David Liddle
Chief Executive; President
The TCM Group; The Institute of Organisational Dynamics

David is a thought leader in the areas of Organisational Dynamics, conflict resolution and Transformational Culture (a fair, just and learning culture).

He has spent the last 30 years reframing HR systems, management processes, and leadership behaviours. He puts people and values at the heart of his customers organisations. With a mindset of collaboration and engagement, he brings disparate stakeholders together to develop a highly effective and progressive form of organisational pluralism and common purpose.

David created The FAIR Model™ and he draws inspiration from processes including, but not limited to, systems thinking, positive psychology, appreciative inquiry, restorative justice, behavioural science, principled negotiation, emotional intelligence, and nonviolent communication.

Following the completion of a degree in race relations in the early 90’s, David led several high-profile inclusion and regeneration projects across Leicester. In that time, he observed the insidious and damaging impact of unresolved conflicts and tensions within, and between, communities. He went on to establish and lead Leicestershire Mediation Service, one of the first community mediation and restorative justice (RJ) schemes in the UK.

In 2001, having been awarded an MBA with Distinction, David established The TCM Group (Train. Consult. Mediate). His vision for TCM was, and still is, to reduce the negative impact of conflicts and complaints by creating the conditions for employees and managers to have better conversations.

David has built an award winning company with world class consultants and employees. TCM works with household names to integrate person-centred and values-based systems, cultures and leadership practices.

In 2014, frustrated with the corrosive and adversarial systems for addressing issues in the workplace, David launched his ground-breaking Resolution Framework™. This Framework has been adopted by numerous organisations to replace their discipline and grievance procedures including major banks, insurers, hospitals and government bodies.

David is a Fellow of the RSA and he is the founder of the Institute of Organizational Dynamics (www.organisationaldynamics.org). David is a well respected speaker and he has written numerous articles and contributed to a number of texts.

David is author of bestseller ‘MANAGING CONFLICT’ (Kogan Page/CIPD) and he is working on his second book ‘TRANSFORMATIONAL CULTURE’ for the same publishers.

Stephen Frost
Founder and CEO
Included

Stephen is a globally recognised diversity, inclusion and leadership expert, and founded Included in 2012. He leads the team and works with leaders around the world to embed inclusive leadership in their decision-making.

From 2007-2012 Stephen designed, led and implemented the inclusion programmes for the London Olympic and Paralympic Games as Head of Diversity and Inclusion for the London Organising Committee. From 2004-2007 Stephen established and led the workplace team at Stonewall. Stephen has also led D&I at KPMG and worked in advertising and consulting.

Stephen was a Hertford College Scholar at Oxford and a Fulbright Scholar at Harvard. He remains a Visiting Fellow of the Women and Public Policy Program. He has won various awards from the 2010 Peter Robertson Award for Equality and Diversity Champions and 2011 Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum to one of Management Today’s Change Agents for his race and gender work.

He has taught Inclusive Leadership at Harvard Business School, Singapore Management University and Sciences Po in France and advised the British Government, Royal Air Force and the White House. He is author of The Inclusion Imperative (2014), Inclusive Talent Management (2016) and Building an Inclusive Organization (February 2019) and the upcoming book, The Key to Inclusion.

Simon Fanshawe OBE
Author of “The Power of Difference”,
Broadcaster, partner in Diversity by Design

Simon Fanshawe OBE is a co founder and partner of Diversity by Design a ground breaking consultancy that works with organisations to develop diversity solutions to strategic questions in order to build greater performance. www.diversitybydesign.co.uk

Our current clients include: Sheffield, Cardiff, Kingston, Hertfordshire Universities, FirstGroup, Costa, Virgin Media, the Co-op, GCHQ, NSPCC, The College of Policing, The Army.

From 2007 – 2013 he was chairman of the University of Sussex governing Council. He is currently on the Boards of Brighton Dome and Festival, Housing and Care 21 and is a Trustee of The Museum of London.

He was a co-founder of one of the most successful lobby and campaign groups in recent times, the lesbian and gay equality organisation Stonewall. He is now a co-founder of the Kaleidoscope Trust, supporting lgbti activists abroad.

He is also a broadcaster, writer and pundit. He was awarded the OBE in the New Years Honours list 2013 for services to Higher Education. And he was made an Honorary Doctor of the University of Sussex for services to diversity and human rights in 2013.

Graham Boyack
Director
Scottish Mediation

Graham is responsible for developing Scottish Mediation’s strategic direction and delivering its plans. He is accountable to the Board and manages the staff team. Prior to joining the SM he has worked in a number of third sector organisations.

Nita Clarke OBE
Director
IPA

Nita Clarke OBE

Director of the IPA since January 2008, Nita has a long career in the trade union and labour movement. She joined COHSE from university in 1976, working for the health union until 1983; after seven years at the GLC/ILEA including four year’s as Ken Livingstone’s press officer she rejoined COHSE in 1992 and was merged into UNISON the following year. She was press officer and then political officer for UNISON until January 2001 when she joined Downing Street as Tony Blair’s assistant political secretary with responsibility for trade union liaison.

At No 10 Nita was directly involved in establishing important social partnership developments including the transposition of the Information and Consultation Directive, the Woman at Work Commission, the commissions looking at the right to request part-time working, the Turner Pensions Commission and many others.

She was instrumental in securing government support for the groundbreaking two-tier workforce deal and the Cabinet Office guidance on the treatment of staff in contracting; she was also one of the prime movers behind the establishment of the Public Services Forum, bringing together public sector unions and employers and was one of the government nominated members of the PSF. She was particularly involved in the development of the Drive for Change toolkit, which embodies the principles of partnership working. She also ensured that proposal for a Compact, further equalising the treatment of directly and indirectly employed staff, was included in the Warwick Agreement of 2004, and worked on its implementation right up to leaving No 10 in June 2007.

She was a strong supporter of a social partnership approach to delivering change and reform in public services and supported successive secretaries of state in education and health in developing partnership agreements.

She has an in-depth understanding of the positive role that modern unions and representatives can have in the workplace and a very wide knowledge of the trade union movement as well as business needs. She has close working links with the TUC and many individual unions as well as the CBI, EEF, Chemical Industries Association and many individual companies

Nita’s report on relations between trade unions and the voluntary sector for the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations was launched in June 2008.

Dan Robertson
Director
Vercida Consulting

Highly respected as a subject matter expert on workplace diversity & inclusion, unconscious bias and inclusive leadership, Dan Robertson is the Director of Vercida Consulting.

Dan has a particular expertise in the science and application of unconscious bias, leadership decision-making and behavioural economics. He spends his days supporting executives to turn diversity theory into meaningful actions. He is acknowledged as an inspirational conference speaker and an expert facilitator working across a wide range of business sectors globally, including Asset Management, Banking, Insurance, Private Equity, Pensions, Legal, Professional Services, Consulting, Media, Oil and Gas, Recruitment and many others.

He has provided tailored learning, facilitating face to face workshops and delivering conference presentations covering themes including bias reduction and inclusive leadership to a wide range of global organisations based in London, Madrid, Paris, Amsterdam, Rome, Frankfurt, Munich, Brussels, Moscow, Prague, Zurich, Dubai, Dublin, New York, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Tokyo, Singapore, Bali, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and Johannesburg, amongst others.

He sits as an advisor to the following:

The Lord Mayor of London’s Power of Diversity programme (London)
ICEDR’s QUEST programme: Supporting early career woman (Boston, USA)
Publications: The Long Road to Inclusivity: Published in Beyond 2015, Shaping the Future of Equality, Human Rights and Social Justice. A Collection of Essays: Equality & Diversity Research Network. 2015.

Baroness Falkner of Margravine
Chair
EHRC

Kishwer, Baroness Falkner of Margravine (Chair, EHRC)

Kishwer Falkner serves as a Member of the House of Lords where she is a Cross Bench member. In the Lords, she was a spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats on Home Affairs, Justice and Foreign Affairs from 2004-2015. She has also served on several parliamentary committees including Chairing the EU Sub-Committee on Financial Affairs, and as a Member of the EU Select Committee, Constitution Committee, the Joint Committee on Human Rights; and the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy.

Kishwer was formerly Policy Director at the Liberal Democrats; a political researcher at the Commonwealth Secretariat, and has held Fellowships at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford (2010), and at the Institute of Politics, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University (2006).

Kishwer’s academic background is in International Relations, obtaining degrees from the London School of Economics and the University of Kent.

Ann Francke OBE
Chief Executive
Chartered Management Institute

Ann Francke OBE CMgr CCMI

Ann Francke is Chief Executive of the Chartered Management Institute the UK’s leading professional body for management and leadership with a global member community of over 160k. She started her career at Procter & Gamble and has held senior executive positions at Mars, Boots, Yell and BSI. In 2020, Ann was awarded an OBE for services to workplace equality.

Ann is an expert on gender balance in the workplace and speaks frequently in the media and conferences on this and other management topics. Her book on gender balance – Create a Gender-balanced Workplace, published in September 2019. Ann also authored the ‘Financial Times Guide to Management’ and has been named in the top 100 women to watch in the 2015 Female FTSE Cranfield report. She was awarded the MemCom award for outstanding leadership of a UK professional body in 2016.

Ann has five Honorary Doctorates for her work in management and leadership and is an advisory board member for the Work Foundation & Nottingham Business School, sits on the Advisory Council of the Chancellors Help to Grow: Management initiative, is an Engineering Council Board member, chairing their diversity & inclusion working group and chairs the WACL working group on workplace equality. She has also previously served on commercial boards – Grant Thornton and Tongal.

Ann and her husband live in West London; she has one daughter.

Susan Clews
Chief Executive
Acas

Susan Clews was appointed as Acas Chief Executive in December 2018.

Since joining Acas as an adviser and conciliator over 25 years ago, Susan has had a range of operational and leadership roles. She was Director for Acas Yorkshire & Humber and Acas North West teams and has held national roles as Acas Strategy Director and Chief Operations Officer.

Susan is passionate about making workplaces productive and good places to work, based on strong foundations of compassionate leadership, employee voice and inclusive workplace culture. She is developing how Acas supports business and employees as independent, impartial and trusted workplace experts, as the labour market re-builds after the pandemic. Susan is proud to have been in the civil service for most of her working life, and to work with the great people in Acas.

Karen Baxter
Partner and Head of Investigations and Regulatory
Lewis Silkin LLP

I am the Head of Lewis Silkin’s Investigations and Regulatory group and I sit on the Firm’s Strategy Board. I specialise in employment and partnership law, and regularly conduct complex and highly sensitive workplace investigations, alongside my advisory work.
I have a wealth of experience advising major companies and LLPs, in relation to the employment law issues they face, and I routinely conduct complex and highly sensitive investigations, both within the UK and internationally.

I have a diverse client base, with a particular emphasis towards advising major domestic and international law firms and other professional services organisations on all aspects of their relationships with their employees and members/partners. This includes resolving issues such as contentious team moves, the enforcement of restrictive covenants and the use of alternative dispute resolution. I also act for senior executives and individual partners/members.

I pride myself in taking a pragmatic, commercial and business-focused approach to all of my work. I particularly enjoy resolving high value disputes, both before and after the commencement of litigation, including sensitive discrimination cases, whistleblowing claims, and those involving regulatory matters. I also advise on workplace restructures, negotiate employment documentation, such as contracts and settlement agreements, and provide training on all of these issues.

Employment
A typical day might include advising my clients on issues such as how to deal with allegations of discrimination or harassment, redundancies and complex grievances or disciplinary matters. I also manage and advise on all aspects of outsourcing arrangements, including the application of TUPE, and any Employment Tribunal claims faced by my clients. Examples of some of my recent work includes:

advising a major international law firm on a significant restructuring and outsourcing project
successfully resolving a discrimination dispute between directors of a plc
successfully defending a multi-Respondent disability discrimination claim
advising a major supermarket in relation to board level issues
advising a bank faced with multiple whistleblowing claims

Investigations and Regulatory

My investigations work typically involves allegations of serious wrongdoing and/or allegations against very senior employees or partners. This work requires careful and sensitive handling to ensure that all the facts are uncovered in a fair, proportional manner.

Stefan Stern
Visiting Professor
The Business School, City, University of London

Stefan Stern’s career in journalism has included stints at Euromoney, the BBC, Management Today magazine, and the Financial Times, where he was the management columnist between 2006 and 2010.

In 2010 Stefan was appointed visiting professor in management practice at City University Business School (formerly Cass). After the FT he had a short spell at the PR firm Edelman, where he enjoyed holding the job title ‘director of strategy’. He left to go back to full-time writing in 2013. Then he was director of the High Pay Centre, looking at the issue of executive pay, between 2015 and 2018. He is a fellow of the RSA, and continues to write for the FT and the Guardian, among other titles.

Between 2015 and 2018 Stefan director of the High Pay Centre, a London-based think-tank. He is the author, with Prof Cary Cooper, of Myths of Management – what people get wrong about being the boss. His second book, How To Be A Better Leader, was published in March 2019.

Stefan lives in south London. He is married with two daughters.

Twitter: @stefanstern

Professor Binna Kandola OBE
Business Psychologist, Senior Partner and co-founder
Pearn Kandola

Professor Binna Kandola OBE is a Business Psychologist, Senior Partner and co-founder of Pearn Kandola. Over the past 35 years, he has worked on a wide variety of projects for public and private sector clients both in the UK and overseas.

Books
As well as leading the practice, Binna is particularly interested in the study of gender bias and unconscious bias in organisations. He is the author of 10 books, three of which are on the subject of bias and critically acclaimed – ‘The Invention of Difference: The story of gender bias at work’, ‘The Value of Difference: Eliminating bias in organisations’, and ‘Racism at Work: The Danger of Indifference’.

He is also the co-author of several other management books. One of which, ‘Managing the Mosaic’, won a Special Commendation at the 1994 Management Book of the Year Awards. A regular contributor to the HR and business press, he is a sought after and highly regarded conference speaker.

Accomplishments
Binna was the first Chair of the Standing Committee for the Promotion of Equal Opportunities of the British Psychological Society (BPS) and a member of Sir Robin Butler’s Panel of Enquiry into Equal Opportunities in the Senior Civil Service. He has also been a member of the Board of Trustees of the BPS, and in 2002 was elected as Chair of the Division of Occupational Psychology. Additionally in January 2004, Binna was invited to join the UK Government’s National Employment Panel and appointed Chair of the Minority Ethnic Group.

He is currently a visiting Professor at Leeds University Business School and at Aston University Business School. In 2012 the University of Aston awarded him an Honorary DSc. He is a regular contributor to the media and has appeared on Sky News, BBC Breakfast, Channel 4 News and the Radio 4 Today Show.

Binna was awarded an OBE in 2008 for his services to Disadvantaged People and Diversity. He is also on the Asian Power List 2020.

Delegate Resources:

Download the conference programme here