Advisory Editorial Board

Toni is an experienced HR professional with 20+ years in professional services. She trained as an accountant at PwC, working with global clients across multiple sectors. After 10 years in client facing roles she moved into human resources and went on to shape and drive the firm's reward strategy. As part of the HR leadership team, she was also responsible for employee relations and global projects. She joined A&O in 2016 as Global Head of Reward and also became the firm's first Head of Wellbeing. Throughout her career Toni has worked with senior leaders to create people strategies that drive change and improve performance across many aspects of the people agenda including diversity, resourcing, performance management and wellbeing in the workplace - a topic she is passionate about.

Zoe is one of the founders of This Can Happen. She is also the founder of Employees Matter, the largest provider of employee engagement seminars and webinars in the UK.

Chief People Officer for the Weber Shandwick Collective in Asia, Susie has been living and working across the Asia Pacific region for over 25 years, holding people and HR leadership roles in multinational organizations.

Based in Hong Kong, Susie has been a part of the IPG network since April 2013 having worked across multiple brands during her tenure, overseeing People initiatives across China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and India. In addition to her HR responsibilities, Susie actively developed Weber Shandwick’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Asia Pacific strategy and has leading the initiative for the region since early 2021.

Jonny Benjamin MBE and Neil Laybourn give talks and present on the topic of mental health to groups and organizations all around the UK and internationally.

The pair are award-winning mental health campaigners – their journey together began in 2008 when Neil talked Jonny out of taking his own life by jumping from the edge of Waterloo Bridge in London. Jonny had just been diagnosed with schizophrenia and depression and was extremely unwell.

Neil’s interaction saved his life but the two were soon separated when the police intervened and took Jonny away to be sectioned. 6 years later, in 2014, Jonny launched a campaign on Twitter to find and thank the man who had stopped him taking his own life - #FindMike - it became a global news campaign that reached over 300 million people around the world and was successful in reuniting the 2 strangers within a matter of weeks from the campaign being launched.

What followed was an emotional meeting and the beginning of a journey where both men united to campaign around the issues of both mental health and suicide, which is now the biggest killer of men under 45 in the UK.

The story of their journey was made into a TV documentary, The Stranger on the Bridge, which aired on Channel 4 in 2015 and had a meaningful impact on millions of viewers.

The documentary has won a number of awards and is currently being aired internationally.

After a private meeting with Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge in March 2016, the pair were invited by the Royal Foundation to represent the ‘Heads Together’ charity in running for the 2017 London Marathon.

Sarah joined Northern Trust in 2016 and is responsible for the strategy and implementation of a wide variety of D&I programmes and initiatives.  Before joining Northern Trust, Sarah headed up D&I teams at AIG and Barclays Wealth and prior to that held a variety of HR roles at Morgan Stanley and Simmons & Simmons LLP. 

Sarah holds a BA in International Management and Business Administration with German from the University of Reading. Additionally she holds an MSc in Human Resource Management and an MBA from the Open University. She is a Fellow of the CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development) and is bilingual English/German. Sarah is also a Magistrate, serving on the East London bench. 

Sarah is a qualified Mental Health First Aid instructor.

Wendy is based in Singapore and has been part of the IPG network since July 2022. She enjoys helping teams get organized, enabling Executives and team members to run their day-to-day activities more efficiently.

Wendy identifies as a neurodivergent. She has been openly sharing her anxiety journey since late 2019, helping peers find comfort that they are not alone and there is no shame in seeking professional help. She is a strong advocate for mental health awareness and encourages others to practice self-compassion.

Jyoti is an experienced HR professional with 10+ years of generalist experience roles. Jyoti designed and implemented the wellbeing programme in the Allen & Overy Middle East offices. She is now responsible working for with global teams across the firm to drive the broader wellbeing and mental health agenda. She also directly supports individuals through internal coaching.

Mellener currently head Diversity, Equity Inclusion and Mental Wellbeing for Northern Trust in India. An Inclusion Strategist, she has a passion for creating cultures where people can bring their passion and whole selves to work. 

Mellener has won several awards for her work in Diversity and Inclusion and has recently been appointed as a global D&I advisory board member for the Future Talent Council. She is often invited to speak at external D&I events and conferences including the 2018 UN Gender focal point meeting in Geneva. She has been on the taskforce for a number of projects led by Community Business Asia. guest faculty member for the Certified Diversity Professional Program in India. She has contributed to research on Diversity and Inclusion.

As a passionate advocate for mental health awareness her mission in life is to work towards creating more mindful and grateful communities at the workplace and beyond.

Jamie works alongside Zoe our co-Founder to research the mental health space in-depth and always ensure our speakers and topics are of the highest quality – of which we are immensely proud!

Arif Jiwany is a highly experienced GP & Occupational Health Physician who has worked in both the NHS as well as several different industry sectors.

Having worked at GSK for 16 years, in September 2021, he became Global Head of Occupational Health & Wellbeing for the GSK Consumer Healthcare business which separated from GSK in mid-2022 & is now called Haleon PLC.

Since starting his new role, Arif’s main remit has been to oversee the separation of previous H&W programmes/services & build a new global team/function from scratch; this is set up as a small ‘centre of excellence’. The focus for the new Haleon health organisation is to drive the future H&W strategy, improve delivery of health programmes, raise levels of governance & ensure that H&W initiatives are strongly linked to the emerging new organisational culture.

Susan combines an academic post in Organisational Psychology with her work as a business psychologist,  an executive coach, mediator and consultant.  She specialises in working with below the surface dynamics and vulnerability at work.  Her research interests include endings, failure and resilience with books published on these topics.

Katie has been working with organisations to help them grow and provide excellent customer service. Since joining Mental Health UK in 2017 Katie has been focussing specifically on engaging workplaces with mental health both through advising on organisation-wide strategies and charitable and awareness campaigns for employees and customers to engage with directly. Partners have included Lloyds Banking Group, PureGym and ISG.

Monika is Head of Employee Health and Wellbeing at GlaxoSmithKline. She is experienced in setting workplace wellbeing and mental health strategies and leading global teams to operationalise these. She has over a decade of experience in delivering change programs globally at team and individual levels and has more recently in supporting managers to create a positive environment for their people to thrive.

She started her medical career as a General Practitioner and subsequently became a specialist in Occupational Medicine, which she has practiced both in the public and corporate sectors.  She coaches all levels within organisations including executives and is a strong advocate of harnessing the power of mentoring and coaching to enable people to lead more fulfilling lives. She is on the board of the What Works Centre for Wellbeing.

Her interests outside work include practising yoga and mindfulness and supporting the mental health of school aged children.