Speakers Biographies
Christine Abel
As a member of Hay's European practice, Christine works with many large national and international companies and has consulted with clients from across every industry. She advises remuneration committees on top executive pay and reward design, international corporate governance standards, and reward projects for exempt and non-exempt pay reflecting all items of German co-determination. On a national level, she is responsible for the business lines reward strategy and executive pay. Christine joined Hay Group in 1997.
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Trevor Blackman
Trevor is Global Head of Reward for the Royal Bank of Scotland Group and leads the team responsible for the strategy, development and implementation of compensation and benefits policy. Prior to joining the RBSG in May 1994, he spent 10 years working with Hay Management Consultants in London, Philadelphia and Glasgow. Trevor is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Bankers in Scotland.
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Peter Boreham
Peter joined Hay Group in 1997 and was UK Practice Leader from 2001-2003. Peter’s work is mainly focused on pay, incentives and benefits for senior directors and managers across a wide variety of leading organisations. In addition to advising international corporations on long-term incentives and executive rewards, Peter has also advised the UK Department of Trade and Industry on pay and incentives in government- owned businesses. Peter is a qualified actuary and before joining Hay Group he advised the trustees and sponsoring employers of occupational pension schemes.
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Marie Brinkman
Marie has worked with technology and life sciences companies to develop compensation and benefit programmes for more than 20 years. Prior to joining Radford Surveys + Consulting, Marie was a principal consultant with the global rewards practice of Right Management Consultants (previously Bowker Consulting International). Her assignments included market analyses of US and international pay levels and practices; modelling; and design of equity programmes; and audits of international benefits and human resource practices. Prior to Right, Marie held positions with Visa International, Pacific Telesis, and Sprint Communications. She also was an executive compensation consultant with Watson Wyatt.
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Chris Bruce
Chris is one of the two founding directors of thomsons online benefits. He both led and designed the original build of the technology, “Perquisite”, and spearheads the effort to continually update and enhance the technology, maintaining its position as the most cutting edge solution in the market. He was particularly heavily involved in the early development of the international and flexible benefit business streams and was responsible for launching the first online global multilingual and multi-currency flexible benefits scheme across eight countries simultaneously.
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Peter Christie
Peter is Director of Reward Services for the Hay Group and advises organisations on reward and performance management issues. He helps businesses to design, implement and operate effective and appropriate programmes, policies and supporting processes. He has worked on many international assignments in Europe, North America, Middle East and Africa. Most of Peter’s experience has been in the financial services sector, but he has also advised supranationals such as EBRD, EIB, World Bank and ADB, the pharmaceutical sector and the mining industry, among others.
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William Claxton-Smith
William joined Insight Investment in 1976, initially working as a UK equity analyst, then as a fund manager responsible for Insight's Equity High Income Fund for 19 years until January 2004. William has been involved in corporate governance and regulation issues for many years and is now focusing entirely on corporate governance activity. He is a member of a number of industry bodies including the Investment Committee of the Association of British Insurers and the Confederation of British Industry’s Companies Committee.
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David Clifford
David’s career in HR spans over 30 years. He worked in a variety of C&B and generalist roles, principally with Bank of America and Citi Group until 1992. He then joined KPMG as a Partner in their HR Consulting practice. In this role he led many major engagements in compensation & benefits, HR organisation design and HR IT implementations. In 2000 David joined Robert Fleming, a privately held UK bank, as Group HR Director and then move to Ernst & Young as a Partner in their UK Human Capital practice. Leaving Ernst & Young he joined ABN AMRO in June 2005. Based in Amsterdam, David is responsible for the Bank's Global Centre of Expertise for Performance & Reward.
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Siobhan Cummins
Siobhan is Managing Director Europe for ORC Worldwide and is also an Executive Vice-President of the firm. Since joining ORC in 1991, Siobhan has been responsible for the management and development of the ICS practice in Europe. In addition to her consulting activities, Siobhan chairs two of ORC’s Meeting Groups. Both are multi-industry networks of HR professionals with nearly 40 member companies, focusing on all aspects of expatriation. Before joining ORC, Siobhan held a number of personnel management positions with a variety of companies. She has lived and worked in the Far East, Middle East, Australia and Africa and is a faculty member of WorldatWork. She is a board member of the Permits Foundation and a member of the Advisory Council of AHRMIO.
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Tom Flannery
Tom is a Principal and National Healthcare Practice Leader with Buck Consultants, located in Buck's Boston office. He has significant experience in the financial services, manufacturing services and health science industries, and has spent over 20 years focused on executive and employee level issues, including executive and employee compensation and benefits.
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Chantal Free
Chantal is a senior consultant in Watson Wyatt’s London office and is responsible for performance and incentives. Her work includes working with clients across industries to align their reward plans and performance systems with their business strategy. She also leads sales management and rewards services in Europe. She has been with the firm since mid- 1996, taking on a variety of roles in Hong Kong and London. Prior to joining Watson Wyatt, Chantal was a management consultant where she specialised in the areas of change and human resources management.
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Helen Freeman
Helen is a Principal in Towers Perrin's benefits strategy practice, based in London. Her primary focus is helping companies to more effectively align their benefits strategies with their business strategy. In this role, she has advised companies on all aspects of the design, financing and operation of employee benefit and pension arrangements. She has expertise in major pension plan change and in the design and implementation of flexible benefits arrangements. Helen is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries in the UK.
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Elisabeth Ganss
Elisabeth is the HR Business Partner Europe and HR Manager for Central Europe at Dow Corning. She joined the company in Wiesbaden, Germany, in August 2002, with extensive HR experience gathered in various multinational companies mainly in the chemical industry. Since she joined Dow Corning, Elisabeth has concentrated her efforts on organisational and employee development activities, such as work-life effectiveness, leadership development, vocational training, and strategic direction by creating a new site mission. Under her leadership, Dow Corning was recognised as one of the 2006 "Best Workplaces in Germany”.
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Robert Holdom
Robert, Vice-President Human Resourses (Global Retirement Plans and Health & Welfare Funding) at American Express, leads the strategy for benefit plan redesign and investment management projects for international retirement and health and welfare plans, and also for the company's annual Global Governance Review. Prior to working at Amex, he spent 10 years in global consulting with Towers Perrin and Mercer, including positions in the USA and London.
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Mark Hudson
Mark is a Senior Vice President at Bank of America and responsible for all compensation and benefits for International (EMEA, AsiaPAC and Americas regions). In this role he oversees the design and delivery of programmes that support the Bank’s global strategic initiatives and support the roll-out of its Pay for Performance strategy. Before joining the Bank in 2005, Mark was Head of Reward for the UK Banking division at Barclays, based in the UK.
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Jamil Husain
Jamil leads Hewitt’s HR consulting business for the United Kingdom and Ireland. Prior to this, Jamil was at Barclays where he set up and managed the human resource specialist practice which is the Group's shared service centre of excellence for HR expert functions including executive reward, pensions, management development and talent and HR strategy. Prior to Barclays, Jamil was a Senior Partner at Towers Perrin where for 17 years he held a number of leadership roles including Head of the Reward Practice for Europe and Regional Consulting Head for Asia-Pacific based in Singapore. Jamil started his career with Citibank where he was HR Manager for the UK consumer banking subsidiary.
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Alan Judes
Alan is an Executive Compensation Consultant and founder of Strategic Remuneration. He is the adviser to the Old Mutual Remuneration Committee. By background a chartered accountant and member of the Institute of Taxation, he has worked as a management consultant for many years. He is the author of Transactions: Share Incentives for Employees, (Longman, 1993). His work includes the accounting measurement of share-based compensation.
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Michael McKersie
Michael is Assistant Director, Investment Affairs at the UK’s major institutional investor representative organisation, the Association of British Insurers, having previously worked in both stockbroking and fund management. He has a variety of responsibilities, covering public policy issues relating to investment matters, the operation of the investment markets, the expectations of investors and corporate governance matters generally. He has been closely involved in developing and putting across the ABI position over more than eight years from the start of the Review of Company Law up to the passing of the 2006 Act.
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Stephen Mansfield
Stephen is the Group Human Resources Manager at Vanco Plc. He has been responsible for managing and communicating their flexible benefits scheme "v:choice" in over fourteen territories. The implementation of "v: choice" has helped to decrease employee turnover by 7% to give Vanco one of lowest attrition rates in an industry notorious for high turnover. In the last 12 months, it has facilitated an increase in global headcount by 19%. Steve trained as a chartered accountant with Ernst & Young. As CFO EMEA of Timeplex, he took responsibility for developing the European human resources operation. He became group HR Manager with Vanco Plc in January 2004.
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Sam Mathew
Sam has more than 25 years’ experience in HR. He spent 10 years in India working with major manufacturing and service companies from 1980-90, covering such areas as industrial relations, HR administration, wages and salary administration and employee welfare. He then moved to the Middle East where he has spent 17 years working with a number of international corporates. Since 2006, he has been responsible for Qtel Group Companies’ compensation and performance management. Group Companies includes NAWRAS, the second mobile operator in Sultanate of Oman which is a joint venture with TDC and Qtel, and WATANIYA Telecom of Kuwait. Sam is also responsible for the HR aspects of Qtel's M&A activities and post-merger integration.
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Paul O’Malley
Paul is responsible for leading Mercer’s total rewards consulting services with clients in Europe. He is a member of the Mercer global steering group, which has responsibility for the development of intellectual 15 capital in total rewards. Paul has been with Mercer for 25 years and his areas of expertise include retirement benefits, employee share schemes, compensation and communications. He has specialised in the design and implementation of total rewards and flexible benefits for the last 10 years. He has worked with many clients across Europe and is an Associate of the Pensions Management Institute in the UK and the Irish Institute of Pensions Managers.
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Jean-Philippe Provost
Jean-Philippe is an international consultant, based in Towers Perrin’s Global Resources Group in New York, where he works with multinational organisations helping them address international human resource issues. He has expertise in global mergers, acquisitions and spin-offs. A large part of his work involves consulting on benefit and governance strategy, accounting for pension and benefit costs and global financing and funding policies. Jean-Philippe is a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries in the US and a Fellow of the Canadian Institute of Actuaries.
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Hartmuth Posner
Hartmuth Posner joined Linde AG in 2005 with senior management responsibility for international HR. Since 2006 he has focused on European HR and global support functions. Before joining Linde he was group head of HR at Thomas Cook AG from 2003-2005. Prior to that, he held a range of HR positions at Lufthansa from 1988-2003.
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Justin Reynolds
Justin joined ISS as Director of Corporate Programmes in January 2005 from Mourant to concentrate on ISS corporate business outside North America. Justin spends most of his time working with corporates and their advisors in matters relating to governance, governance ratings, remuneration and their resolutions at AGM time. He covers the EUMESA and Asian markets from London. Justin was a Director at Mourant from October 2003 and at Georgeson Shareholder from May 1999. Prior to joining GS, Justin worked in fund management and sports marketing.
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Linda Roundtree
Linda is President of Roundtree Consulting LLC, a firm that specialises in the design and implementation of global work-life initiatives. Previously, she was with American Airlines for 17 years, holding operational, customer service, and HR management positions. Her roles included responsibility for developing policies and procedures for Asia, Australia, Europe and South America markets, and assisting with start-up activities for European destinations. For five years, she led American’s global work-life strategies effort, implementing a portfolio of initiatives that placed the airline on numerous “employer of choice” lists.
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Anne C Ruddy
Anne, Certified Compensation Professional, Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter, has extensive experience in leading and managing large organisations at the executive level. She spent most of her 20 years in the insurance industry with Aetna, starting as an underwriting trainee in 1975 to become regional vice president of property/casualty operations in Illinois in 1991. She left Aetna in 1994 to manage the Arizona insurance brokerage operation of Alexander & Alexander Inc, but returned to Aetna the next year as a Vice-President to lead the creation and development of a new national strategic business unit dedicated to providing products and services to business associations, franchises and affinity groups. In 1999, she left Travelers to spend time in consulting operations in Arizona. Anne was appointed President of WorldatWork in November 1999.
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Margery Sher
Margery co-founded the child care and work/life consulting firm, Fried & Sher Inc in 1985. In 2000, Caliber Associates acquired the firm and Margery became a Principal with Caliber, managing the work-life practice. Her clients have ranged from the White House to Marriott International to United Ways. Margery has published broadly including Child Care Options: A Workplace Initiative for the 21st Century (1994) and serves on many non-profit boards of directors including as president of National Learning Institute. She also works on parent engagement for the child care organisation, NACCRRA.
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Mark Sprague
Mark joined Deloitte in 2000. He has provided reward and benefit advice for over 16 years to both corporate and public sector clients, including national government. Mark has an extensive and detailed knowledge of private pensions and benefits and is a well known expert in this marketplace. He is an Associate of the Chartered Insurance Institute (ACII) and an active member of the Herts & Middlesex Institute of Directors.
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Kevin Stacey
Kevin is Head of Reward for Old Mutual plc, an international insurance and asset management and banking company with 45,000 employees in 30 countries, mainly based in South Africa, Europe and the US. His job covers senior executive compensation across the group. Recent projects have included review and implementation of compensation arrangements on the acquisition of Skandia group, which has employees across Scandinavia and in more than 20 other countries in Europe, Latin America, Australia and China.
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Andrew Stemp
Andrew is Director of Reward for the UK healthcare company Alliance Boots plc, following the recent merger of Boots and Alliance Unichem. The company employs over 70,000 full-time staff worldwide. He is responsible for all aspects of company reward strategy and implementation, and acts as an internal adviser to the company’s remuneration committee. Andrew was previously Group Head of Reward for BPB plc. Prior to that Andrew was EMEA Compensation & Benefits Manager for GE Consumer & Industrial based in Barcelona, Spain and has also worked for the Human Capital Group of Watson Wyatt, Mercer in London and KPMG's London Tax Practice.
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Gregory A Stoskopf
Gregory is a Senior Manager in the Total Rewards/ Human Capital Practice of Deloitte Consulting LLP in New York. His consulting expertise is focused on the design and implementation of strategic broad-based performance and reward systems, including talent and total reward strategies designed to enhance the attraction and retention of critical talent segments. He has over 20 years’ experience in compensation, performance management and human resources. His clients represent a broad range of industries including healthcare, financial services, pharmaceuticals, media, manufacturing, professional services, and non-profits.
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Shaun Tyson
Shaun is Professor of Human Resource Management, and Director of the Human Resource Research Centre at Cranfield School of Management (UK). He has experience of human resource management in the public sector and in corporations such as the Thorn Group and has held a faculty position at the Civil Service College, Sunningdale. He is a Visiting Professor at the University of Paris. Professor Tyson has written extensively on human resource strategy and policies. He has carried out consultancy assignments and research with a wide range of public and private sector organisations in the UK and overseas.
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Philip van Elsdingen
Philip joined Mercer in February 2006 to manage the Human Capital Advisory Services business in the Netherlands. He has 13 years’ experience in HR consulting and has consulted with many large multinationals clients in the areas of employee engagement, broad-based and executive compensation and benefits, talent and performance management, organisational culture and corporate restructuring and change (mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, spin-offs etc). Prior to joining Mercer, Philip worked as a senior HR/rewards consultant at Hewitt and as an international employee benefits consultant at Fortis.
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Richard Veal
Richard is the Practice Leader for Watson Wyatt's communications practice in the UK. Specialising in the communication and delivery of total reward and flexible benefits programmes, Richard and his team work with a broad range of reward programmes, both UK specific and pan-European. The team aim to create campaigns that recognise real lives and real needs creating active employee participation on a very practical level.
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David Wightman
David is Head of Global Compensation & Benefits at Heineken NV, one of the world’s largest brewing groups. David’s day-to-day responsibilities include the development and direction of all compensation and benefits programmes, performance management, grading and organisation structures, and international assignment programmes. He started his career working in production management in the car industry in the UK, and then moved to the Far East to set up and run a manufacturing company as a subsidiary of a Europeanbased multinational group. He then spent time working for the British government before moving into HR, firstly in the public sector and then as an HR consultant. David joined Heineken in 2003.
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