning; rolling out leadership programmes and learning solutions that bring about behavioural change and help people develop powerful leadership conversations at work.

Dan is a learning specialist with a background in business psychology, which provides an academic underpinning to his innovative and pragmatic solutions. Over the last 30 years Dan has led a number of high-profile learning initiatives in New Zealand, Australia and Asia.

Seeing the potential to re-define how organisations designed and delivered learning, Dan founded Inspire Group in 2001. Since then, Inspire has become New Zealand’s and Australia’s premier provider of learning solutions, a hot bed of innovation and maintained its status as one of New Zealand’s best workplaces. Dan continues to lead Inspire Group’s expansion into new markets and products, remains actively involved with Inspire’s customers and provides thought leadership to the professional community through speaking engagements and coaching practitioners.

Barry is a human resource and consulting leader with experience in strategic talent management, HR technology, future of work and culture transformation. He is currently the Head of BDO People and has more than 25 years of consulting experience. Barry was previously the Chief Strategy Officer of VSLS Enablement Technologies specialising in workforce upskilling, strategic advisory, experience design and technology enablement to unlock the true potential of organisations.  His passion is organizational learning, and he is fascinated by the interplay between organizational learning, technology, and large-scale behaviour change. He enjoys the challenge of supporting organizations to act their way into new ways of thinking and behaving.

David focuses on making progress possible in difficult times. This requires the development of foundational human capabilities: purpose, adaptability, collaboration and trust. Unfortunately, many organizations value efficiency over experience, control over trust, competition over collaboration and short-term thinking over a long-term, sustainable approach. When strategies fail, it’s often because organizations and their leaders underestimate its human side.

As the founder of Otolith – an organizational transformation practice – he helps organizations to become more resilient by embracing a behavioral approach to business. He is also the author of a book on Sustainable Leadership and co-authored books about the customization of work. Next to his advisory work, he is a teacher and a certified board member.

Irina joined BAT Australia as Communications and Sustainability Executive in 2016 before moving into HR in 2019. 

In her time in communications, she was driving corporate narrative initiatives, internal communications as well as looking after projects in tobacco product stewardship.

Since moving into HR, Irina has been business partnering across both Corporate and Marketing functions with particular focus on Trade and Field as well as driving South East Asia Diversity & Inclusion portfolio. 

In August 2022, Irina moved to Dubai to assume the role of the Area Head of Talent APMEA West. Her team’s portfolio is focusing on driving the talent agenda, diversity, equity & inclusion practices, wellbeing and flex framework implementation as well as EVP and L&D practices across all Area markets. 

Irina has a double degree in International Economics and Strategic Marketing. Prior to BAT, she has enjoyed 15+ years working in Public Relations and Communications in TELCO, data protection, education and NFP sectors with career defining stints in London and Sochi Olympics. 

Originally from Russia, relocated to Australia in 2013, since 2022, lives in Dubai. 

Irina on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/iaristova/ 

Martina Quinn is the Founder and Managing Director of Alice, an award-winning public relations agency, headquartered in Dublin, Ireland. 

Alice’s purpose is to create change that makes Ireland and the world a better place. Since the company was established in 2015, it has devised and managed successful campaigns on gender equality, LGBTQ+ rights, integration and anti-racism initiatives, reproductive rights, access to education and employment, climate action, and much more. With offices in Dublin and Belfast, Alice works throughout the island of Ireland – and beyond. 

While Alice’s external purpose is focused on improving the world, the company has a complementary internal purpose, which is to provide Alice employees with secure, sustainable career paths, whilst ensuring they can lead happy, fulfilling lives. 

Martina’s specialisms include strategic communications; stakeholder engagement; public affairs and political communications; and crisis / issues management. She currently serves as Strategic Advisor for the WorkEqual campaign on workplace gender equality, and for Trans Equality Together, a coalition working to create an Ireland where trans and non-binary people are equal, safe and valued. 

In a voluntary capacity, she is the Chairperson of the Board of the Public Relations Consultants Association of Ireland, and a member of the Board of Management of ICCO, the International Communications Consultancy Organisation. She also sits on the Board of Women’s Aid. 

Alice was recognised in the Top 25 Workplaces in the EMEA region in the 2023 Inspiring Workplaces Awards, as well as in the Global Top 100. 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martinaquinn/  

Twitter: @MartinaPQuinn / @HelloAlicePR

Instagram: @martinaquinn / @helloalicepr

Website: www.alicepr.com  

Rachel Pipan is the Managing Director and founder of Maneuvre, an Amsterdam-based strategy firm that advises visionary companies and founders on growth and communications. She is an emerging tech and PR expert who has spent the last 7 years helping brands make crypto, blockchain, AI and other inventions more accessible to their customers. Alongside her role leading Maneuvre, she also serves as a Netherlands ambassador for the Global Blockchain Business Council, and she was recently elected to join Money 2020’s RiseUp Europe cohort.

Before founding Maneuvre, Rachel directed global communications at European blockchain unicorn Bitfury. She evolved their communications strategy from startup to established scale-up and ensured top media, including Forbes, Reuters, and Bloomberg, recognised this rise. She also served in communications roles at Edelman PR and Auburn University. She received an MA in Strategic Communications from Washington, D.C.’s American University and her BA in Public Relations from Auburn University.

Jess Badley FCIPD is Director of People and Resources at the British Society for Rheumatology. Jess is particularly interested in the links between wellbeing, flexible working, and innovation and how this can transform an organisation’s culture and approach towards work. She is also a trustee for Yes Futures, and a committee member of CIPD Central London branch. 

While Jess has been at British Society for Rheumatology, the charity has won several awards, including Best Small Organisation at the Inspiring Workplaces Awards 2023, as well as placing 10th on the Global Inspiring Workplaces List.

Kirsten Mayer is the EVP of People & Culture at Cielo, the world’s leading strategic provider of technology-enabled Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) solutions, where she has held multiple leadership roles in client services and most recently global talent development.

Kirsten has extensive experience in the HR sector and has worked with multinational and global clients in the EMEA region on forward-thinking strategies in workforce planning, DE&I, solution design, operational excellence, and overall program performance.

In Kirsten’s newest role at Cielo, she brings her wealth of HR experience, knowledge of the business, and her exceptional relationship building skills to develop an internal talent growth engine that will propel Cielo into the future.

Working across multiple countries over the past few years and managing Cielo’s global talent function from Europe, Kirsten brings a multicultural aptitude to her role and holds a certification in diversity management and strategic workforce planning. She also has substantial in-house leadership and management experience of big staff groups in service industries such as tourism and financial services.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirsten-mayer-32898853/

David Bellamy is the Founder and CEO of Harkn, a revolutionary platform transforming how companies listen to and engage with their employees. With over 25 years in management consulting and leadership strategy, David champions the untapped potential of employee voice as a catalyst for organisational culture and performance. Beyond the corporate world, David serves as a Director and Trustee for The Churn Project, a community-based charity focused on improving the well-being of vulnerable individuals.

(Chief Joy Bringer / CEO of Evoloshen), an expert in engagement, personal and organizational development, and is an international best-selling author. With over 20 years experience working with Fortune 500 companies globally, she has worked with cultural development, employee engagement, leadership training / mentoring, inspirational speaking and writing. Karin is regularly acknowledged as a global leader and employee engagement expert, and most recently recognized in the inaugural 50 Women of Influence by Success Magazine. Evoloshen has been named as the Top 10 Organizational Development companies in Europe. Her purpose is bringing joy to the workplace.

Suzi is an experienced people leader, having taken on senior leadership positions from early in her career. As Staff Director at Huler, Suzi’s role encompasses all elements of the employee experience journey from talent acquisition, onboarding, employee growth through to exit & Alumni. Suzi’s people-first approach has enabled significant people growth at Huler with an award winning employee experience journey, reflective of Huler’s own innovative approach to work place technology.

Lucy is a Senior Strategist at Home, a global employee experience agency. Lucy’s background is in HR, OD and employee engagement. She has led global culture change programmes in the Defence and Aerospace and Higher Education sectors. She is passionate about helping organisations engage, empower and develop people to be the best they can be.

Home’s vision is to make every employee experience a great one, from hire to retire. Lucy does that through taking a listening-led approach to employee experience design, culture shift strategy, and innovative leadership development. Creating environments where people can be their best and drive better business outcomes.

To find out more about what we do at Home, visit us here or keep updated on our thoughts on the new shape of work on LinkedIn.

Phil is the Co-Founder of WITHIN. He works with leaders to drive results by building cultures of connection. He was previously Chief People Officer for customer agency, C Space where his team won ‘Learning Team of the Year’ at the Learning Performance Institute’s Global Learning Awards. As Joint Managing Director of C Space London, he and Felix Koch won a variety of ‘Best Place to Work’ and ‘Best Agency’ awards and were jointly listed on Management Today’s ‘Agents of Change’ Power List for men championing gender equity in business. After a 4 year stint in Boston, he’s now based back in the UK.

Felix is the Co-Founder of WITHIN. He works with leaders to drive results by building cultures of connection. Before this, he headed up the EMEA & APAC regions for customer agency, C Space, as their regional CEO. As Joint Managing Director of C Space London, he and Phil Burgess won a variety of ‘Best Place to Work’ and ‘Best Agency’ awards and were jointly listed on Management Today’s ‘Agents of Change’ Power List for men championing gender equity in business.  This year, Felix was also listed on the InsideOut LeaderBoard which celebrates senior-leader role models who are working to smash the stigma of mental ill-health in workplaces. After many years in the UK, he now lives in Germany.

David Bator thinks and writes about how work could work. David leads Achievers Workforce Institute, a strategic practice whose focus on Research, Community and Advisory empowers global executives with tactical, practical approaches to changing how the world works. David is passionate about people and has spent the last 20 years working closely and consultatively with HR, IT and Communications leaders to build programs that position individuals, teams, and companies to grow.

Perry Timms is the Founder and Chief Energy Officer of PTHR – a niche consultancy, with the mission to create better business for a better world. 

Perry is a Chartered member of the CIPD and a Fellow of the RSA. He is a 5x member of HR Magazine’s HR Most Influential list making the top 10 in 2018, 2019 & 2021 and ranked Number 1 Most Influential Thinker in HR for 2022. In 2023 Perry was inducted into the HR Most Influential Hall of Fame.

He is an international and 2x TEDx speaker and award-winning writer on the future of work, HR & learning. He is a certified Semco Style Institute Expert in Self-Managed systems of work.

His 2017 book Transformational HR was named one of the Top 100 Business Strategy books of all time and published as a second edition in July 2021. 

His second book – The Energized Workplace – was published in August 2020 and was shortlisted for the UK Business Book of the Year 2021.

Perry is an Adjunct Professor at Hult International Business School and Ashridge Management School; a visiting fellow at Cranfield School of Management, and Sheffield Hallam University.

He is a LinkedIn Learning instructor, and a member of the European Organisation Design Forum, the People and Culture Association and The OD Academy. 

PTHR is in its 11th year of operating, is a Certified BCorporation, a Gold-Standard 4-day Working Week organisation, an accredited Living Wage employer and a Climate-Positive enterprise. PTHR was ranked in the Top 50 EMEA Inspiring Workplaces, a WorldBlu certified Freedom-Centred Organisation and a Top 5 company in Flexa’s verified flexible workplaces.

Anna Rasmussen is the Founder & CEO of OpenBlend – the platform for effective conversations at work. As a former executive leadership coach, Anna is extremely passionate about helping people to reach their full potential through frequent and effective manager-employee conversations that support wellbeing, motivation, and high performance. In fact, it’s the very reason that OpenBlend exists today.

Adam leads our Global teams, overseeing our offering to these new and existing customers. Prior to joining Benefex, Adam spent over ten years with Grant Thornton working with global organisations, having trained originally as a Chartered Accountant with the firm. Building upon his experience of working across the globe, his focus is on ensuring we use a range of approaches that cater for the many different audiences and in many cases their cultural requirements.

Michael is a self-proclaimed people geek, fascinated and driven by all-things customer service. With 20 years’ experience working in the employee benefits and tech industries, Michael has worked to build and manage customer teams across both the UK and US and now heads up everything customer-related at Benefex.

As Regional Vice President in Brazil, Caio Infante is firmly establishing the Radancy brand in the Brazilian market and implementing an array of powerful and evolving talent acquisition technologies. In addition to growing Radancy’s market share in Brazil, he ensures that global clients in his region receive quality customer service while managing the day-to-day operations of the office.

With over 17 years of experience, Caio possesses a strong background in business planning and strategy, marketing, talent acquisition and management. Prior to joining Radancy, he’s had tenures at advertising agencies in São Paulo, Brazil and Sydney, Australia. Caio moved on to become part of the start-up team at Trabalhando.com – a Latin American job site – where he was responsible for sales and marketing and building long-term client relationships. There, he rose to the position of Country Manager. Most recently Caio was leading teams at Catho.com, Brazil’s largest career site. He’s enthusiastic and passionate about technology and connecting his clients with the best talent.

Caio earned a bachelor’s degree in Advertising & Marketing at Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing, widely regarded as Brazil’s top school for advertising. He also earned an MBA in International Management at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia.

In 2019, Charlie Judy joined Intelligent Medical Objects (IMO), a high-growth technology company ensuring the quality and value of clinical data across the healthcare ecosystem, as its first Chief People & Culture Officer. He leads a collaborative effort to manage the culture and employee experience that gives its 380 employees a place to thrive. 

Charlie has over 30 years of experience as an HR executive with some of the world’s most prominent professional services firms including Baker Tilly, Navigant (now Guidehouse), and Deloitte and has enjoyed long-term global assignments in Brussels, Belgium and Hyderabad, India. Before joining IMO, Charlie undertook a 5-year entrepreneurial venture building and selling a successful company with a digital workplace culture assessment tool and analytics platform used by companies like T-Mobile, Cisco, and Takeda.

Charlie earned his BS in Management from Tulane University’s AB Freeman School of Business. He is also a Certified Public Accountant (CPA), a certified Senior Professional of Human Resources (SPHR), and a Society for Human Resources Senior Certified Professional (SHRM-SCP). He and his family – including two dogs – reside in Chicago, Illinois.

Mark is the VP of Sales at Fuel50 for the UK and Europe. He has worked in Technology sales for the past 12 years, supporting some of the world’s leading organisations, primarily in the HR and L&D space. Mark has a passion for delivering solutions that support the employee experience and provide career development opportunities for all, which can directly impact bottom-line business metrics like internal talent mobility and employee retention. 

Barbra Gago is the Founder and CEO at Pando. She spent her career as a CMO building and scaling companies from pre-series A to scale-up mode. In her career she brought companies like Culture Amp and Greenhouse to market, and prior to founding Pando she was the CMO at Miro leading the re-brand from RealtimeBoard to Miro and scaling the business from $3m to $50m in ARR in just under 2 years.

Barbra Gago is the Founder and CEO at Pando, the first employee progression platform. Prior to founding Pando, Barbra was the CMO at Miro where she led the re-brand from RealtimeBoard to Miro in 2018, and scaled the business from $3 to $50m in just under 2 years. Barbra was also the first head of marketing at Culture Amp and Greenhouse bringing both products to market and initial scale. Having worked at the intersection of people tech and future of work for over 10 years she’s expert at building high performing teams, processes and programs that result in effective, rapid scale and meaningful business outcomes.

Natasha Wahid is the Head of Content at Blueboard. She’s a natural storyteller who found her niche helping companies connect to their audiences through thoughtful communication. She believes in building spaces—both personal and professional—where people can be their full selves without fear or shame. She’s a seasoned speaker who’s presented at marketing conferences across the U.S. and is an alum of the incredible Shine Bootcamp (google it!)
When she’s not writing words for work, you’ll find Natasha hiking in the BC mountains, reading, laughing with friends, guzzling black coffee, and chasing sunshine.

Chris Dyer is a recognized company culture and remote work expert. As a former CEO managing thousands of people, his companies consistently were named a best place to work. They have also been named a fastest growing company by Inc Magazine 5 times. Chris routinely consults and speaks, and Inc Magazine ranked him as the #1 Leadership Speaker on Culture. He has two bestselling books The Power of Company Culture and Remote Work, and has been named #5 on the Leadershum Power List, a Top 50 Voice in Leadership, a Top 40 Change Management Guru, a Top 50 Global Thought Leader, and a Top 50 leadership podcast, Top 50 HR Leaders Shaping the Future of Work, and a Top 101 Global Employee Engagement & Experience Influencers by Inspiring Workplaces and Work Buzz, just this year.

As a keynote speaker his goal is to inspire audiences with a straightforward delivery, insightful candor, and engaging humor. His talks leave audiences permanently transformed, offering innovative perspectives on leadership to improve company culture, and empower organizations to discover new successes. Countless companies have unlocked productivity, performance, and profits by implementing his 7 Pillar Strategy.

Lance Haun lives life at the intersection of people, work, and technology. He’s currently vice president of market insights at The Starr Conspiracy. He focuses his work on researching and writing about work technology and its practical implications for organizations and people. Lance is a former editor for ERE Media, broadly covering the world of human resources, recruiting, and sourcing. He is a current columnist for ERE.net and Reworked and has been featured as a work expert in Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, MSNBC, Fast Company, and other major HR and business publications.

Rob is WorkTango’s co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer and has spent the last 18 years building HR Technology and advisory companies. Rob was on the founding team at Achievers, where he spent 10+ years growing the organization and his passion for improving the employee experience led him to co-founding WorkTango in 2015 to help companies collect and act on authentic employee feedback. He was named one of the 100 Top Global Employee Engagement Influencers each year between 2017 and 2020 and has had the privilege of speaking to HR leaders in over 40 cities.  He is an avid hockey and volleyball player, traveler, used to play guitar in a metal band, and in his own terms a ‘pointaholic’ – he collects loyalty points for everything and anything! You can reach him at [email protected] or @RobCatalano on twitter.