IHR Live London 2026

Lord Ranger is a Member of the UK House of Lords and a NED / senior adviser to various technology businesses. He has over twenty-five years of industry experience in leading and collaborated on the strategic development of digital services and the communication of effective public policies, corporate brands and multi-channel global campaigns. He has worked in the UK and internationally across industry, government, and the public sector, leading teams and acting as a trusted adviser to senior politicians, chief executives and boards.

Jason Tunney is a senior People & Talent leader with over a decade of experience spanning talent acquisition, workforce planning, people analytics, and HR technology. He currently leads the Talent function at So Energy, the UK renewable energy supplier, where he has scaled the organization over the past 5 years and built a function that operates as a genuine commercial unit, connecting every talent decision to business outcomes and the bottom line.

Jason takes an AI-first approach to people strategy, holds an LSE AI Leadership credential, and has built a reputation for turning People functions from operational support into data-driven strategic partners. He led the So Energy Talent team to win the 2025 IHR award for Internal Mobility - recognition for the practical, measurable approach to unlocking talent.

Fuelled by a deep passion to use the transformative power of strategic leadership to shape the future of work.

I do this by cultivating positive and engaging environments for both current and potential employees to thrive and experience the enormous sense of worth, pride and achievement that great employers can provide.

My vision extends beyond traditional recruitment, I find that taking a broader and more innovative approach to talent acquisition results in far more successful, sustainable and profitable growth - which is good for business - and all current and future employees!

My career journey encompasses a spectrum of expertise, from crafting compelling employer brands and enhancing candidate experiences to driving resource planning, internal succession strategies, and shaping executive hires. I take immense pride in my contributions to early careers and diversity and inclusion initiatives.

With two decades devoted to Talent Acquisition, I am honoured to have recently been named the Talent Acquisition Leader of the Year 2023 at the prestigious IHR Awards—a recognition that fuels my passion for creating meaningful impact.

Beyond my professional pursuits, I am privileged to be a member of the RL100—a vibrant community of industry professionals united in challenging norms, sharing insights, and mentoring future talent acquisition leaders. My commitment extends beyond the boardroom, fuelled by a deep passion to cultivate positive and engaging environments for both current and potential employees.

As a thought leader, I believe in the transformative power of strategic leadership to shape the future of work. My vision extends beyond traditional recruitment, aiming to craft experiences that resonate, fostering growth, innovation, and inclusivity.

Let's connect, collaborate, and create a future where every talent is recognised, every voice is valued, and every workplace is a source of inspiration.

Hayley currently leads Global Early Careers Recruiting for Expedia Group – leading a team of recruiters, regional managers and recruiting coordinators to hire around 1000 interns, apprentices and graduates into Expedia each year, across NORAM, EMEA and APAC.

She thrives in an environment which is fast paced and complex, and working globally is one of her favourite parts of her role – across timezones, across cultures – providing a global framework of consistency with allowances for regional nuance and structure within.

Mark Kunaseelan is the Head of Resourcing at the University of the Arts London (UAL), a world-class university shaping the creative industries worldwide. UAL is home to a diverse community with over 6,000 staff and 22,000 students from 130 countries. Mark has spent more than a decade in Resourcing and has a significant amount of experience working in the public sector at two councils and Parliament prior to his current role. 

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.

Maria Dinu is Senior Director, Culture & People Experience for Europe at The Coca-Cola Company, leading Culture strategy across 23 countries. With 20+ years across Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola HBC and P&G, she specialises in organisational design, leadership alignment and culture transformation in complex, fast-moving environments. An ICF-accredited coach and LBS alumna, Maria is known for translating strategy into the leadership behaviours that make change stick, without losing trust, momentum, or the leaders themselves along the way.

A Senior Talent Acquisition Director with a strategic view and talent for scoping out all outcomes and driving forward projects with precision and to detail. Strong problem solving, senior stakeholder management and financial management experience. Has proven success with strategies that have been created and implemented which has resulted in award winning results. A passion for DE&I and embedding it into the fabric of TA.

A resourcing and talent expert with demonstrable global experience and the ability to work across all levels of an organization. Working strategically to align talent acquisition objectives to business requirements as well as operationally to solve problems and implement solutions. Proactive and highly organised with excellent interpersonal and communication skills who has thrived in a busy and demanding role that has evolved over time.

Gita Selli began her career in sales in both the UK and the U.S. before pivoting to agency recruiting while based in New York City. That move set the stage for her transition in-house when she joined Loadsmart, a logistics tech pioneer, as their first U.S. recruiter. Starting as employee number 81, she played a pivotal role in scaling the company through hyper-growth, helping it expand to almost 800 employees at its peak.

Over the past six years, Gita has grown from recruiter to leading Loadsmart’s global Talent Acquisition function. She has navigated the company through rapid expansion, contraction, and renewed growth, building and adapting recruitment processes to match each stage. Today, as Senior Manager of Global Talent Acquisition, she continues to shape hiring strategies, stakeholder alignment, and scalable talent frameworks that enable Loadsmart to thrive in a fast-moving, highly competitive industry.

Marcell Edwards is a distinguished leader in talent acquisition, diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI), and organizational culture. With a career spanning over a decade, Marcell has been instrumental in shaping inclusive hiring practices and fostering equitable workplace environments. His strategic approach to talent management has not only enhanced recruitment processes but also cultivated cultures where diversity thrives. Recognized for his thought leadership, Marcell continues to influence the industry through innovative DEI initiatives and by championing inclusive organizational strategies.

As the Early Careers Talent Acquisition Business Partner at IPG Mediabrands, my role focusses on attracting and recruiting diverse junior talent and developing entry-level programmes.

I began my journey as an Advertising Apprentice, eager to prove that you can pursue a career within the media industry without a degree.

After three years, I transitioned into the Talent Department of IPG Mediabrands. I recognised the opportunity to champion apprenticeships and created IPG Mediabrands’ first apprenticeship programme, launching in September 2021.

I continuously seek ways to streamline our recruitment processes to ensure we provide a high-quality candidate experience that meets business requirements. My long-term goal is to promote apprenticeships through pillars of education in business, schools and society, raising awareness of the benefits and creating opportunities that are open to all.

Marley Andrews is Talent Acquisition leader with experience transforming hiring across retail, operations, and commercial environments. Passionate about building proactive, strategic TA teams that partner with the business, drive change, and deliver impactful hiring solutions at scale.

With 10 years in Talent Acquisition Manager, and half of this spent as a DEI&B advisor. Natalie’s work is driven by a passion for offering equitable, accessible, and positive experiences for candidates through the recruitment process and beyond. Having delivered workshops on topics such as allyship, diversity, and inclusivity, Natalie’s expertise lies in forming meaningful and impactful conversations around DEI&B and best-in-class hiring processes.

Steve Brooks is a forward-thinking talent acquisition leader dedicated to modernising recruitment. As the Team Manager for Nottinghamshire County Council, Steve oversees complex hiring strategies designed to bring agility, efficiency, and innovation to local government. A passionate advocate for human-centric technology, Steve is an expert in shifting organisational mindsets from fearing AI to embracing it. He focuses on building practical, compliant frameworks that empower hiring managers, earn C-suite trust, and prove that talent teams can truly do more with less.

Kye is a neurodiverse talent leader with half a decade of recruitment experience across tech, hospitality, charity, and multi-site retail. At KERB, spanning the UK, US and Germany, he led an ATS implementation, cut agency spend by a six-figure sum, and lifted Glassdoor from 3.0 to 4.3 across a 340+ headcount business. Now Talent Partner at Borderless, Kye helps build an automation and AI-native talent function at the immigration-tech startup reshaping global mobility for 600+ businesses, working alongside its Talent Lead. Co-Founder & Host of BadgerTheRecruiters, an IHR Community Champion, and a Parliamentary contributor. Outside of TA, he DJs.

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.

Prior to joining Appcast, Robin served as Senior Director, Head of UK for ZipRecruiter UK, where he oversaw the strategic direction and expansion of the UK business and transformed a start-up into a market leader. Robin has been driving revenue growth and sales excellence within the TA industry for over 18 years, in which time he has developed influential relationships across a wide portfolio of the world's largest enterprise companies.

Tom Hacquoil founded Pinpoint in 2018 after the realisation that clunky, outdated recruitment tech was creating a terrible experience for both candidates and recruiters. He set out to build a better ATS, with the help of his two friends Bill Rogers and Tom Luce. And Pinpoint was born.

Since then, Tom is proud of the impact Pinpoint has made by supporting companies that design clothes, package food, produce TV shows, and research cancer.

Before Pinpoint, Tom held director roles at software and cybersecurity businesses, and founded a coding bootcamp for Digital Jersey aimed at closing the island’s tech skills gap. Tom has always been passionate about building world-class teams—Pinpoint was designed to help businesses all over the world do exactly that.

After 10 years working within recruitment and software sales, Matt managed to combine both worlds when joining Tribepad. He's passionate about helping recruiters hire fairer, faster and better, and is our resident expert on all things public sector, leading the charge on helping Tribepad's growing customer base in local government to transform their hiring processes. Tribepad is used by more than 25 million people across the globe in 16 languages. Clients include The BBC, Tesco, Subway, NHS Professionals, Grant Thornton and The Church of England.

I've always been fascinated by technology. I can geek-out over the newest tech, jump into the metaverse and have a 2-hour conversation with Alexa.

However, it's how humans interact with and use technology that gets me every time. That's why I've fallen in love with chatbots and conversational ai. What better way is there to interact with technology than to have a chat with it. It's the most intuitive way to interact.

Nicky Garcea is Co-Founder and Co-CEO at Cappfinity, a Chartered Occupational Psychologist with over 20 years helping global organisations reimagine how they identify, measure and develop leadership talent. A published author and keynote speaker, she brings a global perspective on building the skills-based organisations of the future.

Robert Newry, Co-Founder of Arctic Shores, is a passionate advocate for social mobility and skills-based hiring. He has spoken on psychometrics, HR tech, and AI, appearing on BBC and being quoted in outlets like The Times and The Guardian. As host of the TA Disruptors Podcast, he writes for leading HR media and campaigns for CV-less hiring to promote social mobility and inclusion.

Greg Dunbar is dedicated to leveraging technology to enhance workplace human value. With senior roles in enterprise tech, SaaS startups, and public companies, he also led digital transformation at a global media firm. Greg champions AI as a tool to empower workers, improve candidate experiences, and enable meaningful work, advocating for a human-centered approach to tech innovation.

Charles is the Founder and CEO of Oleeo, a company he guided to a successful flotation on the London Stock Exchange within five years. His expertise lies in enabling organisations of any scale, from emerging startups to established corporations, to undergo significant change by leveraging AI-powered talent acquisition technology.

Outside of the office, his happy place is definitely in the water — whether enjoying a relaxing dip in the pool or an adventurous open-water swim.

Barb Hyman is the CEO and founder of Sapia.ai, the AI hiring platform trusted by leading UK brands including Holland & Barrett, BT Group, and Costa Coffee. A former CHRO turned tech innovator, Barb brings a rare blend of HR leadership and deep AI expertise. Named KPMG’s Australian Tech Innovator of the Year and recognised as a LinkedIn Top Voice, she is a vocal advocate for ethical, inclusive AI in hiring.

Theo Kitsberg is the co-founder and CEO of HireGlide, an AI-native recruiting tool that helps talent teams source and screen candidates fairly, accurately and quickly. HireGlide's platform uses natural language search to find candidates from both across the web and within a company’s existing network, and it screens inbound applicants with explainable AI, so recruiters spend time on conversations, not CVs. Theo studied Philosophy at Cambridge, conducted applied AI research at MIT, and built HireGlide with his cofounder after speaking to hundreds of recruiters buried in AI-generated applications.

Chris is a people-focused leader in HR Tech, with a career spanning EdTech and global revenue roles at PageUp, IBM, Culture Amp, and HowNow. As CRO, he leads worldwide revenue teams, combining strategy with empathy and coaching to drive sustainable growth and champion people-first results.

Akbar has helped build 55 tech startups and scale-ups across 23 countries as a hands-on People and Talent leader. His sweet spot has been SaaS businesses looking to accelerate after achieving product–market fit. This work has been carried out in-house, in partnership with RPOs, or in a fractional and freelance capacity.

During this time, he and his co-founders also established one of the largest global communities of recruitment and HR professionals, The Black Recruiters Network, where he led commercial agreements with brands and HR tech partners.

Businesses in the employee lifecycle space have sought his expertise on go-to-market strategy, product feedback, and partnerships. He has contributed in roles such as Non-Executive Director, Board Observer, and Advisor.

Parminder Kaur is a Transformation Strategist and Advisor with over 20 years of experience helping global organisations navigate the human and strategic side of technology change. With a current focus on AI, Parminder focuses on what determines whether it actually succeeds; the operating models, the people, and the organisational structures that either carry transformation or quietly collapse under it.

A systems thinker by nature, Parminder has spent her career at the intersection of complex technology and human organisation, leading strategic transformation at SAP across a 200-person global function, driving AI adoption and customer strategy at Eightfold AI, and consistently turning the hardest challenge in enterprise technology - genuine, lasting change into measurable outcomes.

Her work has taken her across global enterprises in retail, banking, telecommunications, and utilities, advising C-suite leaders on how to move from technological experimentation to ROI advantage. She is a certified Solution-Focused Coach, an experienced speaker, and a rare voice in the AI conversation who brings both the strategic architecture and the human intelligence that transformation demands.

Matt is a strategic advisor, speaker, and commentator working at the intersection of talent, technology, and economics.

Riham Satti is CEO and Co-Founder of MeVitae, a responsible AI company helping organisations make hiring decisions they can trust. An award-winning keynote and TEDx speaker, Riham applies her experience as an Oxford University neuroscientist to the world of HR, translating scientific insight into practical solutions for AI, future of work and innovation. Riham advises global leaders and industry on responsible AI and workforce innovation, and contributes to strategic initiatives including University of Exeter’s Behavioural Insights Advisory Board.

As Partnerships Director, Paul draws on 15+ years' experience in RPO and recruitment to advise our 350+ clients on the strategy, design, implementation and delivery of their recruitment programmes, spanning employer branding and attraction through to onboarding and learning & development. He has led recruitment programmes ranging from niche and executive search hiring to high-volume campaigns of 1,000+ hires, across the UK and internationally.

Bernardine Bruggen is the Enterprise Team Lead at Zinc who is passionate about building high-performing teams with a value-first customer mindset, turning insight into action and helping people do their best work. As an experienced Account Manager who moved into leading account management teams, she is currently driving data-led, AI-enabled transformation - helping teams close revenue, mitigate churn, and deliver an exceptional customer experience at scale.

Keith is Chair of the Better Hiring Institute and founded Reed Screening, Reed’s employee vetting business which now employs over 100 people in multiple countries. He is a Non-Executive Board Member with multiple government bodies, recently spending 5 years as a Home Office Non-Exec preparing for the launch of the Fair Work Agency. He received a Commendation Award from Home Office for projects such as digital Right to Work. He was recognised at Buckingham Palace as a Community Leader and has won multiple industry awards including In-House Recruitment's Big Impact Award. He is an Honorary Fellow of Lancaster University.  

Alec Stanwell is a brand and communications leader with extensive experience shaping challenger brands in the recruitment and HR technology space. As Brand and Communications Director at CV-Library and Resume-Library, he leads brand strategy, content, PR and customer engagement initiatives across the UK and US markets.

He is a regular contributor to discussions on the future of work and recruitment technology and brings a practical, commercially grounded perspective on how AI is reshaping the hiring landscape.