Session Leaders

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.

Jean-Marc Huët is the Chairman of Heineken NV’s Supervisory Board. A distinguished business leader, Jean-Marc was previously Chief Financial Officer of Unilever based in London and CFO of the Bristol-Myers Squibb company based in North America, he is currently a director of Canada Goose and the Chairman of Vermaat, a premium catering business owned by Bridgepoint Capital. Earlier in his career Jean-Marc worked for Goldman Sachs International. He received a Bachelor of Arts from Dartmouth College and a Master of Business Administration from INSEAD. He has a long term interest and involvement in the organisation of Formula 1 motor racing.

In his session Jean-Marc will discuss what senior business leaders and non-executive directors are looking for when it comes to Reward and Workforce Pay.

Matt and his team gives advice on every aspect of credit investing, from cash to CDS to structured credit, and from market direction to portfolio construction and risk management.

In 2000 he coined the credit-equity “clock” – still a cornerstone of many investors’ asset allocation processes. In 2008, his piece ‘Are the Brokers Broken?’ predicted the fall of Lehman and showed how its sources of repo funding were drying up. Since the financial crisis, he has focused increasingly on global debt dynamics and on the distortions created by central banks, with pieces like Buy the bubbles, sell the bath, How much debt is too much debt? and How long till the teflon wears off?

Prior to joining Citi in 2003, Matt was Head of European Credit Strategy at JPMorgan.

He is a graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he read Social and Political Sciences.

Simon Patterson has enjoyed a long and distinguished career advising companies around the world on how to pay their people.
He provides independent Boardroom advice on executive and non-executive directors’ pay together with good governance to drive shareholder value and help executives to flourish. Simon is Managing Director of Remuneration Associates, Rem.n, the advisory firm he created in 2022 from the divestment of Pearl Meyer’s London based international compensation consultancy, which he ran from 2012. Simon has led ground-breaking research into which remuneration practices best drive long term shareholder value, the results of which have been widely published. Earlier in his career, Simon worked for Booz Allen & Hamilton, Price Waterhouse Management Consultants, Strategic Compensation Associates and Mercer. Simon has a BSc and MBA from UCLA and was educated at Rugby school.

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.

Xavier Baeten’s interests include stakeholder engagement, materiality, executive rewards, responsible rewards, aligning rewards with company strategy and culture, reward communication, flexible rewards, and pay-for-performance. He has a strong interest in the implications of digital transformation and corporate sustainability on rewards. He bridges theory and practice by combining a strong academic record with close collaboration with a large number of organisations.

He heads the Vlerick Business School Centre for Excellence in Strategic Rewards and Executive Remuneration Research Centre. He teaches Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility in our Masters and MBA programmes, and Compensation & Benefits on our executive programmes.

Xavier develops strategic reward strategies for large companies – and is an independent member of several remuneration committees and advisory boards. He’s a member of the remuneration committee of Ghent University, chairs the remuneration committee of APB – and is member of the Socially Responsible Investment Board and the External Sustainability Board of KBC. He speaks frequently at industry and academic events.

Alex leads Linklaters’ Global Employment and Incentives practice which advises leading corporations and financial institutions including 8 of the FTSE Top 10, over half of the FTSE top 20, 14 of the top 20 global banks and half of the top 20 asset managers including their boards, on their most complex, sensitive and strategic people and reward-related issues. Alex specialises in Board, executive and senior management appointments; incentive plan design and implementation; workforce engagement; significant corporate transactions, crisis management and investigations and severance arrangements and terminations.

She chairs Linklaters’ London Social Impact Committee and is on the Board of Trustees of St Mungo’s, the UK homelessness charity and chair of its People Committee. She is also a member of Business in the Community’s London Leadership Board.

Born and educated in Spain with a combined Degree in Business Administration and MBA Programme from ESADE Business School, Placid worked in the Department of Information Management & Technology of the university and in the Marketing function at Bacardi before joining Unilever. With experience across Spain, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the UK, and LATAM (Argentina and Uruguay) in progressively bigger HR roles, Placid was appointed Chief Talent and Reward Officer and Head of HR for Finance, based in London (UK).

Placid has a clear passion for Organisation Design, Talent, Change, HR Analytics, Longevity, and the Future of Work, and was voted one of the ‘Top 70 HR Analytic Influencers’ globally.

Placid has also studied at INSEAD, the MIT, Columbia and the University of Southern California and is a member of the advisory board in HR Technology companies.

He is married with 2 kids. In his free time, he loves reading, hiking, cooking and travelling.

Leigh is the COO at uFlexReward and leads the uFlexReward Customer Success team. Leigh is responsible for driving the end-to-end client experience strategy and ongoing delivery of the uFlexReward platform. She is responsible for all aspects of uFlexReward client success and client relationship touchpoints. This includes sales, project management, product implementation oversight, product strategy and customer success strategy.  

With over 10 years’ experience developing and maintaining global SME and stakeholder relationships, Leigh has led several global implementations; to over 100,000 employees spanning 100 countries. She has developed and maintained key external supplier relationships in India, China, Romania, and Canada to facilitate system development and deployments. 

In her spare time, Leigh enjoys travelling, yoga, live music and hiking.  

Ashok is a senior member of bp Plc’s People and Culture leadership team as the Global Head of Reward. In this role he is accountable for matters relating to wider workforce and executive total reward- policy, design and implementation. He is an advisor on performance and reward matters to the executive committee and the main board.

Ashok joined bp in 2004 and has held various positions including the Global head of reward Policy and Global Head of Reward for the downstream business. Over the years his roles have spanned a variety of areas including Executive remuneration, all employee reward, wellbeing, People strategy, workforce representation, location strategy and performance management.

Earlier in his career, Ashok worked for the Hay Group in Singapore & London and ITC ltd in India. He has a Masters in human resources from XLRI, India and an MBA with distinction from the London business School.

As a Global Total Rewards leader for one of General Electric’s Power Portfolio businesses, Diana oversees all areas of compensation & benefits, including executive compensation, annual pay reviews, incentive plans, performance recognition & talent retention.

Passionate about driving a strong EVP with a goal to stand out as a top employer company in today’s volatile environment, Diana acts as a strong partner to business leaders and SHRMs to concretize a “People First” culture.

She started her career in GE 15 years ago in one of GE’s leadership programs, and has tapped into a variety of operational functions working in a fast-paced global multicultural environment, prior to making her way into the HR function. Her engineering backbone and HR acumen, help her drive complex initiatives in a cross-functional organization and build a credible solid roadmap for teams and stakeholders.

Mel is an award-winning elite sports coach who has overseen grand slam winning Adam Peaty’s rise to the top of the international swimming stage since he was 14 years old.  Mel has coached him to become the fastest human in history at breaststroke, bringing gold medal success at every level – Olympic, World, European, Commonwealth and British.

Mel herself is a double Olympian and is a Belief Partner at The Leadership High and MD of MM Swiminspiration. She has a BSc in Sports Science and an Honorary Doctorate from Loughborough University.

Mel is first and foremost a people coach and is passionate about taking people and teams in pursuit of better.

Kathi is a Senior Vice President and Global Industry Analyst at The Josh Bersin Company, supporting clients and the market with evidence-based insights on all areas of HR, Learning, Talent, and HR Technology.

Kathi has more than 20 years global experience from management consulting with IBM, PwC, and EY, and as a talent leader at McKesson and Kaiser Permanente. Most recently, Kathi led talent and workforce research at Deloitte. She is a frequent keynote speaker, author, and thought leader.

Originally from Austria, Kathi has worked in Vienna, London, San Francisco, and Spain and now lives in Palo Alto, California. Her passion is to make work better and more meaningful. Kathi holds a doctoral degree in mathematics and a master’s degree in mathematics from the University of Vienna, Austria.

Natasha has worked in reward throughout her career. She is currently People Director at Tesco, responsible for reward, mobility, performance and wellbeing.  Prior to  joining Tesco Natasha was Group Reward Director at Rolls-Royce, and has also held roles as Head of Reward at O2 (Telefonica) and Vodafone. Natasha has led several large scale projects throughout her career, most recently a group wide review of colleague reward and benefits at Tesco. Natasha started her career as a consultant with Arthur Andersen after graduating from Cambridge University where she studied history. In her spare time, Natasha is a cellist with the Kensington Symphony Orchestra and enjoys cooking, travelling, and walking her dog.

Marc Hommel is a director, coach and adviser to numerous executives and businesses – primarily around business and marketing strategies, people strategies, and overall transformation and development for businesses, teams and individuals.  He has over 30 years’ experience advising global Fortune 500 organisations on people strategies plus, for six years, was a CEO of FTSE100 financial services subsidiary.  For 17 years, he was a partner at PwC where (among other roles) he served on their global people and organisation consulting board as global leader for reward consulting and pension advisory.  He started his career at Towers Perrin (now WTW) where he pioneered their advisory capabilities around “aligning people and business strategies”.

As senior vice president, client strategy and consulting at Workhuman, Derek helps clients – including some of world’s most admired companies – leverage proven recognition strategies and best practices to elevate employee engagement, increase retention, and improve bottom-line results. While he currently leads the company’s strategy & consulting services division, Derek oversaw the company’s global marketing and rewards functions from 2000 to 2010, growing Workhuman from a start-up to the Unicorn organization it is today.

Derek is one of the world’s foremost experts on employee recognition and engagement and continuous performance management, helping business leaders set a higher vision and ambition for their company culture. As a renowned speaker and co-author of three books – “Making Work Human,” “Winning with a Culture of Recognition” and “The Power of Thanks” – he teaches HR leaders how to use recognition to proactively manage company culture. His viewpoints and writings are also regularly featured across major HR publications including HR Zone, Workspan, HR Magazine, HR Executive, and Workforce Management.