The Speakers

About The FutureWork Forum

Founded in 2003, the FutureWork Forum works with CEOs and HR directors to help them anticipate the future of work and develop strategies and plans to achieve their objectives of inspiring, engaging and directing the best performance from their people. It is a specialist consulting enterprise, a unique combination of independent and talented people who share an interest in helping organisations turn the future of work into a competitive advantage.

Speakers

Mike Johnson Founder of FutureWork Forum		Mike is the managing partner of Johnson & Associates, a corporate communications firm that he founded in 1982. He has had a career in journalism and corporate communication for multinational corporations. His work today centres around the future of work, talent management, organisational development and corporate communication for private and public organisations. He is the author of nine books and has developed a series of World of Work studies for the Financial Times and The Economist. His most recent books are Winning the People Wars (2001) and TalentMagnet (2002).

Walter Brinkmann		A native German, Walter graduated in economics and mechanical engineering from the Technical University of Berlin (TUB) in 1971 and gained an MBA from INSEAD, Fontainebleau, France, in 1973. He started his marketing career with Colgate-Palmolive in Brussels where his last position in 1976-77 was as a new products manager Benelux. This was followed by seven years with McKinsey&Co in Düsseldorf, Germany. In 1984 Walter joined Bayer AG as marketing director in the Business-Group Consumer-Products and became general manager of its German operation in 1987. From 1990 to 2000 Walter created, built and managed The Coca-Cola Companys European Affairs Office in Brussels, Belgium. Since late 2000 Walter has worked as an independent consultant in European affairs in Oxford, UK.

Cliff Dennett		Cliff delivers innovation programmes across EMEA, the US and the Far East for public, private, profit and non-profit organisations. He has worked for Orange, The National Prisons Service, Jaguar, Electronic Data Systems, The United Nations, Morgan Stanley and local councils. Cliff takes groups of passionate people on creative expeditions, pushing the boundaries of thinking to achieve specific results. He uses various proven techniques including LEGO Serious Play, theatre improvisation and Systemic Inventive Thinking and he works iteratively with clients to design bespoke processes and events that deliver specific outcomes.

Marthijn de Groot		Since the age of 17, Marthijn has concentrated on painting : attending courses at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and Academie Minerva, Groningen. In the course of his life as an artist, draughtsman, musician and writer, Marthijn has applied himself to working with people, helping them in their personal growth. Combining his artistry with the human process of transformation, Marthijn’s talents are exceptional and unique. With boundless passion he creates for himself and his surroundings a world in which joy, love and art coincide. He has published a book entitled Towards the Light in collaboration with author Wim van der Beek.

Labeed S. Hamid		Labeed Hamid is the founder and president of the Middle East Management and Research Centre, an organisation devoted to bringing leading-edge and best-practice management to clients in the Middle East. MEMC has been operating in the Middle East since 1980 with offices in Dubai, Istanbul and Cairo. He has worked for the Management Centre Europe in Brussels as head of the Programme Division and was later appointed vice president of the American Management Association (AMA) responsible for the Middle East. After obtaining his master’s degree from California State University in Los Angeles, he worked for the United Nations Management Development Project in Baghdad until the Baathist take-over when he left to settle in Europe.

Göran Hultin		Göran has more than 15 years of experience in international labour market legislation and regulation. Recently he was assistant director general of the ILO and executive director of the employment sector where he was globally responsible for developing employment strategies and the implementation of job creation, enterprise development, and human skills development. In this capacity he had the opportunity to work closely with labour ministries in all parts of the world. He now works with governments and leading organisations on policy and practice by building private-public partnerships to improve labour performance and business strategy, aligning business goals with corporate values, building management labour relations, developing training strategies to meet skills and competency needs. He is advisor to the Shanghai Municipal Labour & Social Security Bureau and governmental affairs advisor to Manpower Inc.

Shay McConnon		Shay is an inspirational and entertaining speaker with a powerful business message. He is a leading authority on relationship issues has developed a unique blend of magic, humour and common sense in his keynote presentations. He is the founder of People First Ltd, an international training and consultancy group that specialises in creating winning relationships in the workplace. He is the author of 17 books on personal development. His latest, Resolving Conflict, has been published in nine different languages. Shay is also a member of the Magic Circle. His flair for entertaining combined with his real world experiences in the workplace, create a unique presentation style that sets him apart from other speakers.

Matthias Moelleney		Matthias is the owner of the consulting company peopleXpert GmbH in Uster, Switzerland, which is specialised in HR due diligence analysis, management of change processes and HR management training. He gained his experience in international human resources management during almost 20 years in a variety of management posts at Lufthansa and later as head of human resources management and member of the executive board at Swissair, Centerpulse and Unaxis. He has participated in advanced strategic management studies at the INSEAD business school in Fontainebleau, France. He gives lectures at the University of St Gallen and other national and international universities, and is the author of several published works on the subject of personnel management. In 2003, he published his first book Die Zukunft möglich machen.

Richard Savage		Richard, who is based in Brussels, established himself as an independent Human Resource consultant in September 2003. His primary areas of focus draw on his thirteen years of experience as Head of European HR for ACNielsen and Quaker Oats and his twenty plus years of experience of ‘sitting at the top table’: assisting companies to determine and implement effective European organisations; working with HR and business leaders to develop innovative HR strategies to deliver enhanced business results and assisting companies deliver ‘world-class’ client service.

Susan U. Stucky, Ph.D.		Susan Stucky founded the Strategic Practices Group (SPG) in 1999 to develop and further refine a consulting practice in strategic learning for knowledge-based businesses. Before launching SPG, Susan was involved in setting up and running both the Institute for Research on Learning and the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford University. She holds a PhD in linguistics from the University of Illinois and did postdoctoral work in cognitive science and artificial intelligence at the University of Massachusetts and at Stanford University.

Alper Utku		Alper is the managing director of the Middle East Management Centre an Organisation devoted to bringing the leading edge and best global management thinking and practice to clients in the Middle East with a view to developing responsible management and leadership in their organisations and communities. MEMC has been operating in the Middle East since 1980 with offices in Dubai, Istanbul and Cairo. Prior to his current role at MEMC, he was the director of the Management Centre Turkiye, a MEMC subsidiary in Istanbul which he started in 1993. During his 11 years of working in management consulting and HR development, Alper has worked with more than 150 clients including but not limited to several Fortune 500 companies and regional industry leaders mainly in long-term HR development interventions.

Nick Winkfield		Nick is managing partner of Stakeholder Studies Ltd, a research and consulting firm working in stakeholder relationship management and communications. He has a background in marketing and corporate communications, and moved full-time into research in the late 1970s. His main focus is on cross-cultural issues and the communication challenges facing multinationals, especially those resulting from mergers and acquisitions. He is a regular contributor to seminars and workshops, and writes occasional papers on issue- and risk-evaluation, CSR, communication ethics, and the methods and applications of research for employee and external stakeholder communications.

Hanneke Frese		Hanneke is an independent consultant active in the field of think-tank research to create a better understanding of the trends that shape the future of work, leadership, the employee value proposition and similar topics. She works with business schools, universities and organisations to integrate this future thinking into todays decisions. Hanneke has extensive strategic and operational human resources experience gained at business and corporate level in global financial services organisations. She has lived and worked successfully in five countries and has particular strengths in the following areas: Supporting and advising businesses as they go through rapid changes Creating value in highly diverse, cross-cultural environments Talent management, succession planning and executive assessment Aligning Human Resources in transformations such as supporting matrix organisations From 1972 to 1999 Hanneke worked for Citibank where she started her career in human resources in Amsterdam. She was later assigned to a public relations position at Citibank and 1998 she transferred to Citibank’s private bank based in Zurich where she became division human resources manager for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In 1995 she was assigned to Citibank’s head office in New York as manager human resources strategy development. Subsequently she had assignments as head expatriate staffing and leadership & development manager for global operations and technology. In 1999 Hanneke moved back to Switzerland and joined Zurich Financial Services as chief human resources officer of ZurichRe, its global reinsurance division. She was appointed to head group capabilities for Zurich Financial Services world-wide and became a member of the Group Management Board in November 2000. Hanneke left Zurich Financial Services in 2005 to become an independent consultant.

Ruben Nieuwenhuis		Ruben is chief innovation officer at PartnersinPerspective, a strategy and resultancy firm. He is also founder and management director of GMF, a business format company. He is co-author of the book: 'YES BUT: what if everything succeeds'. After working in Kazakhstan and Moscow he is now advisor and interim manager for a broad range of organisations as well as running idea-launch workshops and working as a conference speaker. He lives in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Catie Thorburn		As president of the Generation Europe Foundation, which she established in 1995, Catie has been the driving force behind the creation of the Generation Europe European awareness campaigns, which are now running in 26 countries. She has also helped develop the Generation Europe online community, which comprises of 5,000 19 -29 year olds in 45 countries. Prior to this she created and ran a multinational, Lexitech Inc in the field of multilingual document production and software localisation and took it onto the New York Stock Exchange in 1986 (Nasdaq). She was a consultant for Eurexpansion (Expansion, Dow Jones and Handelsblatt) at the Europe Information Service and thereafter was the international director and a board member of the Club de Bruxelles, a leading European think-tank. An accomplished public speaker, Catie has received best practice status from the European Commission for non-propaganda publishing activities (DG Education and Culture) and an Oscar for the Best Performing Service Company from the European Service Industries Forum.

Andrew Chadwick MA(Cantab) RIBA MCSD		Andrew Chadwick is Principal of Chadwick International, a new type of management architectural practice specialising in creative space economy and new ways of working. Trained at Cambridge University School of Architecture under Sir Leslie Martin, Andrew Chadwick became Principal of Hulme Chadwick & Partners, the precursor of Chadwick International in 1973. In 1980, he was one of the early global pioneers of the use of CAD in architecture, which led to a deep interest and involvement in space planning and space management during the 1980’s. In 1982, Chadwick won a Phillips inspired competition to predict the Office of the Future 2000 with a highly novel and prescient “office in a briefcase” which anticipated the information revolution and the way in which technology has promoted mobility in architecture in the last twenty years. Most notably in the recent past, Chadwick moved Accenture (then Andersen Consulting) from La Defence in Paris into the most prestigious building on the Champs Elysees, No. 55 Avenue George V, saving the firm $1,000,000 per year in the process and creating, with his client David Andrews, arguably the first truly working “virtual” office in the world. Chadwick has recently sponsored a Fellowship at Pembroke College Cambridge to study the use of space in time in order to give something back to the profession and to encourage serious research into the value of the built environment in economic and cultural terms. In the process a seminal space and property strategy has been prepared for Pembroke College Cambridge