Adrian Bettridge

Adrian has been with Baringa Partners since 2007 and serving as managing partner since 2014. In that role, he brings his 25+ years’ experience as a strategy, change and leadership consultant to bear on ambitious plans for Baringa’s growth: moving into new markets, creating new capabilities, forging new relationships with new clients, and always developing and supporting our people who make our business thrive. For Adrian, creating lasting impact for clients means being prepared to take some personal risk, asking insightful questions, going broader and deeper than the brief implies to really get to the heart of an issue or opportunity. He’s happiest when his consulting relationships extend into coaching relationships – supporting CEOs and senior leaders to create high performance teams, enabling them to mobilise everyone around their vision and strategy, and as a result, transform their future business outcomes. That people-first mentality is evident in the culture Adrian’s fostered at Baringa. From going to every single new joiner session, to setting up a people fund for each team member to spend time and money on their hobbies – like wine tasting, guitar lessons, poetry and pottery. His regular Monday morning emails are just as likely to contain quotes from tennis players, poets and philosophers as they are ideas from the business and leadership authors that inspire him. He’s proud to see that culture of kindness and curiosity recognised, with Baringa ranking in the top ten in the Great Place to Work awards for more than 10 years in a row. Adrian loves running, tennis and golf, and is an avid Liverpool FC fan – he counts the evening they beat Barcelona four nil in 2019 as one of the best nights of his life... after his wedding and the birth of his four sons, of course!

Pim de Morree

Pim de Morree is one of the co-founders of Corporate Rebels. Together with Joost Minnaar, he quit his corporate job in 2016 out of frustration. Frustration caused by the old-fashioned and outdated ways of working that are still present in today’s world of work. As Corporate Rebel, Pim set out on a mission to make work more fun. Nowadays, he travels the world to research the world’s most progressive organisations. Besides researching, Pim writes for the popular Corporate Rebels blog, advises companies, and gives keynote presentations to inspire organisations to radically change the way they work. In 2020, he published a book together with Joost Minnaar called ‘Corporate Rebels: Make Work More Fun’. And recently they launched the Corporate Rebel Academy, an ultimate training camp for corporate rebels. A place to learn how to make work better, with a wide variety of courses and the opportunity to learn from pioneers while connecting to a global community of rebels. Pim’s formal training is in Industrial Engineering & Management Science (BSc, Eindhoven University of Technology) and Innovation Management (MSc, Eindhoven University of Technology). Today, the Thinkers 50 rate them among the “Top 30 Emergent Management Thinkers”, they won the 2019 Radar Award, and they were named as one of the “new voices reenergizing management”.

Toby Fowlston

Toby Fowlston is the CEO of the Robert Walters and Walters People brands within the Robert Walters Group. A market-leading international specialist professional recruitment group with over 3,100 staff spanning 31 countries that delivers specialist recruitment consultancy and staffing services across the globe. Robert Walters matches highly skilled professionals to permanent, contract and interim roles across the disciplines of accountancy and finance, banking, engineering, HR, IT, legal, sales, marketing, secretarial and support and supply chain, logistics and procurement. Their client base ranges from the world’s leading blue-chip corporates and financial services organisations through to SMEs and start-ups. After qualifying as a Solicitor in 1999 Toby joined the business as a Recruitment Consultant in London. Over the proceeding 22 years he has developed his career at Robert Walters, both in the UK and in APAC, through a commitment to teamwork, integrity, passion, innovation, quality, and inclusion. It’s these founding principles that mean the business continues to deliver engaging candidate and client experiences, whilst powering rewarding careers for their people. In his current role as CEO, Toby is focused on international expansion, discipline diversification and building an entrepreneurial culture to help Robert Walters and Walters people leverage new opportunities whilst ensuring the delivery of outstanding customer experience.

Rina Goldenberg Lynch

Rina Goldenberg Lynch Rina Goldenberg Lynch, founder and CEO of Voice At The Table, has 20 years of experience as a lawyer. Having started her legal career in Washington DC, she then worked as a banking lawyer with Clifford Chance LLP in London and as a director in the legal department of ING Bank London. During her career, Rina observed that most organisations had a dominant culture which required - directly or indirectly - every person to adapt. As a result, leaders often failed to realise the full potential of their colleagues, overlooking individual differences as strengths, leaving untapped much talent, dedication and commitment. Having experienced this first-hand and learning how to break the corporate mould, Rina developed a passion for endowing her experience and knowledge onto other women, helping them attain sustainable career satisfaction by contributing fully and authentically. Rina mentored many women to break through their own limiting beliefs and to become agents of change for other women and colleagues. Separately, Rina also began to help her own employer to realise women's untapped contribution by modelling how to value difference and turn it into a useful resource for the business. This was the catalyst behind Voice At The Table. Rina talks passionately on this topic and contributes to the advancement of women by speaking to audiences across the private and public sectors, as well as schools and non-profit organisations, and is frequently asked to judge awards events honouring women’s professional achievements.

Johann Hari

Johann Hari is the author of three New York Times best-selling books, and the Executive Producer of an Oscar-nominated movie and an eight-part TV series starring Samuel L. Jackson. His books have been translated into 38 languages, and been praised by a broad range of people, from Oprah to Noam Chomsky, from Elton John to Naomi Klein. His latest book, ‘Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention’, was published in January 2022, and received rave reviews everywhere from the Washington Post to the Irish Times to the Sydney Morning Herald. It has been a best-seller on three continents. Johann’s first book, ‘Chasing the Scream: the First and Last Days of the War on Drugs’, was adapted into the Oscar-nominated film ‘The United States Vs Billie Holiday’. It has also been adapted into a documentary series which is available to view now. His second book, ‘Lost Connections: Uncovering The Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions’ was described by the British Journal of General Practice as “one of the most important texts of recent years”, and shortlisted for an award by the British Medical Association. Johann’s TED talks have been viewed more than 80 million times. The first is named ‘Everything You Think You Know About Addiction is Wrong’. The second is entitled ‘This Could Be Why You Are Depressed or Anxious’. He has written over the past decade for some of the world’s leading newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Guardian, the Spectator, Le Monde Diplomatique, the Sydney Morning Herald, and Politico. He has appeared on NPR’s All Thing Considered, HBO’s Realtime With Bill Maher, The Joe Rogan Podcast, the BBC’s Question Time, and many other popular shows.

Professor Peter Hawkins Honourary President

Peter Hawkins is Honorary President of the Academy of Executive Coaching (AoEC). For the last 30 years he has been helping organisations in many parts of the world connect their strategic change, their organizational culture and their leadership development. He has written extensively about leadership, leadership teams, coaching and supervision. Currently his major concern is the growing gap between the increasing and changing challenges for individual and collective leadership and how leadership development is failing to evolve at the same speed. The AoEC Systemic Team Coaching suite of programmes, diagnostic tool and coaching are based on Peter’s 5 Disciplines model which in used internationally. He regularly blogs and publishes papers on these and other topics. He also is also Professor of Leadership at Henley Business School University of Reading UK and Emeritus Chairman of Bath Consultancy Group, visiting professor at the universities of Bath and Oxford Brookes, chairs Renewal Associates and is enjoyably kept busy by his wife, three children and their partners, five grandchildren, and numerous hens, sheep, goats, steers and guinea fowl and large gardens where he lives on the edge of Bath in the UK.

Jude Jennison

Jude Jennison is Founder of Leaders by Nature, a leadership and team development company that creates behavioural change in senior leaders and executive teams. Jude works with a herd of horses to reveal default patterns of nonverbal leadership and team behaviour. She is also a tech founder of a leadership app called AskOpus that solves leadership and team issues through stories, coaching and an interactive game that incentivises changes in behaviour. Jude is author of three leadership books, a podcast host and inspirational speaker. Her leadership experience includes 17 years in IBM where she managed a budget of $1 billion. She is a tech founder, business owner and leads a herd of 5 horses who she says are the most challenging team she’s ever led.

Jo North

As giffgaff’s People Director, Jo North is the brand’s leader for culture, HR and talent. With over 25 years of experience, she is an expert in her field and passionate about fostering the unique giffgaff culture. Since joining giffgaff in 2020, Jo has been growing and developing the people team at the gaff by recruiting specialist talent to support different areas of the expanding business. With a focus on learning and development, and diversity, equity and inclusion, Jo is leading the way for giffgaff to retain even more talent and stay true to its culture in the world of hybrid working. Prior to giffgaff, Jo has a variety of experience across industries such as financial services and telecommunications and has worked for household names including Vodafone and Thomas Cook.

Adah Parris

Adah Parris is a futurist, storyteller, cultural strategist and highly versatile speaker. She is the creator of Cyborg Shamanism, an innovation model that subverts the ‘status quo’, drawing parallels between various digital and spiritual ecosystems. A polymath and enthusiastic curator of people, patterns and stories, Adah was recognised as one of the UK’s Top 100 Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) Leaders in Technology in 2018. With over 20 years’ experience in transforming cultures to create human blockchains – decentralised human ecosystems of trust and transparency – Adah has worked with businesses and individuals in advertising, education, entertainment, entrepreneurship, marketing, media, and technology start-ups. She has a philosophical approach to technology which, combined with her skills in pattern recognition and immersive storytelling, has helped transform cultures to nurture decentralised humanity-centred innovative environments. Her innovative idea, Cyborg Shamanism was submitted to the Fast Company World Changing Ideas Awards. The concept of Cyborg Shamanism allows one to empathetically subvert the ‘status quo’. It can be utilised as a potential business application across the areas of innovation, culture, diversity and inclusion. Adah addresses how, to date, most of the development of an investment into scaled technology, especially digital technology, has been for and by the WEIRD (Western Educated Industrialised Rich and Democratic). Cyborg Shamanism offers an impact on innovation by combining ‘other ways of knowing’, which are the perspectives of First Nation Peoples, Indigenous or ancestral knowledge with the design of these new and emerging technologies. It is specifically related to SDG 17, Partnerships for the Goals, providing a new approach for work and enabling people to address the other SDGs as equals and inclusive partners.

John Sills

John is managing partner at the customer-led growth company, The Foundation. 25 years ago John started his career on a market stall in Essex, and since then has worked in and with companies around the world to make things better for customers. He’s been in front-line teams delivering the experience, innovation teams designing the propositions, and global HQ teams creating the strategy. He's been a bank manager during the financial crisis (not fun), launched a mobile app to millions of people (very fun), and regularly visits strangers’ houses to ask very personal questions (incredible fun). He now works with companies across industries and around the world, and before joining The Foundation spent twelve years at HSBC, latterly as head of customer innovation. He regularly writes on customer experience and innovation and has his first book on the topic being published by Bloomsbury in February 2023.

Karen Smart Head of Consultancy

Karen is an ICF accredited and experienced executive coach, coach trainer, mentor coach, supervisor and faculty member for the AoEC. She is pivotal in building, connecting, and maintaining effective authentic relationships both internally and externally.

As AoEC Head of Consultancy, Karen is responsible for meeting all executive coaching needs for our organisation-based clients. She works with leaders and senior decision makers across all sectors including financial services, professional services, entertainment, not-for-profit, and the public sector.

Karen sits on the Senior Leadership Team feeding into the AoEC strategy and business objectives. In addition to this, she manages an internal team to seek out opportunities and serve clients effectively. Karen is accountable for the budget for the organisations part of the business.
Prior to joining the AoEC, Karen enjoyed a successful commercial career in the pharmaceutical industry, latterly holding a global responsibility for strategy implementation and launch preparedness for a billion-a-year dollar brand across forty-four different countries. Karen has a broad-based sales and marketing experience in a variety of settings, including a two-year stint as Strategic Planning and Market Research Manager in Mexico City.

In her spare time, Karen likes spending time with her family and three rescue dogs, staying fit and learning music

Jen Tippin

Jen is the chief people and transformation officer for Natwest Group and a member of the group executive Committee. In this role, Jen is responsible for the people strategy and transformation plan, as well as customer journeys, investment, property and supply chain services. Jen is passionate about inclusion and is the executive sponsor for ‘Rainbow’, the Group’s LGBTQ+ employee led network, and for wellbeing groupwide. Prior to joining NatWest Group, Jen spent 15 years at Lloyds Banking Group. Appointed to the group executive committee in 2017, she was group director, people and productivity responsible for HR, efficiency, sourcing, supply chain management and property. Prior to that, she was the group organisation design and cost management director, group customer services director and MD, business banking serving over a million small business customers. She has extensive experience running large scale business, customer and operational teams as well as leading significant transformational change. Before working in financial services, Jen worked in both the engineering and airline sectors. Jen has significant board and committee chair experience. She has served on both private and public sector boards, including the NHS and charitable organisations. She sat on the board of Lloyds Bank Corporate Markets. She is currently a non-executive director on the board of Morgan Sindall Plc, a fast-growing FTSE250 construction, housing, infrastructure, and regeneration business. She is also a non-executive director of City University, University of London, where she chairs its remuneration committee and is a board member of the Financial Services Skills Commission driving the future skills agenda for the banking sector.

Bart Weetjens

Bart Weetjens is a Zen Buddhist monk and social entrepreneur. Graduating in Product Design from Antwerp University, and with a vision to empower the most vulnerable communities of subsistence farmers in sub-Sahara Africa, he took the initiative to train rats as sustainable detectors in response to the global landmine problem. What started in 1995 as a modest research initiative in detection rats technology, gradually grew into a global humanitarian operation and became one of the leading social enterprises in the world, recognised and awarded by networks like Ashoka, the Skoll Awards and the World Economic Forum. When Mozambique officially announced itself free from landmines in 2015, Bart transitioned from his executive role to focus on the practice of Zen. In the same year he got involved in The Wellbeing Project which aims to catalyse a culture of inner wellbeing for all changemakers. While exploring the relationship between personal growth and social action, Bart supports individuals and groups to fulfil their noble purpose. He inspires audiences through public speaking, Zen workshops and individual coaching trajectories, and he facilitates the Personal Growth and Wellbeing Programme at the AoEC.