Speakers

Tristan Adams - Account Director - Link Group

Tristan has worked within the world of share plans and share registration for 15+ years, undertaking a range of client facing and team / leadership roles.

Most recently as an Account Director at Link Group, Tristan collaborates with key clients and stakeholders to identify and deliver strategic objectives across share plans, share registration and complimentary services. 

Sophie Altaf - European Industry Relations & Marketing Lead - Fidelity Stock Plan Services

Sophie joined Fidelity in 2018 and is based in London. She is responsible for European marketing, communications, events and industry relations; supporting Fidelity’s growth as a global market leader in equity compensation.

Over the last 15 years, Sophie’s career in equity has included key roles at Citi, Morgan Stanley, Computershare and Equatex; where she successfully led marketing strategies across the UK and Europe. Sophie is passionate about equity, and has over the years worked closely with both companies and providers, to spread the word of employee ownership. She is also a frequent speaker at industry events and known for her enthusiasm.

Focused on creating a community in equity compensation, Sophie has been involved with the Global Equity Organization for many years and is currently the Chapter leader for the UK & Channel Isles and member of GEO’s Provider Alliance Council. Sophie has a bachelor’s degree in English Literature from Brunel University in London, and speaks English, Urdu and German.

Rebecca Avery - Trust Manager - Zedra

Rebecca provides employer solutions for a large number of corporates, including employee benefit trusts, employee ownership trusts and nominee arrangements. Her clients include some of the largest companies on the London Stock Exchange including the FTSE 100, FTSE 250 as well as private companies with institutional shareholders. In addition, she is regularly involved in direct listings as well as IPOs and mergers and acquisitions for both new and existing clients.

Rebecca has over 14 years’ experience in the finance industry in both private client and employer solutions, 9 of which have been at ZEDRA. She is an Affiliated Member of the Chartered Governance Institute (formerly ICSA) and holds the International Diploma in Financial Administration from the IAM.

David Baxter - Director, Incentives - Clifford Chance

David is a Director in the Incentives team at Clifford Chance and advises both private and public companies on all aspects regarding the design and implementation of share incentive schemes both in the UK and overseas. David also has experience of advising on both public and private M&A and IPOs and the impact these transactions have on existing incentive arrangements.

David has over 20 years' experience advising on share schemes, remuneration and incentives with experience in both the legal and consulting sectors. Prior to joining Clifford Chance David worked for a leading UK independent remuneration consultancy and a Big 4 accountancy firm.

Ian Bird - Practice Director – Secondsight

Ian is Practice Director at Secondsight and has been advising employers on their employee benefits packages for over 35 years. He is passionate about helping employers deliver employee financial wellbeing and resilience. Core to this strategy is financial education around employee benefits and the need to spread savings between short term, medium- and long-term savings. Founder of Mybenefitsatwork digital portal providing education around all types of share plans.

Sally Blanchflower - Senior Associate - Tapestry Compliance

Sally specialises in all aspects of global incentive plans for leading global companies and banks, including advising on global due diligence, new plan design and documentation, corporate governance requirements and the annual reporting of executive remuneration. Sally leads on a number of Tapestry’s largest global clients such as HSBC, Aviva, Ericsson, Shopify and Dr. Martens. Sally leads Tapestry’s customised in-house client training sessions and delivers our client roundtable and global webinar programmes. Sally is also a trustee of Tapestry’s Employee Ownership Trust.

Ben Brettell – Director - RewardPointZero

Ben is a director and copywriter at RewardPointZero – a consultancy specialising in employee benefit communications.

Ben has over 15 years’ experience in financial services marketing and content. Ben formerly worked as Head of Marketing Communications & Content for Hargreaves Lansdown, leading a large team of content writers and communications professionals.

Ben is adept at copywriting across all channels and is also an experienced PR and economics spokesperson – with regular media appearances in his role at HL.

Ben is now applying his experience to the world of reward and benefit communications – taking all the complicated details, the small print and the nitty gritty, and turning them into powerful, engaging communications everyone can grasp.

Lauren Brown - Head of Secretariat - Coca-Cola Europacific Partners

Lauren Brown is Head of Secretariat for Coca-Cola Europacific Partners, one of the world’s leading consumer goods companies and the world’s largest Coca-Cola bottler. In this role, she manages the day to day of the Co Sec team, delivery of CCEP plc Board and Committees, Integrated Report, AGM and a variety of other related matters.

Jan Colhoun - Senior Associate - DLA Piper

Jan is a Senior Associate in the Employment Department in DLA Piper's London office.

Jan advises both multinational and regional clients on all aspects of employment work, undertaking a broad mix of contentious and non-contentious work.  Jan also has significant experience in international project work.  She advises employers across all sectors, but particularly Tech, Media, Financial Services, Hospitality and Leisure and Retail.

Jan has undertaken client secondments to an international airline and a global bank and her in-house experience allows her to step into the shoes of her clients and provide commercially aware legal advice.  Jan has also worked in DLA Piper’s Paris and Hong Kong offices, broadening her international practice. 

Janet Cooper OBE - Acting Chair - RNLI and ProShare Advisory Panel 

Janet has over 30 years’ experience of advising on global executive and employee share plans, with Chambers Legal Directory ranking Janet as the top lawyer in this area. Janet developed and lead the employee incentives team at Linklaters, where she was a partner for over 20 years, and then co-founded specialist law firm, Tapestry, and she left at the end of 2020.

Janet was involved in founding ProShare 30 years ago and is on ProShare’s Advisory Panel.  Janet also co-founded the Global Equity Organisation in 1999 and continues on their board. Janet is Acting Chair of RNLI (Lifeboats) and Vice Chair of Roehampton University, Non-Executive Director of Nurture Landscapes Group, and Chair of two remuneration committees.

Ian Cox - Managing Director, Head of Share Plan Services - EQ

Ian has responsibility for EQ’s share plans businesses, including discretionary share plan administration and outsourced solutions, UK and international SAYE schemes, UK and international share purchase plans, Global Nominee and Employee Benefit Trust services, Investment and High Net Worth accounts, as well as execution only services for companies administering their plans in-house.

Katie Crisp - Director - Deloitte LLP

Katie is a Director who has over ten years’ experience advising companies on the design, implementation and operation of UK and global incentive plans. Katie works with multinationals to address a broad range of incentive plan issues including tax, legal & regulatory compliance, employee communications and funding strategy. Katie also supports a number of companies who use our GA Incentives technology to manage on an automated basis the employer payroll obligations for expatriates. Katie has a degree in Economics from the University of Manchester and is a member of the Association of Tax Technicians.

Suzannah Crookes - Legal Director - Tapestry Compliance

Suzannah has extensive experience advising UK and overseas companies on the introduction and ongoing operation of their share plans and other equity incentive arrangements, both at executive level and for the wider workforce. She supports companies in the design and implementation of plans to meet tax, legal and governance best practice requirements whilst maintaining focus on effective communication and alignment with commercial strategy.

Eleanor Cunningham - Partner - McCann FitzGerald LLP

Eleanor is a Partner and Head of the Pensions & Incentives Group in McCann FitzGerald. She is responsible for advising financial institutions, semi-state bodies, companies, trustees, committees and employees on various pension plans, employee share plans and other incentive plans. Her practice includes advising international and domestic clients in both the private and public sectors. Eleanor advises on both Revenue approved tax efficient employee shares schemes and on unapproved employee share schemes and other incentive plans. 

Eleanor lectures on the Law Society of Ireland’s Certificate in Applied Pensions Law and Trusteeship. She is the outgoing Chairman of the Irish Pro-Share Association, Chairman of the IAPF’s DC Sub-Committee and a IAPF Council Member, a former Chairman of the Association of Pension Lawyers and is a member of the UK Association of Pension Lawyers.

Chrissie Davis - Founder and MD - Eximia

Chrissie is a Fellow of The Chartered Governance Institute (CGI) who’s worked for large listed organisations. She has managed UK and global share plans in-house and navigated a hostile takeover and a rights issue.

During that time, she noticed a key gap: we struggle to simplify the complex, and communication experts often don’t understand share plans enough to translate them to employees.

To bridge that gap, Chrissie founded Eximia in 2012, creating a team with expertise in share plans and reward, as well as skills in copywriting, graphic design, animation, and digital development. They produce campaigns which empower employees to understand and engage with their organisation’s offerings.

Mike Emmett - Interim Share Plans Manager - Kingfisher plc

Mike has worked for several Financial Services firms, spending 12 years working in the world of Employee Share Plans for one of the UK’s largest administrators. He has led and managed share plan operations, supporting both UK and International organisations to deliver their employee share plan offering. He’s cultivated his Share Plans proficiency by completing numerous implementations, launches, corporate actions, switches and closures, as well as dealing with the challenges a normal week presented!

In 2021, Mike switched from share plan administrator to share plan issuer, joining Kingfisher plc to help deliver a variety of plans to their 80,000 employees in eight countries.

Roger Fairhead - Group Reward Director - Legal & General

Roger Fairhead is Group Reward Director for Legal & General, responsible for reward and employment strategy across the group.

Originally qualifying as a Chartered Accountant, and then specialising in employment tax with Ernst & Young, Roger has held senior HR and Reward roles with Sony, Prudential, SABMiller and Anheuser-Busch InBev.

In what remains of his spare time, Roger is a trustee of the SABMiller UK pension scheme, a council member of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), Chairs its People Committee and a volunteer crew member at his local lifeboat station in Calshot, Hampshire.

Marie Flynn - Private Client Director and Head of Management Incentivisation - PwC Ireland

Marie is a Tax Director and Head of Management Incentivisation in PwC Dublin’s Private Client team with over twenty years’ experience in UK and Irish taxation, both in practice and with HMRC. She specialises primarily in advising management teams on all aspects of incentivisation (including share valuations) and high net worth individuals/families and partnerships on a variety of planning/structuring projects. Marie is a Chartered Tax Advisor (CTA) and has written articles and presented in Ireland and the UK on a variety of topics including management incentivisation, valuations, tax issues for non-domiciled individuals, professional partnerships and real estate. Marie is a member of the PwC European Management Shareholder Network and the PwC International Private Wealth Network. Marie is also the current Chairperson of the Irish ProShare Association. 

Kristy Foster - Head of Equity Operations - bp

Kristy started her career in Newcastle with PwC in private client tax, qualifying as a chartered accountant before relocating to London and taking a position in the international assignment services tax team. She then moved in house to a role in expatriate taxes at bp, primarily advising reward and international mobility with focus on the global withholding and reporting requirements associated with bp’s share plans. In 2018, Kristy eventually moved into group reward where she attained the ICSA qualification and now leads the equity team.

The team are proud to have received the Proshare awards last year for best international share plan and best company for fostering overall employee share ownership which they received in terms of their all employee and bp Reinvent plan offerings.

Marina Gostanian - Senior Consultant Equity Services - Aon

Marina is a Senior Consultant in the Equity Services Team based in London, having joined Aon in December 2014. Marina works across both Equity Services and Executive Compensation.

Marina qualified as an accountant at Ernst & Young, where she spent 4 years working in audit.

She holds an MSc in Finance from Imperial College Business School and a BSc in Economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Wade Gravett - Share Plans Manager - Pearson PLC

Wade is Share Plans Manager at Pearson PLC, a British publishing and education company. He has over 34 years’ experience in Executive Discretionary Performance and Bonus-related schemes, employee share schemes and SAYE option plans.

Tom Gwinnell – Client Director - RewardPointZero

Tom is Client Director at at RewardPointZero – a consultancy specialising in employee benefit communications.

Tom has worked in financial services marketing and communications for over 15 years. Tom started marketing ISAs, funds and pensions at Hargreaves Lansdown before moving into the share plans world with Computershare.

Having delivered successful and award-winning share plan communication campaigns for many FTSE 100 companies, he has built up great experience of what works.

Tom is passionate about bringing financial benefits to life, helping employees understand the value of share plans, incentive schemes and pensions.

Garry Harding - Associate Director, Computershare

Garry has been at Computershare since 2010 in his role as an Associate Director.

While working for Computershare, Garry has accumulated a wealth of experience covering all kinds of plan types from UK approved SAYE to a major Global Stock Purchase plan, which was delivered to over 40 countries.

Garry is ICSA qualified and has worked in Employee Share Plans for over 15 years managing a number of the world’s leading companies both in the UK and worldwide.

Susannah Hill - Associate Director - Deloitte LLP

Susannah is an Associate Director in Deloitte’s Financial Services Reward team.

Susannah advises firms across the financial services sector on the rules and regulatory guidance which impact the design and structure of incentive plans, as well as broader remuneration arrangements, including relating to the governance and the disclosure of remuneration.

Helen Hopkins - Client Technical Director -  Share Plans - Link Group

Helen is Client Technical Director within the Share Plans team at Link Group. Helen has over 30 years’ experience in the share plan industry.  She joined Link (previously Capita Registrars) in 2004 and has held several key roles within share plan operations, implementations and as a product specialist.

Helen is a Chartered Secretary and currently studying with Birkbeck, University of London for a Master of Research (MRes) in Management.

Lucy Hovland - Director - Deloitte LLP

Lucy has over 17 years’ experience working with clients to help them establish and operate their incentive arrangements effectively, partnering with the business to align incentive design to business strategy, optimise participant experience and to support the company’s tax and legal compliance.

Lucy has particular expertise in the design, implementation and operation of executive and all employee incentive arrangements for both private and listed multi-national companies.  She specialises in working with fast-growth businesses going through the IPO process or other periods of transformation or change, advising on both the impact on employee share incentives and on the design and implementation of new plans and processes.  Her clients include those in the Tech, Fintech and Biotech sectors.

Lucy is a practising solicitor.  

Matthew Hunter - Managing Associate - Tapestry Compliance

Matthew has broad experience in advising clients on all aspects of their global incentive arrangements, including for many of Tapestry’s biggest clients such as Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, Weber, Schroders and Rothschild & Co. Matthew also has a particular specialism in leading our practice in the financial services sector, and advises a number of the world’s leading global banks, insurers and asset managers in relation to the structure of their incentive plans and their compliance with EU and global remuneration regulations. Matthew is also a trustee of Tapestry’s Employee Ownership Trust.

Christian Hyldig - EMEA Equity Services Director - Aon

Based in Barcelona, Christian is Director in EMEA Equity Services. With the client in focus, he helps companies make better decisions in the world of share plans.

Christian joined from Morgan Stanley where he was a Vice President helping companies on a variety of equity compensation issues and successful develop Morgan Stanley share plan financial reporting solution to unlock its true potential. Prior to this, Christian was Product manager (in UK) and Senior client manager (in Denmark) at Computershare, supporting share plan clients and developing new/existing products.

Christian has over 12 years’ experience in employee share plans. Christian holds a master’s in accounting from Copenhagen Business School, subject IFRS2. Earned the Advanced Equity Compensation Accounting (AECA) Certificate from Santa Clara University in 2020.

Christian is a regular attendee and speaker at share plan industry events and is Board chapter liaison for Global Equity Organization Spain, France and Italy chapters.

Sonia Jenkins - Global Head of Reward and Wellbeing - Schroders

Sonia leads the Reward and Wellbeing team at Schroders plc. This includes global oversight for all matters relating to employee wellbeing, global mobility, pensions, benefits, payroll and compensation.

Rosemary Lemon - Group Head of Reward - Hays

Rosemary has over 35 years experience working in a wide variety of international industries where she has held Head of Reward positions - oil & Gas (Texaco), container shipping & logistics (P&O Nedlloyd), luxury retail (Burberry), financial services (Legal & General) and she currently is Group Head of Reward for the global professional recruiting company Hays.

She regularly speaks on the value of employee ‘wellbeing’, especially employee financial confidence, and emphasises the importance of bringing employee benefits to life. She is particularly interested in how employee benefits need to evolve to meet new social and economic pressures on employees.

She is a member of Hays Diversity & Inclusion Steering Committee and, throughout her career, has taken an active interest in ESG writing on the subject within the Annual Report & Accounts and actively running or supporting projects that complement the companies’ business and give back to society. She wrote a series of LinkedIn blogs on the single-use plastics problem. She is the Group Project Lead for Helping For Your Tomorrow, a programme across Hays globally to ensure its volunteering and charity work is aligned to its Social Purpose of helping to lift the employability of people who may not have the same advantages as others.

Sarah Long - Head of New Business - WEALTH at work

Sarah joined WEALTH at work in 2021 and heads up the new business team based from her home in Yorkshire.  Sarah has extensive experience in both broad based and executive compensation plans on an international level and has over 20 years’ experience in the equity plans/employee benefits market.  She is passionate about all aspects of wellbeing in the workplace and in particular financial wellbeing to help improve people’s lives.  A keen runner having participated in many marathons and is proud to have raised over £28,000 for Breast Cancer charities.  In her spare time Sarah is also a Rugbytots coach.

Matthew Longson - Trust Manager - Zedra

Matt provides employer solutions for a large number of corporates, including employee benefit Trusts, employee ownership trusts, and nominee arrangements for both private and listed companies.

Matt has over 11 years’ experience in the fiduciary services industry; 8 of which have been at ZEDRA (formerly Barclays). Matt has an MSc in Corporate Governance accredited by the Chartered Governance Institute (formerly ICSA), of which he is an Associate Member. Matt also holds an undergraduate degree in English Literature and the Graduate Diploma in Law. 

Martin MacLeod - Legal Director - DLA Piper

Martin advises clients on reward, focusing in particular on employee share plans, executive compensation and the associated aspects of corporate governance.  He helps his clients to design, establish and operate their remuneration plans, including bespoke executive incentive arrangements, international all-employee schemes and tax-advantaged plans in the UK and elsewhere.  He advises companies across all sectors, from large publicly listed multi-nationals to smaller, privately owned businesses.

Martin has experience of a wide range of corporate transactions, including public and private mergers and acquisitions, initial public offerings, secondary issues, demergers and restructurings.  He also supports clients with the incentives and reward aspects of hiring and firing, and has a background of advising on wider employment and HR issues.

Maximilian Meyer - Executive Director – ESG Solutions, J.P. Morgan

Max has more than 11 years’ experience in investment banking and has spent more than 6 years that time focusing on ESG & Sustainability. He focuses on helping J.P. Morgan’s global clients positioning their businesses and aligning their strategies most favourably for ESG-focused investors and other stakeholders. His product skill set includes ESG-related debt and equity capital markets products, ESG rating advisory and M&A.

Before joining JPMorgan in 2020, Max spent 10 years at Barclays in a variety of roles. He spent his first three years of his career in FIG M&A and then transitioned in 2013 to the firm’s leading FIG DCM franchise covering banks in the German speaking region.

Starting in 2016, he spearheaded Barclays’ efforts in building a presence in the growing ESG-labelled fixed income space and in 2019 joined the firm’s newly created Sustainable Capital Markets team where he led the ESG-coverage efforts for the DACH and Nordic regions. Max holds a Bachelor of Arts in Management from the University of Fribourg (CH) and an MBA from Columbia Business School in New York.

Robin Miller - General Counsel & Company Secretary - Travis Perkins plc

Robin joined Travis Perkins plc in September 2018 as General Counsel and Company Secretary, and is a member of the Executive Committee. Prior to joining the Group, Robin who qualified as a solicitor in 1996, held a similar position with Dairy Crest for over 10 years. Robin has extensive commercial experience in property, compliance, regulatory and health and safety, whilst specialising in corporate law.

Jeremey Mindell - Director - Primondell Ltd

Jeremy is a Director of Primondell Ltd, a consultancy company specialising in taxation, share scheme advice, reward, and lecturing. He is also a member of the ProShare Advisory Panel Previous to this, Jeremy worked for Henderson for 9 years, leading the Share Schemes team for part of this time, and before that, spent 16 years specialising in tax at three of the “Big Four” accountancy firms.

Away from work, Jeremy likes cricket history, skiing, tennis and gardening. He gives lectures on history which helps keep his presentation skills fresh.

Joanne Mitchell - Senior Client Manager - Computershare

Joanne began her career with Computershare in 2001 and has 20 years’ experience in employee share plans. She worked as a service delivery manager, before beginning her current role as a Senior Client Manager in 2012. Joanne has worked with numerous global clients across many sectors and has detailed knowledge of both discretionary and all employee plan types and has helped companies launch ProShare winning plans.

She is an experienced Client Manager with a demonstrated history of working in the financial services industry. She is skilled in Financial Services, Business Relationship Management, Risk Management, Change Management, Account planning and Customer Service.

Joanne has an ICSA certification in Employee Share Plans.

Emma-Lou Montgomery - Associate Director, Personal Investing at Fidelity International

Emma-Lou is an experienced financial journalist with almost 25 years’ experience working in the national and online press. She is a former editor-in-chief of Interactive Investor and was the editor of both Shares and Moneywise magazines. Prior to that she was the Stock Market reporter for The Daily Telegraph and has also worked for the Evening Standard, Bloomberg Business News and BBC Radio 5 Live.

Emma-Lou leads our UK and US stocks coverage and can be found regularly commentating in the press on quoted company results and announcements. A qualified business and life coach, she is also our personal finance expert, covering all aspects of financial wellbeing from cradle to grave, with a special focus on issues that affect women and their money. 

Karen Morley - Share Scheme Co-Ordinator - Aviva

Karen is the share schemes co-ordinator at Aviva looking after the day-to-day running of the Aviva all-employee and discretionary plans, both in the UK and globally. Aviva has multiple incentive plans, offering cash and equity in many jurisdictions. Karen also handles plan communications, employee engagement and also gets involved with remuneration committee activities. Karen has been at Aviva for 4 years and prior to that, worked on the administrator side of the industry with Capita/Link for 11 years.

Alex Murdoch - Partner & National Share Plans Leader, PAS - EY

Alex is a Partner in EY’s People Advisory Services team, specialising in employee share plans.  Alex has 20 years of professional services experience supporting clients in the design, implementation, and operation of employee share plans.  Alex’s experience covers companies from rapidly scaling start-ups to FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 companies, allowing him to bring insights from all stages of a business life-cycle to his clients.

Hannah Needle - FGE - Board Member and Legal Director - Tapestry Compliance

Hannah is a Legal Director and on the Board of Directors at Tapestry Compliance, an award-winning UK law firm specialising in global equity incentives. She advises many leading global companies (many of whom are listed) on the implementation and operation of all forms of global executive and employee equity and incentive plans, including the design and establishment of new plans, global compliance, managing grants and maturities under existing plans and on technical tax and legal matters. She also has significant experience with tax-qualified and non-tax-qualified arrangements and the use of employee trusts.

Hannah leads on Tapestry’s legal services, and is therefore instrumental in the delivery, development and quality of the firm’s legal advice, both in the UK and globally.

Emma Parker - Senior Associate - Tapestry Compliance

Emma specialises in all aspects of UK share plans, including advising on executive remuneration and UK tax-advantaged plans, the establishment of new share plans, plan rule drafting and reviewing the legal and tax aspects of plan awards. Emma also has significant experience in establishing and advising on overseas tax-qualified plans. Emma leads on a number of our clients such as Coca-Cola European Partners, Howdens and Hays. Emma also leads on Tapestry's Chartered Governance Institute (formerly ICSA) Certificate in Employee Share Plans.

Martha Parkhurst - Strategic Communications Manager - Eximia 

Martha is Eximia’s Strategic Communications Manager. She devises communications campaigns for Eximia’s clients, providing strategic direction and simplifying the complex. She works with other Eximians to create narratives and resources that align clients’ share plan offerings to their purpose and value, creating a cohesive whole that employees find compelling.

Before joining Eximia, Martha created award-winning content and communications in various industries including insurance, education, and the railways. She meets her audience where they are and guides them on a journey with strategically delivered information.

Martha is the bridge between the technical subject and the audience, making sure they have access to the right information, at the right time, in the right format, delivered in a way that is accessible and engaging.

David Parry – Communications Director, Computershare

As the Global Relationship Director within Computershare’s Communication Services Division, David leads support of service to the Share Plans Business. He has over 25 years work in communication strategy design and delivery primarily supporting complex financial services projects including the UK’s Lloyds Banking Group.

Jack Price - Managing Director, UK Communication Services, Computershare

Jack joined Computershare in 2014 before becoming Managing Director of the UK Communication Services business in 2018. In addition to this, he also acts as the communication expert supporting the Computershare Employee Plans business around the world.

Throughout his career, Jack has focused on supporting clients in the utilities, finance, employee share plans & government sectors in their digital transformation journey. He often speaks at industry events around digital transformation & how clients can get the best out of their customer or employee communications.

Rob Reynolds - Director - Coca-Cola Europacific Partners

Rob Reynolds is Director, Executive Rewards for Coca-Cola Europacific Partners, one of the world’s leading consumer goods companies and the world’s largest Coca-Cola bottler. In this role, he manages the compensation and incentive programs for senior executives, the executive leadership team and Board, as well as broader responsibility for share plans and mobility programs.

Rob has 15 years’ experience in compensation and benefits, originally with Kepler Associates, an independent executive remuneration consultancy, and later with Mercer in their UK reward practice and in People and Culture at Kingfisher plc, the international home improvement company. He has advised a range of UK and European, listed and private companies across a number of sectors on executive remuneration, incentives and share plan design, corporate governance, M&A compensation and wider reward matters.

Rob holds a Masters degree in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University.

John Rowland-Jones ACIS - Corporate Services Director - Bally’s Corporation

John is a member of CGI, the Chartered Governance Institute, with over 20 years’ experience across the company secretarial function, including Board support, governance, corporate compliance as well as share plan administration. John joined Gamesys Group plc (“Gamesys”) (now part of Bally’s Group), as Deputy Company Secretary, in January 2019. In his time at Gamesys/Bally’s he has supported a reverse takeover, helped to drive Gamesys’ ESG activities which included setting up a dedicated board committee and charitable foundations in the UK and US as well as enhancing the Group’s ESG reporting, project managed the Group’s redemption of Canadian listed shares and oversees its international subsidiary governance.

As part of the Gamesys/Ballys transaction, oversaw the termination and relaunch of the discretionary and all-employee global share plans. Prior to joining Gamesys, John worked for a number of FTSE 100/250 companies, overseeing the core secretarial activities, such as leading the Annual Report process, arranging the AGM and driving best practice in governance and corporate compliance.

Jennifer Rudman - Industry Directory, Employee Share Plans - EQ

Jennifer has worked at EQ for 33 years, over 20 years specialising in employee share plans, with responsibility for enhancing employee share plan services. She is a member of a number of employee plans working groups, liaising with HMRC and industry bodies.

Leanne Scimia - Group Reward Manager - RS Group plc

Leanne is an experienced reward and HR professional.  Leanne has held a variety of international HR and reward roles for BBC Worldwide and Xerox amongst others before joining RS three years ago. Leanne discovered her passion for reward 10 years ago, and has held a variety of global reward roles since then with a particular focus on incentives, global mobility and more latterly Executive Reward.

She has an ever growing passion for share plans and is excited about the impact these can have on driving great business performance and an inclusive culture. The opportunity to deliver a truly global, all employee share plan has been incredibly rewarding for her and for RS people.

Julie Shepherd - Director, Share Plans, Reward & Recognition - Sage Group plc

Julie has over 20 years’ extensive experience in the equity compensation industry gained in both in-house issuer and equity service providers.

In her current role as Share Plan Director at the Sage Group plc, Julie is responsible for the global administration and compliance for the company’s executive and broad-based equity plans, leading a team of two share plan specialists.

Prior to this Julie worked in the Company Secretarial team at Kingfisher plc and before that held various account management and business development roles with both Computershare and Santander.

Julie is the current joint Chair of the Proshare Global Focus Group and holds the ICSA Certificate in Employee Share Plans. She is a Fellow of the Global Equity Organisation and a regular speaker at conferences and events.

Pat Sims - Global Share Plan Consultant

After working in the world of taxation, with a particular interest in employment taxation, Pat moved into the share plan community. Originally as a share plan consultant at Mercer, and then in 2002 she joined the in-house share plan team at Orange.  Pat moved to Rio Tinto in 2009, and in January 2015 went freelance. Since then, Pat has provided support to a number of global companies on their share plans, and related projects. This includes Pearson, Vodafone, AstraZeneca, BT, Nokia, J Sainsbury's, Rio Tinto and currently Avast plc. Pat is an active member and supporter of ProShare, and speaks at conferences and seminars on a regular basis.

Puneet Singh -Head of Executive Pay and Interim Head of UK Reward - National Grid

Puneet has experience both in the UK and internationally across HR, with a focus on executive compensation and reward. National Grid employees have been invited to join SAYE for many years and the plan has a strong track record with take-up at 68%, well above the industry average.

Darren Smith - Business Development Director - Global Shares

Darren has worked in the Share Plans industry with YBS Share Plans for over 20 years.  In this time he has worked on all the operational teams including management, relationship management and most recently business development. He is a regular industry host and speaker on topics including share plans and financial wellbeing, bringing a fun and engaging style to events. Prior to joining Global Shares he held the position of UK National Sales Manager at YBS.

Yvonne Smyth - Group Head of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion - Hays

Yvonne Smyth is the Group Head of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion for Hays and ensures that Hays’ major recruitment linked activities and insights are designed to positively promote and create more diverse workforces and inclusive workplace cultures.

Yvonne is the national director for the HR recruitment division at Hays, the largest HR specialist recruiter in the UK. She is responsible for the HR national strategy within this high growth and pivotal specialism consisting of over 50 consultants across 30 locations. Yvonne is also the national director for our legal recruitment division, a team of over 20 experts across 7 locations. 

Siobhan Spiro - VP, Group Reward - RS Group plc

Siobhan is a seasoned reward professional, having worked in multi-nationals around the world including 3M, British American Tobacco and BP. Her focus has been on the full suite of reward tools; executive reward, mobility, incentives and benefits.

She is passionate about creating pragmatic reward solutions that work all the way through the organisation.  The creation of an all employee LTIP plan giving every single employee in RS Group the chance to own part of the business is all part of creating an inclusive and dynamic culture.

Gabbi Stopp - Chief Executive - ShareGift

Gabbi Stopp FCG is Chief Executive of ShareGift, the share donation charity. She has 20+ years’ experience in share registration, share plans and governance, and is currently studying for a Masters in Philanthropy, Grant-making and Social Investment. ShareGift specialises in releasing value from shareholdings of all shapes and sizes, generating a multi-million pound stream of funding for thousands of charities whilst enabling substantial savings for companies by helping to lower their administration costs. Since ShareGift’s inception in 1996, it has generated more than £42m for charitable causes. The pool of money ShareGift generates arises from a variety of sources, such as dormant assets, corporate transactions, share registration and plans, philanthropic donors and legacies. For corporates, incorporating ShareGift’s services into shareholder register and share plan practices demonstrates tangible ESG commitment to investors, employees, customers and other stakeholders alike.

João Teque - Equity Lead Manager - Adevinta

João is Equity Lead Manager in Adevita, based in Barcelona, where he looks after Adevinta global employee equity plans. On strategic and operational level, he designs, implement, and manage Adevinta portfolio of executive and employee share purchase plans.

Prior to joining Adevinta in 2019, Joao background in equity started back in 2012 when he started working on one of the main share registrars in the UK and its listed companies in the many stock exchanges around the world. Many corporate actions later, regulatory changes, and direct contact with investors, the acquired knowledge within the industry has allowed him to jump into the employee share plans project management. Having moved to Barcelona 2 years later a big part of my role was implementing, testing, documenting, deploying and managing employee equity events.

These 10 years of experience have allowed him to grow a great knowledge and expertise within the equity industry from both client and custodian sides with a big focus on regulatory compliance.

Anna Watch - Senior Manager, Corporate Governance - BT

Anna has been at BT for over 30 years, and has been responsible for BT’s share plans for around the last 12 years.  BT has nearly 100,000 employees and offers share plans in around 25 countries Anna’s remit now includes the all-employee and the discretionary share plans.  Anna led the team who were responsible for the introduction of the free share plan ‘yourshare’ in 2020 for which the BT team was recognised by winning the award for the Most Effective Communication of an Employee Share Plan award: 50,000+ employees.