IHR Live London 2027

Dr. Michelle Penelope King is an organisational psychologist and globally recognised expert on workplace culture, human motivation, and the future of work. She is the bestselling author of My Workplace Is Killing Me, The Fix, and How Work Works, and has held senior roles at Netflix, HSF Kramer, and UN Women. Her work on workplace equity and the future of work has been featured in leading global media, including The Economist, Harvard Business Review, CNBC, CNN, and Fortune.

Jonathan Berry, 5th Viscount Camrose, is a leading voice in UK technology, AI and innovation policy. Elected to the House of Lords in 2022, he served as the UK’s first Minister for Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property, was one of the ministers in charge of the 2023 AI Safety Summit and oversaw the launch of the AI Safety Institute. Now Shadow Minister for Science, Innovation and Technology, he combines policymaking experience with hands-on technology expertise. Camrose advises and supports UK technology ventures, including AI recruitment platform Lumi Network, and is establishing the UK Hiring Taskforce to accelerate effective AI adoption across recruitment and hiring.

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. 

Kianna Briggs is an award-winning talent and inclusion leader committed to embedding equity at the heart of company culture and talent strategy. A two-time Open Women’s Network award winner and recipient of the Join Our Table “Black Women Game Changer” award, she has also been recognised as a two-time IPA iList shortlister and IHR In-house Recruitment Awards finalist. With a background spanning recruitment, talent strategy and DE&I, Kianna is passionate about creating workplaces where underrepresented talent can thrive. An experienced speaker and advocate for inclusive recruitment, she brings a practical, people-first perspective to conversations around hiring, inclusion and building meaningful workplace cultures.

Rachel is a multi-award-winning People & Culture Director and Founder of ChangeWave Consultancy, who help leaders and organisations make change land through culture. In her extensive senior corporate career, she has worked across professional services, infrastructure and policing and finance combining strategic HR leadership with culture, inclusion and employee experience across UK, Europe and India. She was recognised as D&I Influencer of the Year and a D&I Inspirational Leader and is a respected culture change and inclusion expert and international speaker. She is an Executive coach and mentor and as CEO of ChangeWave helps change cultures and shape careers.

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.

Until recently, Maria Dinu was 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.

Like many, Elisabeth found her way into talent acquisition while seeking a field where she could use her hotel management skills, and reflecting on her journey it feels like a natural transition. Her experience in five-star hotels taught her to remain calm under pressure, proactively develop creative solutions and work effectively across functions — skills she now consistently uses to develop effective solutions for teams and clients. Originally from Germany, she has lived in several countries, including New Zealand and Australia, and for the past seven years has called Manchester home, where she lives with her husband and dog. She champions a growth mindset in sourcing, believing there is always more that can be done, whether that's rethinking a job advert, using tools like ChatGPT and Canva to sharpen outreach, or building LinkedIn projects and engaging hiring managers directly. She also advocates telling a story with talent insights rather than presenting a data dump, and using talent intelligence to predict the market by asking the right questions about job titles, talent pool activity, audience trends and key competitors for talent. To get her attention, talk about good coffee, 90's action and horror movies, or innovative sourcing techniques.

Alanna is an experienced people and resourcing leader with responsibility for attracting, engaging and onboarding talent while ensuring the effective delivery of people services across the organisation.

As Attraction & Resourcing Manager, she leads recruitment, employer branding and workforce attraction initiatives, working closely with leaders to identify and secure the talent needed to achieve organisational goals. In addition, she manages the People Administration team, who provide essential HR operational support across the employee lifecycle, including onboarding, employee records and responding to day-to-day HR enquiries. Together, they strive to deliver a positive and seamless experience for candidates, employees and managers alike.

Alongside her substantive role, she is the Co-Lead for the Recruitment Strand of the Future Surrey Local Government Reorganisation (LGR) programme, supporting one of the most significant transformation programmes in local government. Working collaboratively with senior stakeholders across councils and workstreams, she helps shape recruitment strategies, workforce planning approaches and talent solutions that will support the future organisation.

Her expertise spans talent acquisition, workforce planning, people operations, organisational change, stakeholder engagement and team leadership. She is passionate about creating inclusive recruitment practices, building high-performing teams and delivering people-focused solutions that support both organisational success and employee experience.

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.

Martin Haywood is a senior talent acquisition leader with extensive experience building and leading recruitment strategies across some of the world’s largest and most complex organisations. As Head of Talent Acquisition at Digital Realty, he leads talent acquisition within a global business at the heart of the digital economy. Previously, Martin spent several years at Amazon in senior talent acquisition roles, leading teams and hiring across multiple countries and markets. His career has given him first-hand experience of recruiting at scale, navigating rapidly changing talent demands and aligning hiring with business priorities, bringing a highly practical and commercial perspective to modern talent acquisition.

She is an experienced Talent Acquisition and Recruitment specialist and Talent Development Leader with a broad industry background across the UK, Australasian and Middle Eastern markets. She guides delivery teams to success and works with stakeholders across the organisation, leading recruitment appointments at all levels up to General Manager, Managing Director, C-Suite and NED level using search methodologies. Her talent development leadership includes designing, implementing and delivering team development programmes from graduate through to business management and leadership level, alongside building succession plans across the organisation, and she also leads on sales, marketing, employer brand and ED&I in recruitment, including creating training and running leadership programmes. Currently focused on the Hospital and Healthcare sector, she has previously worked across broader Healthcare including Medical Device/MedTech, Life Science and Pharmaceutical, specialising in commercial appointments within Sales, Marketing and Communications, with earlier experience in Accounting, Business Support and IT&T recruitment that included managing major accounts, on-site RPO teams of more than 200 and leading teams of up to 30 recruiters. She graduated with Merit from Henley Business School with an MA in Business Management in 2016, focusing on HR topics including Leadership, Culture and Conflict, Change Management, Strategy and Project Management.

Jenny Sadler is Talent Acquisition Director at Wood Mackenzie, where she leads recruitment within a global organisation at the heart of the energy and natural resources sector. An experienced talent acquisition leader, Jenny brings a strong strategic and commercial perspective to recruitment, combining deep business understanding with a focus on attracting high-calibre, diverse talent. Her experience spans senior and specialist hiring, including technology, commercial and leadership roles, alongside building effective candidate engagement strategies. Jenny is passionate about the human side of recruitment and creating an inclusive workplace culture, while ensuring talent acquisition delivers against the evolving skills and workforce needs of the business.

Carrie-Anne Iorizzo is an early talent leader at Omnicom Media Group UK, passionate about opening doors to careers and creating more inclusive routes into the media industry. She has played a key role in developing OMG’s early talent strategy, including its Anchor onboarding programme, designed to give entry-level hires the confidence, community and support to thrive from day one. Carrie-Anne has also helped build impactful partnerships with organisations including WYK Digital, supporting 200 people into roles at Omnicom Media UK. Recognised with OMG UK’s 2025 Talent Award, she is committed to challenging traditional pathways and unlocking overlooked potential.

With over 15 years of experience, Sher is a seasoned professional dedicated to enhancing recruitment efforts. As a Senior Program Manager, she drives efficiency through global initiatives, including implementing a new ATS and overseeing Talent Acquisition Tools. She integrates job boards and develops policies and analytics strategies to improve hiring experiences. Leading cross-functional teams, she spearheads DEI strategies and collaborates closely with TA Partners and Hiring Managers to align priorities and communicate global talent insights.

Gary Manning is HR Program Director for Medtronic's Surgical business, supporting Digital Technologies and global functional teams. He began his career in agency recruitment before moving into Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) and then in-house talent acquisition, building teams across technology and product organisations.

Having spent much of his career supporting software, digital and technology businesses, Gary moved into broader people leadership roles, including serving as Head of People at Digital Surgery before being acquired by Medtronic in 2020.

Now HR Program Director for Medtronic's Surgical business, Gary works with leaders around the world to build exceptional teams and cultures. He is passionate about developing people, creating environments where individuals can grow and succeed, and helping organisations scale while staying connected to their purpose and values.

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.

Jessica Richardson is a Senior Talent Acquisition Business Partner at Omnicom Media UK, focused on senior hiring across media. She is passionate about creating more inclusive hiring practices and building workplaces where everyone can thrive. Alongside her recruitment role, Jess leads Omnicom Media's Neurodiversity and Disability Network, driving change in accessibility, representation, and employee experience. With a background in design, she brings a unique creative perspective to talent acquisition, employer branding, and candidate engagement. In 2026, she was recognised in the IPA iList for her contributions inclusion within the advertising space.

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.

Natalie Winterton-Whitfield is a Talent Acquisition Manager at ZEAL Creative, with more than a decade of recruitment experience and a strong focus on creating equitable, accessible and positive candidate experiences. Alongside her talent acquisition career, she has spent several years working as a DEI&B advisor, helping organisations build more inclusive approaches to hiring. Natalie began her recruitment career through an apprenticeship, going on to win the REC’s Apprentice of the Year award in 2017. A passionate advocate for people-first recruitment, she combines practical talent acquisition expertise with a commitment to improving candidate experience, inclusion and the wider world of work.

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. As a Talent Partner at Borderless, Kye helped build an automation and AI-native talent function at the immigration-tech startup reshaping global mobility for 600+ businesses, working alongside its Talent Lead. He recently joined Vixio as its Head of Talent Acquisition. Co-Founder & Host of BadgerTheRecruiters, an IHR Community Champion, and a Parliamentary contributor. Outside of TA, he Djs.

James Fellowes was born lucky. A privileged childhood. Eton. Edinburgh University. A stellar career in the international drinks industry.Then, in 2018, his luck ran out.

James experienced a spectacular personal and professional collapse following a period of bad luck, bad people and undiagnosed bipolar disorder. But what felt at the time like his greatest vulnerability ~ bipolar ~ would ultimately become his superpower: a deep understanding of what it means to be judged, overlooked and given a second chance.He left the corporate world with an ambition to change it. Fellowes founded Bridge of Hope to bridge the gap between overlooked talent from under-represented groups and inclusive employers looking to expand their talent pool.

Why? Because James passionately believes a job can be the biggest game-changer in life. James is a social entrepreneur and innovator, an unshakeable optimist, a proud dad of three young adults in the US - and an obsessive cold water swimmer.

Chance Bleu-Montgomery was not born lucky. A childhood marked by physical and mental abuse was followed by the death of his sister from cancer. In his twenties, a mental breakdown triggered years of reckless behaviour and heavy drug and alcohol use. His life spiralled out of control until, one day, he woke up in a prison cell facing a lengthy sentence.Prison was harder than he could have imagined. But it also became transformative.

For the first time, Chance confronted what had brought him there. He recognised that he needed help - and, remarkably, discovered that he could help others too. He emerged determined to build a different life, and to prove that people can be far more than the worst thing they have ever done.

Today, Chance is on a mission to change the way we see people - particularly those society has too often overlooked, judged or written off. Through powerful lived-experience storytelling and immersive dining experiences such as Dine with Conviction and Dining in the Dark he challenges unconscious assumptions, confronts prejudice and puts humanity back at the heart of inclusion. His message is simple: look beyond the label, the CV and the first impression - and you may discover remarkable talent.

Graeme Paxton is the Founder and Managing Director of Caraffi, a data-driven talent advisory business helping organisations transform how they attract and acquire talent. A passionate advocate for elevating Talent Acquisition beyond a transactional function, Graeme focuses on helping TA leaders build strategies that command attention in the boardroom and demonstrate measurable business value. Throughout his career, he has challenged conventional thinking around recruitment, championing greater use of data, meaningful performance measures and more strategic approaches to talent. Known for bringing fresh thinking to the industry, Graeme is driven by a belief that talent can become a genuine engine of organisational performance.

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.

Kate Salisbury is Head of Talent Acquisition at Wates Group, a national construction company where she leads talent acquisition strategy, employer brand, inclusive hiring initiatives and recruitment technology transformation. With more than 20 years' experience spanning in-house talent acquisition and HR technology, Kate has worked across construction, professional services, FMCG, aviation and global organisations. Passionate about creating exceptional candidate experiences, she believes that small, consistent improvements throughout the hiring journey can have a significant impact on employer reputation, engagement and hiring success. Kate is a strong advocate for practical, data-driven recruitment innovation.

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.

Jennifer is the Founder & CEO of Placed, an AI-powered talent attraction platform rethinking how employers identify candidate quality and intent. As AI reshapes how candidates search and apply for jobs, Placed uses proprietary candidate behavioural data, combined with job and market context, to uncover signals of genuine intent and likelihood to hire. Its Placed Predicted Hiring Score turns these signals into a live measure of candidate quality. While much of the recruitment advertising market optimises for clicks and application volume, Placed optimises for quality, helping employers make smarter recruitment investment decisions before interview. Jennifer has been recognised as one of Management Today’s “35 Women Under 35,” while Placed was selected as one of the UK’s most promising scaleups by Tech Nation. Most recently, Placed won “Innovation in Job Advertising” and “Scale-Up of the Year” at the DJAx Digital Job Advertising Excellence Awards.

Katie Raeburn brings a background in recruitment to help organisations build fairer, more effective hiring processes. Before moving into a commercial role, Katie spent over three years in Customer Success at Sova, working closely with some of the organisation’s largest and most strategic accounts, including Unilever, TUI and John Lewis. This experience gave her a deep understanding of the challenges talent teams face and what it takes to deliver successful assessment programmes at scale.

Katie now brings that customer-first perspective to her role in the Commercial team, helping organisations explore how Sova’s assessment technology can support smarter, fairer hiring decisions.

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.

Harry Lee is a Director at PerchPeek, working closely with Talent and People teams as they navigate the realities of global hiring.

He spends his time speaking with TA leaders about how candidates are supported beyond the offer - particularly when roles involve international moves.

Harry is passionate about improving candidate experience in global hiring and enjoys exploring where process, data, and technology can make this support more consistent and scalable.

Dr Alan Redman is a chartered psychologist and Chief Science Officer at Clevry, the Soft Skills Company, working across psychological assessment and development within organisations and business. He specialises in the design of psychometric and assessment technologies and has developed these for Clevry Acquisition, Assessment and Advisory clients, as well as bespoke psychometrics and assessments for Centrica, Marks & Spencer, Royal Mail, BDO, Next and The Civil Service. He chose a career in work and organisational psychology because he wanted to help make life better for people in the single activity most of us spend far too much time doing – being at work. His research specialism is the psychology of cycle commuting, and he spends a significant proportion of his time on one of his bikes, whether cycling from the South Downs to the sea on his way to the Clevry offices or across one of the UK's cities to a client's offices – time in the saddle that has given him a thousand-yard stare, a determined set to his jaw and oily fingernails. He frequently provides comment for the press on technology, social networking and online behaviour, and has published two books on the provision of support for test-takers, available through all good book shops.

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.

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.

Paul Naha-Biswas is the Founder and CEO of Sixley, the headhunter that works employers’ networks every time they hire.

A technology entrepreneur and business strategist, Paul previously co-founded the EdTech platform Boclips, which was acquired in a high eight-figure sale. His career has included senior roles at ITN, Alvarez & Marsal, TVNZ and Fremantle, and he has advised more than 100 CEOs and boards worldwide.

Paul is now focused on reinventing how companies hire—combining AI with human judgement to cut through application noise and find talented people through trusted recommendations.

Peter leads Growth and Marketing for Handshake across EMEA, with research at the heart of everything he does. This year alone, his team has surveyed over 20,000 students across the UK and Europe to capture the voice of the student — turning that insight into practical guidance for the employers and universities working to support the next generation of talent.

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

Gavin Fogarty is Chief Technology Officer at SocialTalent, where he leads technology and product across the company. SocialTalent has always been about making enterprise talent functions stronger, today through learning and AI. Gavin's focus is the strategic shift to AI-first operations, which can pursue commercial and technical opportunities a SaaS-only model never could. His background spans technology strategy, product leadership and VC/private-equity value creation, from early-stage startups to large enterprises.

Oliver is a candidate assessment expert with over 15 years’ experience designing online tests and assessment platforms. As the founder of Test Partnership, he helps talent acquisition teams identify candidates who are most likely to succeed in-role. His work focuses on building modern, AI-resistant assessments that give employers confidence in their hiring decisions, even as candidate behaviour and technology continue to evolve with AI.

Mark is a Senior Account Executive with 8+ years in HR Tech and Talent Intelligence. Mark specializes in consultative approached to CHROs and C-suite executives, with deep expertise in Loxo, Salesforce, and modern ATS/CRM platforms.

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.

Sara Rasul leads strategy and operations at Bright Apply, making the business run in ways that directly deliver an exceptional experience for customers. Before joining, she spent five years at McKinsey working across strategy and transformation in both public and private sector organisations.

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.

Kayla grew up around tech — her dad's a software engineer — so she was introduced to HTML and CSS early on.

She started her career in agency recruitment. After 6+ years she moved in-house, and has since built and led talent acquisition functions across SaaS — from setting up teams from scratch to leading global recruiting at HackerOne across the US, EMEA, and India. She has hired across GTM, product, and engineering, and opened and scaled an office in India as part of that journey.

Along the way, she implemented Ashby as a customer — and quickly became a fan of both the product and the people behind it.

Now she's at Ashby, working with TA leaders and teams across EMEA — advising, learning alongside them, and building community through events and shared experiences. The focus is simple: raise the bar on how recruiting operates.

A Chartered Occupational Psychologist with 26 years of experience, Ben Williams has spent his career helping organisations make better, fairer and more authentic people decisions through evidence-based assessment. As Chief Scientist at Unseen, his focus is on ensuring that science and psychological best practice sit at the heart of how the business thinks, builds and delivers. Ben is an active figure in the psychology community, having served as Chair of the Association for Business Psychology (2018–2020) and Head of Advocacy (2023–2025).