2024 Contributors

Peter Newhouse is a well-known expert on pay. Currently focused on the Future of Reward, he is a frequent speaker at international conferences, has had articles published in newspapers and specialist publications and has featured on television and radio.

Peter was Unilever’s Global Head of Reward from 2010 to 2021. He was previously a senior executive at Ford in North America and Group Head of Remuneration at Standard Chartered Bank in London.

After graduating with a Law degree, Peter started his career in Reward in 1980 when he joined the American consulting company Organization Resources Counselors Inc (ORC). As well as developing the Reward consultancy services of MM&K, specialists in executive and incentive compensation, Peter also ran his own Reward consulting business, Peter Newhouse & Co from 2000 until he joined Unilever in 2010.

Chris has been working in employee engagement before it was even a thing. With a background in marketing and design, he has a passion for brand, driving behavioural change and using effective communication to help organisations to achieve their goals.

He has developed inspiring engagement campaigns and transformation projects across the employee lifecycle for a wide range of organisations, including BT, Boots, Coca-Cola, London Stock Exchange Group, O2, S&P Global and Unilever.

Sarah is a business leader who spent 25 years leading change for some of the world’s top brands. With a degree in sport management and psychology, she was instrumental in the growth and development of the Nike women’s retail business in the UK and Europe and went on to work as a senior leader for GlaxoSmithKline and the world’s leading Investment bank, Goldman Sachs.

Sarah is an expert in building experiences and believes they help us create emotional episodes which shape our attitudes, behaviours and performance.

She is an entrepreneur, mum of four, Founder of The Leadership High and MacExperience (MacX)

Leigh Bornstein serves as the COO at uFlexReward, where she leads the Client Engagement team and directs the client experience strategy to ensure seamless platform delivery. Central to her role, Leigh oversees the full spectrum of the client journey – from sales and project management to business strategy and customer success; aiming for optimal client satisfaction and operational efficiency.

With over a decade of expertise in Reward and HR, Leigh has successfully orchestrated the launch of more than ten global Total Reward System projects, positively affecting over 100,000 employees across 100+ countries. Before joining uFlexReward, Leigh developed her skills in coaching and leading large-scale HR and reward transformation projects for multinational clients, with previous positions at Unilever, Xerox/Buck Consultants, Conduent, and Endava. Outside of work, Leigh is passionate about photography and adventure, including hiking, snowboarding, surfing, and yoga.

Ovul Sezer is a behavioral scientist and a stand-up comedian. During the day, she is an Assistant Professor of Management & Organizations at Cornell University, where she teaches Managerial Decision Making, Diversity and Organizational Behavior. Late at night, she performs stand-up routines in comedy clubs.

She applies the same observational tools to both jobs, identifying a particular human behavior that seems interesting or confusing, either by studying it in-depth using experiments or describing it with humor. Her research focuses on Impression (Mis)Management – the mistakes we make when we try to impress others. She received her bachelor’s degree in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University, and her Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from Harvard University.

Dr. Meisha-ann Martin is the Senior Director of People Analytics and Research at Workhuman, the company revolutionizing the way employees celebrate, connect with, and appreciate each other in the workplace.   

Meisha-ann has a personal passion for diversity, equity and inclusion and loves using data and analytics to identify and remedy inclusion gaps in the employee experience. She is considered a people analytics/employee experience expert as she has led these efforts in companies like Flex, JetBlue and Raymond James Financial and is the former head of talent experience at ServiceMaster.   

Meisha-ann has a Ph.D. in industrial/organizational psychology based on her research on diversity attitudes in the workplace and has fifteen years of experience working in people analytics and employee engagement across a variety of different industries.  

Meisha-ann regularly speaks at conferences, on webinars and on podcasts; her thought leadership has been featured in Forbes, HR Dive, and Benefits Pro.   

Martha is the EY Global and EMEIA Total Rewards leader and leads EY’s Total Reward Center of Excellence. Martha advises global company Boards, C-suites and HR leaders on emerging global trends, leading TR framework designs and practical strategies to enhance their EVPs, employer brands, WF experience and retention while harmonizing across people, performance & rewards agendas.

She has a proven track record of helping implement strategic solutions that integrate cost efficiency, market leading design, & employee engagement with digital insights that promote performance, wellbeing and long term value stakeholder outcomes.

She a frequent contributor to the global total reward discourse through her participation in EY thought leadership, external webcasts, publications, and speaking events (most recently Davos in 2023).

Gaurav Khera is Infosys’ Digital Experience Business leader for EMEA region. Gaurav advises global brands to leverage digital technologies to create hyper personalised, connected, and frictionless journeys for employees and customers to increase brand loyalty, improve productivity and profitability.

Gaurav brings wealth of experience in envisioning and delivering digital, and data led business transformation initiatives for enterprises across multiple industry domains. He believes that rapid maturity of disruptive technologies like Generative AI, machine learning, blockchain, cloud, automation and advanced analytics is forcing organisations to be more innovative, agile, and pushing boundaries to re-invent their business and engagement models. 

He is excited about the prospect of limitless possibilities that Generative AI brings to redefine employee experience in the modern workplace and looks forward to engaging conversations with the industry experts at Neovation.

Ian Leslie is the author of acclaimed books on human psychology and behaviour, translated into over a dozen languages. Malcolm Gladwell describes him as “one of my favourite writers”.

Ian has a background in business; before launching a writing career he worked as a strategist for some of the world’s biggest brands at ad agencies in London and New York. He is a contributor to the Financial Times, the Economist, and the New York Times and a keynote speaker at companies and conferences around the world, on curiosity, innovation, and productive disagreement.

In his popular Substack newsletter, The Ruffian, he writes about culture, politics, and creativity in the age of AI. Ian is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He lives in London with his wife and two young children.

Howard Fry serves as the Global Creative Director at Gallagher’s Communication Consulting Practice.

With over 15 years of experience, Howard has collaborated with many major global brands including Apple, Nike and Walmart, helping leaders link benefits and well-being initiatives to their workforce in compelling, relevant, and entertaining ways that foster awareness and increase adoption.

His passion lies in bridging the gap between internal and external brand experiences, adopting a marketing agency mindset to achieve tangible business outcomes, and helping people live happier, healthier lives.

Simon Patterson is actively engaged as advisor to the remuneration committees of several FTSE 100 companies and consults widely on executive compensation, incentive compensation design and performance measurement. 
 
Prior to Farient, he was Managing Director at Pearl Meyer. Previously, Simon founded Patterson Associates with a streamlined team focused on delivering business results by linking remuneration and reward systems to business needs and increasing returns for shareholders. Prior to that, Mr. Patterson was the worldwide partner in charge of executive compensation in Mercer’s London office and the co-founder of SCA Consulting in Europe. 
 
Mr. Patterson holds a BSc (Hons) from University College London and an MBA from the Anderson School of Management at UCLA. 

Yvonne is passionate about the intersection where numbers and people meet. She delivers impact to the business through driving transformational change in Rewards with a global team of Compensation, Benefits and Recognition professionals across McDonald’s largest International Operated Markets outside of the US. In this role, she acts as a translator to bring McDonald’s Rewards strategy to life globally in creating the employee experience of the future.

Her path at McDonald’s started in Germany in 2008 as the team lead of the Compensation & Benefits team. Over the years, she drove several international transformation projects and was promoted first to a European, then a global role.

Prior to McDonald’s, Yvonne built her expertise in Human Resources in different roles at Infineon Technologies, as a Consultant at Kienbaum and PriceWaterhouseCoopers and started her career at Siemens in Leadership Development. She holds a Master’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Vermont, USA, and a German/ French postgraduate degree.

Fuelled by her passion for people, Yvonne serves as an international mentor to support her mentees in developing and achieving their career ambitions.

Currently Chief HR Officer Beauty & Wellbeing Business Group, based in the US since July 2022. Previously, Global Head of Reward for Unilever since April 2020, based in the UK and before that, Global Vice President of Human Resources for Foods & Refreshments Division since January 2018, based in the Netherlands. I began my career for Unilever in Greece, where I come from, as Total Quality Manager, in 1999.

In 2000, I moved to the Marketing Department, initially as Brand Manager of Knorr Products and then became the Group Brand Manager of all brands under the Spreads, Olive Oil and Dressings categories. I moved to the Customer Development Department in 2005 as Trade Marketing Manager for the company’s Foods Portfolio. I returned to Marketing in 2007 and took over the Marketing Director position for all Foods and Beverages brands, overlooking also the company’s Media department. I took over the position of HR and Communications Director for Greece in September 2011.

As part of my marketing career, I have been awarded with the fastest Brand Growth award in 2005. I am a member of the Board of Greek Female Managers and Entrepreneurs Governing Committee and mentor 20 young female talents.
I am currently also the Unilever representative in the Ben & Jerry’s Independent Board.

I studied Acting in parallel with my University Business Studies and I always enjoy a good play, a film or a music performance. I love arts and try to visit as many art exhibitions as I can. I also have a passion for history and love reading biographies. A good laugh makes my day and travelling with my family is one of the things I enjoy the most. I am married to Konstantinos, we have been together for 30 years now and we have two teenage daughters, Nefeli and Natalia, that keep us alert, trying to stay cool.