Our virtual faculty is a small group of thinkers, thought-leaders and practitioners in non-HRD roles who support the network by speaking, facilitating smaller groups and offering a different perspective to our HR-focused community.
Rob Cross is the Founder of The Purposeful Leader. Formerly an engineer with the Royal Australian Air Force, Rob has held senior HR and Talent roles with BT Global Services, Prudential, Kingfisher Group, Doosan Power Systems, and LexisNexis – and most recently was HR Director, UK, Ireland and Middle East at SIG plc.
Julian Stodd is a writer, artist, consultant, and explorer, with a deep interest in how things work: systems, societies, and structures, both technical and human. At its highest level, his work covers the Social Age, documenting the change and sense-making what we do about it, and ranges from leadership to learning, culture to change, trust to humility. Julian founded Sea Salt Learning as the vehicle to develop ideas into practice: a global consultancy, operating cross-sector, delivering programmes at scale. Julian’s blog at www.julianstodd.wordpress.com is his primary space for sharing these stories, with over 2,000 articles and growing every day. He has written fifteen books so far, with more on the way.
Paul O’Neill CBE is a Senior Research Fellow in Military Sciences at the Royal United Services Institute. His research interests cover national security strategy, NATO, and organisational aspects of Defence and security, including organisational design, human resources, professional military education and decision-making. Previously, Paul was a Royal Air Force officer working in strategy and human resources roles across Defence including in the Ministry of Defence Head Office. His career included commanding the Defence School of Personnel Administration, leading the military team working on the 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review and latterly as the Head of Defence People Strategy. He has undertaken operational tours in Iraq, Northern Ireland, Oman, Turkey and Afghanistan where he was the Senior Advisor on Strategy and Policy to the Afghan Ministry of Interior. He has been a Chief of the Air Staff Fellow at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford and is a visiting professor at the University of Winchester. He is a Companion of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.
Kathryn Marshall is a global HR director – and a champion of profitable and sustainable change with a rigorous focus on customer insight. Former CPO with Balfour Beatty, Kathryn has also held HR Director roles with AWE, Serco and Aviva Canada amongst others.
Aggie is the CEO and lead consulting director of Mahogany Inclusion Partners. She works with C-Suite leaders, HR directors, Inclusion leaders and their teams to explore mindsets, compassionately challenge beliefs and create psychologically safe spaces for reflection, behaviour change and inclusive cultures. In addition, Aggie is an inclusion and people awards judge, supporting the Business Culture Awards and the CIPD People Management awards. She is a trusted panellist and speaker, most recently for the CBI, and the CIPD Annual Conference 2020.
Sarah Sandbrook is a People Director and Transformational Leader. A Global Talent Leader and HR Director with Deutsche Telekom and T-Systems for many years, other senior HR roles were with Three UK and more recently, Zalando.
Sue Swanborough FCIPD has held Group HR Director roles with Aquila Food Group and Falcon Recreation Ltd, HR Director roles with Whitworths Ltd and Kolak Snackfoods Ltd, and was HRD Northern Europe at General Mills, having started her HR career at Mars.