Recruitment Leaders Conference, Birmingham 2025

Elisha is the Recruitment Manager at a FTSE 250 technology solutions provider, where she is responsible for creating and delivering the organisation’s recruitment strategy.

A connection-centric and passionate leader, she is particularly focused on empowering women in the workplace.

I am a natural optimist and try not to worry about things that may go wrong; I just work hard to make sure they don’t.

My biggest strength is building and developing relationships – people fascinate me and I take a lot of interest in watching and learning from everyone that I come into contact with. Internal stakeholders, candidates, peers and suppliers/partners, I enjoy getting to know people and working in partnership to achieve the best possible results.

I am a creative, forward thinking, commercially minded and high energy and I love every aspect of recruitment! I regularly offer considered challenge when I need to but also have the ability to cut through corporate red tape when needed. I am always looking to future proof processes, tools and attraction techniques with a strong focus on innovative, digital solutions.

I have strong market knowledge developed via my extensive network allowing me to provide valuable in-depth market and competitor analysis, ensuring added commercial value to the business.

Cross functional recruitment and talent experience working in fast paced FTSE organisations.

An experienced Talent Acquisition Leader with excellent managerial, recruitment experience, both operational and strategic, having experience of working in an agency, RPO and in-house function. Having worked within the industry for over 10 years, have the experience of landing several projects covering reskilling, upskilling, career returner launch and new process/policy launches.

Outside of work, a mother to two beautiful children and a huge passion for the Asian culture, particularly bhangra dancing.

Penny has extensive experience in resourcing and brand development, leading complex projects including system reviews, implementations, and continuous process improvements. Her expertise spans attraction strategy, agency cost reduction, team organisation design, people management, and policy review. Over the years, she has worked across multiple sectors, managing operations across various UK and international sites.

Rob is a talent attraction leader with 15 years’ experience across agency and in-house roles in hospitality and retail. He combines commercial awareness, creativity, and empathy to design modern, human candidate journeys through strong storytelling, EVP, and employer branding. Known for creative thinking and trust-based leadership, he coaches hiring teams to identify and harness the ‘superpowers’ that elevate performance.

Paul Sumner is the Head of Resourcing at National Express.

Before launching Tazio, Tom founded Miura Conference in 2005, a telephone, web, and video conferencing business which was sold to MeetingZone in 2008. He was CEO of Webcast Global, an audio and video webcasting company in London, before founding Tazio in 2010. He is now responsible for Tazio’s strategic direction and leadership. He is passionate about making recruitment processes efficient, objective, and inclusive, creating productive and harmonious workplaces for customers worldwide.

Louise brings a wealth of HR and senior leadership experience, garnered through collaborating with C-Suite and senior leaders when designing and executing effective business strategies in complex global organisations. Her career started in recruitment, where she led resourcing teams delivering global campaigns and senior hiring initiatives. Having worked in partnership with a number of respected clients such as Morgan Stanley, Barclays, Lastminute.com, and ING Direct, she then transitioned in-house. Louise focused on structuring and leading large, multi-jurisdictional resourcing functions with global change or optimisation agendas as ExCo-level HR Director. In recent years, Louise has applied her extensive HR expertise to support SMEs and technology start-ups, helping CEOs and their leadership teams to articulate and execute their long-term strategies.

An multi award-winning business psychologist, Jamie has designed or overseen the design of embedded end-to-end selection processes in over a third of the UK’s top 100 employers across varied sectors, winning numerous industry awards for improving validity, candidate experience, and EDI outcomes.

Petra Tagg is a dynamic leader in workforce solutions, with a proven track record in brand representation, data-driven insights, and performance optimisation. As Workforce Solutions Director at Manpower, she brings deep expertise in talent strategy, worker productivity, innovation, and new market development, delivering impactful solutions that drive sustainable growth for clients across diverse sectors.

Petra is passionate about aligning workforce strategies with business goals, leveraging data and insights to enhance operational efficiency and talent engagement. A strong advocate for people and culture, she also sponsors an internal Affinity Network, championing inclusion and belonging within the workplace.

Natasha Preocanin is the Managing Director for In-house Recruitment (IHR), the largest and most engaged community for In-house Recruiters. Our 20,000+ community benefit from over 70 live and virtual events each year ranging from our 1000-strong exhibitions and high profile awards to exclusive half-day breakfasts and targeted dinners for Recruitment Leaders. We also produce industry leading digital whitepapers, webinars and leadership videos alongside high value community forums and an all-inclusive supplier directory.

With a background in events, Natasha's joined the company in 2012 as an Events Executive and quickly progressed up the ranks to her current position as MD. She now leads the company in becoming the go-to resource for all In-house and Talent Acquisition teams who are looking to become better recruiters. Natasha can often be seen on stage, hosting our events or behind a microphone, interviewing a host of industry experts.