2025 Topics & Themes
AI – Digital Solutions
HR Related Legislation
Wellbeing and Mental Health
DEI
Future of Workspaces
Talent Retention and Development
Ethical Leadership
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If you are interested in a speaking opportunity, please contact eventteam@summit-events.com
Sam McAlister, a BAFTA-nominated interview producer and LSE senior fellow, is renowned for securing interviews with a spectrum of high-profile figures, from Buckingham Palace to Silicon Valley's elite. With over a decade of experience at BBC Newsnight, Sam has mastered the art of engaging with the most reluctant subjects, delivering exclusives with public figures such as HRH Prince Andrew, Sheryl Sandberg, and Elon Musk, among others.
Her insights into leadership, reputation, and communication are grounded in her extensive background in negotiation and media interaction. Sam's career journey from a criminal defence barrister to an acclaimed public speaker underscores her expertise in negotiation, media strategy, and public speaking.
In 2022, Sam published "Scoops: Behind the Scenes of the BBC’s Most Shocking Interviews," offering a behind-the-scenes look at pivotal journalistic moments. The book's success led to a documentary on Channel 4 and an upcoming Netflix film, showcasing her impactful work in journalism. Sam's portrayal by Billie Piper in the Netflix adaptation highlights her significant influence in media and negotiation.
Beyond her contributions to the media, Sam serves as a Visiting Senior Fellow at LSE, sharing her negotiation expertise. Her role as a keynote speaker and advisor in media and negotiation further demonstrates her versatility and impact across various sectors
Sam McAlister has just been played by Billie Piper in the Emmy nominated Netflix hit film Scoop.
She led the BBC Newsnight negotiations that landed the scoop of the century — and will tell the inside story of the negotiations and resilience that it took to land the historic interview with Prince Andrew that shook the Royal family to its core.
Having worked in Hospitality for over 20 years, Chris has built and implemented a diverse portfolio of people functions that focus on culture, wellbeing and employee engagement. A constant focus for Chris has been the holistic health of the teams he has worked with, ensuring their personal growth, professional application and overall development. Chris was is listed in the 25 global culture creators by Culture Amp, in recognition of his dedication to workplace wellbeing.
In this thought-provoking training session, we will explore the intriguing and often overlooked relationship between workplace wellbeing strategies and employee burnout. This session aims to delve into the complexities and unintended consequences of initiatives designed to promote employee wellness.
By the end of this session, participants will be equipped with the knowledge and tools to critically evaluate and enhance their organisation’s wellbeing strategies, ensuring they truly benefit employee health and productivity without contributing to burnout.
Craig is a highly experienced HR Director/Chief People Officer with over 30 years’ experience across multiple sectors and organisations. In his early career he was HR Director for several businesses in the tech, media and healthcare sectors, including Sky, BT and Bupa. Over the last 10 years he has focused on interim posts primarily in the health & social care, housing and property sectors and is typically hired as a change agent and troubleshooter. He is currently Interim People Director at Anchor, England’s largest provider of specialist housing and care for those in later life.
Craig holds an MA in French & Italian from Cambridge University and a Post Graduate Diploma in Personnel Management from the University of Westminster. He is a Fellow of the CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development). He lives in Clapham, South London, with his wife and daughter.
Craig McCoy is a highly experienced HR leader with over 30 years’ experience across multiple organisations and sectors.
Following a successful 25-year permanent career, Craig took the decision around 10 years ago to pursue a career as an interim HR leader and has since held 15 roles in a range of organisations in the private, public and third sectors, typically businesses employing 5,000 to 10,000 people.
Known as a strong commercial change agent, Craig is typically hired by organisations who need a People leader who can deliver results in challenging circumstances, undeterred by organisational politics nor consideration of their own long term career goals. As such, Craig has led business change in many contexts including:
Merger, Acquisition and Disposal
Restructuring and downsizing
Growth & international expansion
Need to transform failing Exec teams and HR teams.
During this session, Craig will discuss a range of business contexts which he has encountered and the strategies he has adopted and will share the secrets of his success as an interim HR leader.
Jo Carlin is the SVP HR Europe for Firstsource Solutions Ltd where she passionately supports the wider people strategy, residing in the Northwest of England. Prior to this she has operated at senior HR Director level across the UK and Europe for over a decade, working across a variety of sectors including Pharma, Hospitality, FMCG and Manufacturing for both national and international businesses. Alongside this, she is a Non-Executive Director at Lancashire Football Association – a not-for-profit organisation. She is a qualified Executive Coach and holds master’s qualifications in both psychological science and business.
Jo thrives on getting to the heart of issues and delivering solutions to enable businesses to move forward in a positive way, passionate about championing people from all backgrounds, keeping diversity and inclusivity at the heart of the People Strategy. In her spare time, she focusses on spending her time with her husband, two daughters and their dog. Whenever time allows her, and her family go for hikes in the Yorkshire Dales and Cumbria. She also loves to read extensively and lets off steam by going to the gym very early!
There are a number of external and internal forces creating friction and movement within businesses, in turn this creates a need for support functions, especially HR to morph and change whilst in motion. This is precisely what we have done in our organisation, moving from a traditional model to a business partner model, with shared services and off-shoring, digitisation and AI - all done whilst the organisation was going through a significant change, and of course all of this was required to be supported by the HR team.
After a career spanning two decades in business development, marketing & brand partnerships in some of the world’s most innovative companies including Viacom and Global Media, Ann founded women’s health venture Adora Digital Health following her own experience of perimenopause which had a negative impact on her work and her life.
Now on the Advisory Board Committee for the UK Menopause Education and Support Programme with British Menopause Society, UCL and the Royal College of Gynaecology as well as an Associate on NIHR funded research project “The health of women at work: A realist review of pregnancy, postnatal, and menopause workplace interventions and their effectiveness study,” Ann is committed to helping employers fix this problem so women no longer reduce roles or quit the workplace. Her work with the NHS is to ensure No Woman is Left Behind and Adora is committed to reducing the healthcare imbalance that disadvantages women and diverse communities at this stage of life.
Adora Digital Health is a comprehensive peri/menopause Class 1 A health and wellbeing platform helping women manage the impact of symptoms and with a focus on preventative health. With access to virtual gynaecologist consultants, workplace education and training, Adora gives women the skills, confidence and expert knowledge they need to keep thriving in life.
Are you ready? For too long, menopause has been overlooked in the workplace, causing many women to leave their jobs and creating major hidden costs for businesses.
The new Labour govt has committed to changing this and will require all employers with more than 250 employees to write, publish, and submit menopause action plans alongside their gender pay gap reporting each year.
Join Ann O’Neill, founder of women’s health platform Adora Digital Health and gain:
A Clear Understanding of the Problem: understand the real impact that menopause has on businesses and women employees
Actionable Insights: Discover practical, high-impact steps employers can take to support all employees through menopause
Proven Strategies: Hear from pioneering employers who are already leading the way in menopause support and see how their employees are benefiting.
With around 1 in 6 women considering leaving work due to a lack of peri/menopause support and 1 in 10 quitting, this is a session your business can't afford to miss!
As a seasoned HR visionary with global leadership, I've led transformative HR initiatives across EMEA, APAC, and the Americas, touching over 40 countries. My expertise lies in navigating the intricacies of diverse, multicultural landscapes, fostering inclusive cultures, and championing DEI efforts that resonate worldwide. With a career built on strategic acumen, I've been pivotal in aligning HR with core business strategies, driving organisational success through change management, talent strategy, and organisational development.
At the heart of my approach is a commitment to operational excellence and strategic HR initiatives, grounded in a robust educational degree in HR Management and Law. My journey through key HR leadership roles—including as Group Head of HR at Walker Crips and Executive Director at Solidity HR Consultancy—has been marked by significant achievements. These include spearheading DEI metrics improvement by over 10%, leading a £24 million Workday implementation project, and contributing to substantial cost savings and operational efficiencies across organisations.
I am passionate about developing innovative HR solutions that not only meet but exceed organisational goals, enhancing employee engagement and compliance awareness while nurturing a culture of continuous learning. My thought leadership in HR is demonstrated through prolific public speaking, advocating for progressive HR practices and DEI principles globally.
My topic of discussion is EDI strategy within organisations – this will delve into the life cycle of an employee from talent acquisition i.e. attraction, reasonable adjustments and using the right tools and resources to reach diverse candidates. The session will also focus on leadership traits, different EDI organisational strategies i.e. succession planning, learning and development and using the right tools to track EDI goals to build a thriving and inclusive workforce.
Vilma Nikolaidou was appointed the BFI’s first Director of People and Culture in May 2023, joining from the University of the Arts London where she was Associate Director of People Strategy and Culture.
As Director of People and Culture at the BFI, Vilma provides leadership across all areas of people strategy including talent, employee experience, capability, reward, performance, employee relations, culture and behaviours.
Originally from Greece, Vilma studied psychology and graduated with a masters in Organisational Psychology from City University London. She is a Fellow of the CIPD and also holds a postgraduate diploma in coaching from the University of Sussex.
Vilma started her career in Monsoon Accessorize, initially in retail sales and then in their HR division and from there held generalist and leadership roles at Tate Galleries, Arts Council England and London Borough of Lambeth. She was the organisational development lead of the new Tate Modern extension that opened in London’s Bankside in 2017. She co-founded Tate’s first LGBTQ+ staff network and has been a strong advocate for mental health, equality, diversity and inclusion all her life, with a passion for making the arts and creative industries more accessible to everyone. Vilma is a Trustee with Young Minds.
Join us to explore how far we have come on work life balance and are we still seeking an equilibrium between work and life? Has hybrid work, for those who have the choice, made things easier or not? Come and discuss policies that have had the most impact on driving better work life balance for employees including family leave policies, the 4 day week global pilot and more! We will explore how we can as senior HR leaders drive this change and why this is still crucial for good organisational performance and culture.
Ayan has 18 years of extensive experience leading and managing a wide variety of roles in Talent Management, Reward, HR technology and operations and several other transformative HR leadership roles. Currently working as a Vice President for Total Reward at the Adecco Group, he heads up Reward for all global functions at the group, as well as leading on Reward solutions, a portfolio that sits at the cusp of Technology and Reward. Prior to this, as the Senior Director of Human Resources in charge of employee experience and HR Transformation at General Assembly (a subsidiary of the Adecco Group), he spearheaded HR transformation initiatives, developed reward philosophies, managed a diverse workforce, and built high performing teams, resulting in tangible improvements in the overall employee experience and HR delivery capability.
- Introduction
- Current state of HR and Reward and the Role of Technology
- Technology: Challenges and Considerations
- Crystal ball gazing: future trends and opportunities
- Q&A and Discussion
Dominic is the CEO of Notion, co-author of Amazon's No.1 bestseller The Answer is a Question, and a graduate ergonomist with an EMBA from IMD (Lausanne). After a top-tier consulting career running multimillion-dollar change programmes and training leaders in thirty-seven countries, Dominic now applies his passion for human-centred design to learning and behavioural change.
He has helped clients to embed coaching behaviours and improve their commercial performance with programmes that regularly generate returns many hundreds of times greater than the investment, all while delivering sustainable changes in organisational culture.
Dominic’s global career has given him deep insights into the levers of change that make the most difference. Unlike other suppliers in the development industry, he has been willing to subject Notion’s core approaches to the dispassionate and unblinking gaze of academic scrutiny.
Dominic is the co-creator of the STAR® model (2010) and the multi-award-winning STAR® Manager programme. He is the co-founder of Notion, a performance improvement consultancy established in 2000. With a team of experts, the company has won a string of awards for innovation, learning design and academic partnerships and has been recognised for its work with FTSE and Fortune 500 clients by Personnel Today magazine for the industry’s prestigious Learning & Development Supplier of the Year award in 2021.
The time is now for senior leaders to address management performance, engagement and retention. With ever-increasing workloads, demanding schedules and growing instability, it’s little wonder that stress levels are rising whilst employee engagement is low across the globe.
What if instead of bringing you problems every day, those you work with started generating the solutions themselves? What if your team could step up and take work off you so that you got 20% of your time back? What if making one small change could transform not only your team’s engagement levels but also your career?
During this interactive session, we’ll explore what needs to happen to support our leaders and line managers (including academics) to better engage with their teams and reverse these trends. We’ll share the results of an academic study that was commissioned by the UK Government and evaluated by LSE across 62 organisations in 14 sectors that shows us how we can revolutionise management performance in as little as 6 months.
The knowledge you’ll gain from this session could be the missing link for all of the leaders and managers in your organisation.
STAR® Manager are global experts in management behavioural change and coaching.
Speaker Programme
The Summit programme consists of inspirational Keynotes, Strategy Sessions (case study presentations followed by focused discussion), interactive Action Learning Workshops, and debate. In addition, we will add value by offering a series of round tables, presentations, and toolkits in the build-up to the event.
If you have any recommendations for speakers or topics for future events please email eventteam@summit-events.com
Register your interest in the 32nd Human Resource Summit
15 - 17 October 2025
Submit your name and email address and a member of the Summit team will send you further details including:
- the confirmed list of attendees
- instructions on how to apply for a delegate place
- sponsorship options
“The event was a fantastic learning and development opportunity for any HR professional. It was a great to meet peers across various HR disciplines, learn and benchmark against our own HR function. It was my first time attending an event like this and it opened my eyes to the types of suppliers and services that are available to our organisation to assist us on various challenges we face.City of London Corporation”
“This HR Summit was a brilliant way to meet with very relevant industry counterparts and suppliers. The sessions were carefully chosen with an excellent set of speakers. And the suppliers did not hard-sell their products, as often is the case with forums like these. The venue provided ample opportunity to unwind as well the arrangements done by the Summit team in terms of food and hospitality were excellent.General Assembly”
