Ron Thomas

Human Capital Institute

International Country Manager: Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific Region

Ron Thomas is the Managing Director of Strategy Focused Group an international consulting firm based in Dubai. He is a visiting executive faculty member at the Global Human Resources Leadership Institute at Howard University School of Business in Washington, DC. He is also a senior faculty member of the Human Capital Institute, covering the MENA/Asia Pacific & Africa Region.
Ron is the former CEO of Great Place to Work-Gulf and CHRO of Al Raha Group, based in Riyadh. He holds certifications from HCI as Global Human Capital Strategist (GHCS), Master Human Capital Strategist (MHCS), and Strategic Workforce Planner (SWP) as well as New York University. Prior to consulting, he worked in senior level roles for IBM, Martha Stewart Living, Xerox HR Services [HR Consulting] in the US.
He has been identified as one of the top 5 HR/Leadership thinkers in the Middle East by CIPD.  He received the Outstanding Leadership Award for Global HR Excellence at the World Human Resources Development Congress in Mumbai, and was named as one of the 50 Most Talented Global HR Leaders in Asia. As a consultant and management educator, he has worked with companies such as Central Bank of Nigeria, Iran MTNCell, King Faisal Hospital-Jeddah Saudi Electric Company, BASHRM, JLT [Saudi Arabia], Dubai Tourism, American Hospital of Dubai, Dar Al Riyadh, Gulf Bank-Kuwait, Boybyan, Kuwait, CIMB Bank and Singapore Government Civil Service.

Julia Von Dewall

KIKO MILANO

Chief HR Officer

Julia von Dewallis the Global HR Officer at KIKO MILANO. Previously she was the Global Talent Director at Unilever based in London. In her long term career at Unilever, she has held several senior HR generalist roles as the Global HR Director for Ice Cream & Beverages in London and the Global HR Director for the Pepsi Lipton Joint Venture based in Geneva. Julia holds a law degree and bar exam from the University of Bonn (Germany) and an LL.M. from the University of Notre Dame Law School (USA). As a member of the Rotary Club in London, she actively engages in voluntary work.

Anne Morrison

Pearson College London’s Governing Body (former BAFTA chair, former BBC Academy Director)

Chair

Anne Morrison is Chair of Pearson College London’s Governing Body and is a senior media executive, coach and keynote speaker. She is Creative Director of Factual Programmes at Nevision, a London-based independent production company, where she has recently executive produced several feature documentaries, including The Missing Children for ITV’s Exposure strand. 
She was Chair of BAFTA from 2014 to 2016, the second woman to hold the position in the organisation’s history. She is a member of the Communication and Engagement Committee for the British Academy and of the Annual Review Panel for BBC-branded magazines at BBC Studios. Previously she was a Governor of the University of the Arts London, Chair of Creative Skillset’s TV Committee, a Trustee of the Charleston Trust and a board member of Women in Film and TV.
She is a frequent speaker internationally on issues such as diversity, employability, and creativity and has her own coaching practice. Throughout her career, she has been committed to the development of new talent. Until 2014 she was Director of the BBC Academy, the BBC’s centre for training, which she launched in 2009.
In her television career, having worked as a producer/director, she held senior management positions for 20 years at the BBC, and was responsible for hundreds of hours of factual television including many award-winning programmes.
Anne was educated in Belfast and Churchill College, Cambridge.

Barbara Wright-Avlitis

The Wright Work Place

Managing Director

The  WrightWorkPlace   helps   organisations   around   the   world   build   pro-resilient, healthy companies.
Barbara holds a Master of Sciences (MSc) Degree, with  Distinction,  from  the University of Liverpool, UK, in Global Human Resources.
She worked for 20 years with 3M Company, in the U.S., Europe, the Balkans, the Middle East, and Asia where she progressed throughout the organisation in sales, sales learning, and Human Resources Development. Her experience also includes serving as General Manager of HR and Global Head of Leadership Development,   as well as Global Head of Leadership and Change with ING Group (Banking and Insurance)    in    Amsterdam.    After    ING,    Barbara    became    the    Global    Head    of Leadership Development for Novartis Pharmaceuticals in Basel, Switzerland.
Barbara brings, to the HR Bootcamp, an extensive experience in organisational change and leadership transformation on a global scale. She has influenced business leaders in more than 32 countries, over the past 30+ years, to strengthen their personal, team, and organisational effectiveness through strategic learning.
Barbara has also involved some of her colleagues, from around the world, to join us on Bootcamp day to bring their own content on various aspects of wellbeing from the perspective of HR leaders, team leaders and employees. Together, we will make the day about real-life issues we are all facing, not only on hypothetical cases.

Arturo Poire

Ericsson

Global Head of Talent Management

Arturo Poire is the Global Head of Talent Management for Ericsson. In this role, Arturo is directly responsible for Talent Management for the company, including: Executive and Leadership Development, Succession Planning, Performance Management, Diversity, Early Career Programs, Organizational Development and Employee Engagement. Prior to joining Ericsson in 2012, Arturo was the Global Head of Talent Management for Marsh & McLennan Companies (MMC), based in New York. Before MMC, he spent 12 years with Citigroup in HR Business Partner, Talent Acquisition and Talent Management roles and projects globally. The main areas of focus during his years at Citigroup were M&A Integration, Organizational Restructuring, Strategic Staffing and Talent Management.

Alain De Dauw

Atlas Copco Airpower

VP HR Oil Free Division

Alain joined Atlas Copco as Vice President HR for the Airtec Division in 2012. Atlas Copco is a leading supplier of industrial productivity solutions. The headquarter of Atlas Copco group is situated in Stockholm, Sweden. Atlas Copco is active in more than 170 markets around the world. From 1992 until 2011, Alain De Dauw worked for DHL Express in Belgium and Germany with project based international assignments to Singapore and the USA. Alain has 20 years of service with DHL in various HR functions, including serving as Regional HR Manager for DHL Aviation EMEA between 2000 and 2002 and as Global Mobility Manager for the DPWN Group between 2003 and 2005, a role that was responsible for the international assignment management of 800 expatriates. In 2010 and 2011, Alain was responsible for the relocation of the Brussels based EUHQ to the Global Head Office in Bonn, Germany.

Masoud Golshani-Shirazi

Aujan Coca-Cola Beverages Company

VP – Human Resources

Beat Lauper

Zurich Insurance Company

Group Head of Learning & Development

Beat Lauper is the Global Head Learning and Development at Zurich Insurance Group. As such, he is in charge of all mid-career and top-level learning interventions in the managerial/leadership space (from design to delivery), all professional skills training, and the entire field of learning innovation. Beat personally delivers programs for the top 500 leaders of the organization. With more than 30 years of experience as both, leader and trainer, Beat is passionate about organizational effectiveness through strong leadership performance. It is because of this, most of these programs have a strong experiential learning dimension aimed at supporting behavioral change. Beat was the Head Learning and Development for Deutsche Bank’s Risk Division based in London with similar responsibilities. Previous to his work with DB, Beat worked for ETH Zurich building and launching their Master of Advanced Studies in Security Policies and Crisis Management, a post graduate degree in cooperation with King’s College London and various partners in Washington D.C. He has spent 17 years in the Swiss Armed Forces, both in Switzerland and abroad, holding the rank of a Colonel General Staff. Beat started his professional career at Swissair.

Bo Germansen

Novo Nordisk

Business HR Partner

Torsten Dalhoefer

Zurich Insurance Company

Head Leadership & Management Development

Keith Robson

Interim Group Head of Talent, OD and Leadership Development

As an interim HR Executive Keith has been taking on different interim roles most recently at NATS as Interim Director, People & Organisation Development, at Rolls Royce as Interim Group Head of Talent, Leadership Development, OD and TA, and at Aviva as Interim Group Head of Talent & Leadership Development. Prior to Aviva Keith enjoyed a 5 month career break having left eBay in May 2015. At eBay Keith was based initially in Singapore covering eBay’s Asia business then relocated to London where for 3 years he had a global role with approx. 30% of his time spent at eBay’s base in California. He had full responsibility for all areas of Talent Management, OD & Leadership Development and Learning supporting the eBay HR and Business leadership teams. Before joining eBay Keith worked in Dubai responsible for all Talent, Leadership Development and Learning   activity for Barclays’ Emerging Markets business – 14 countries across Africa, SE Asia and the Middle East with18,000 employees. Prior to Barclays he was the Learning and Organisational Effectiveness Executive for Bank of America’s International business. Based in London and with 2 years living in New York, Keith also worked at HSBC as the Global Head of Talent, Development, Learning and Graduate Resourcing for HSBC’s Investment Bank.

Kim Wylie

Builder.ai

VP People

Kim is the VP of People at Builder.ai (an approx. 1k global employees company, using AI to democratize access to software development. Awarded Top 3 Most Innovative Companies in AI, 2023 by Fast Company) She previously spent 12 years at Google and five years at Farfetch in a variety of leadership roles across Transformation, Change Management and People Teams. She is a Certified Clifton Strengths Coach, and Neuroleadership Institute 'Brain-Based' Coach, and practises a human-centred leadership style, informed by principles of Design Thinking, Positive Psychology, inclusion, wellbeing, and neuroscience.