This Can Happen Awards entries will solely be assessed by our esteemed judges. In the first round judges will vote for their favourites and create a shortlist, and then will come together on a judging day to decide on the winners. Currently we are working hard on recruiting a stellar judging panel for the 2021 awards, consisting of senior leaders with diverse experience and skill sets, championing excellence in workplace mental health.
If you would like to nominate a mental health champion for the jury panel, please send their contact details and bio to awards@tchevents.com.
To give you a taste of the caliber of our judges, here is our 2020 judging panel:
Global Head of Reward and Wellbeing
Allen & Overy LLP
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.
Nancy Lengthorn
Head of Diversity, Inclusion and Future Talent
MediaCom
Nancy is a diversity and inclusion specialist within the media industry and was responsible for setting up the industry’s first apprentice scheme and Mental Health Allies programme.
Florent Sherifi
External Affairs Manager
Institute of Directors
Florent is the External Affairs Manager at the Institute of Directors. His role is to represent the views of IoD members and communicate policy research with government and key stakeholders. Florent is MHFA trained and is passionate about mental health within small businesses and supporting IoD members make positive changes.
Amanda Diston
VP Global Compensation
Liberty Global
Amanda has been a Human Resource professional for over 20 years—with an emphasis on the “human.” She strongly believes that different viewpoints create a stronger and better outcome. This can only be achieved through an inclusive work environment where all people can realise their full potential.
Dr Ellie Cannon
GP, Author and Broadcaster
NHS
Dr Ellie is the GP for the Mail on Sunday where she writes her weekly health pages that also appear on Mailonline. She is the on-screen GP for Sky News Sunrise & Channel 5 news as well as Matthew Wright’s Talk Radio show. Her expertise across medicine is current as a result of her NHS practice and involvement with the movement to empower patients about making informed choices. Ellie’s second book Is Your Job Making You Ill? was published in 2018 and focuses on mental health issues at work. In 2018 she presented to the APPG on Women’s Health at their inaugural Women’s Health Conference, encouraging women of all ages to speak up about health issues. In 2015, she gave evidence to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Body image focusing on the health of models.
Beth Rochford
Wellbeing Manager
Marks and Spencer
Beth joined Marks and Spencer following a degree in Social Policy in 2008 and her current role is leading the UK Health and Wellbeing strategy across a diverse and talented 80,000 colleagues. Beth is experienced in developing and running a range of initiatives across Physical, Mental, Social and Financial Wellbeing and working with experts in the field. She has a specific passion for promoting mental wellbeing with personal experience of managing mental ill health in parenthood.
Yvonne Smyth
Group Head of Diversity & Inclusion
Hays
Yvonne is the Group Head of Diversity and Inclusion for Hays plc and spearheads Hays’ commitment to being recruiting experts by ensuring that Hays’ major recruitment linked activities and insights are designed to positively promote and create more diverse workforces and inclusive workplace cultures. With over 23 years professional recruitment experience, Yvonne is also the national specialism director for Hays Human Resources and Hays Legal in the UK. Across Hays Human Resources, Yvonne is responsible for the national strategy for this high growth specialism consisting of over 70 consultants across 45 locations. Across Hays Legal, Yvonne is responsible for a team of over 35 experts across seven locations.
Brian Dow
Chief Executive & Deputy Chief Executive
Mental Health UK / Rethink Mental Illness
Brian is Chief Executive of Mental Health UK a coalition of four charities across the UK in addition to his role as Deputy Chief Executive of Rethink Mental Illness.
Stuart MacDonald
Head of Operations HR&Group IR
easyJet
Stuart MacDonald has worked in the aviation sector for 33 years, covering many senior leadership roles across different disciplines. In the last few years Stuart has transitioned from a Senior Operational leader to the HR space where a passion to drive the Occupational Health & Wellness agenda has been an important personal journey. Stuart’s passion to the HR discipline is driven by a strong sense of responsible and ethical leadership, doing the right thing for the organisation but also by the organisations employees and driving a socially responsible, thriving and healthy work force. Stuart is an active ‘Fellow’ of the Forward Institute which specialises in Responsible Leadership. Prior to his time at easyJet Stuart spent 12 years with the TUI Group in a number of leadership roles across.
June Clark
Health and Wellbeing Manager
Nestlé UK&I
June has worked at Nestlé for over 14 years. Her current role at Nestlé is to provide strategic leadership over the Nestlé UK & Ireland employee health and wellbeing programme. She is passionate about health and wellbeing, supporting behaviour change and gets an enormous amount of pleasure in helping and supporting employees to make well-informed lifestyle changes.
Susie Hill
Global Health Promotion Manager
Shell
Susie Hill is Global Health Promotion Manager at Shell and has led health improvement programmes in the UK NGO and corporate sectors for 25 years; most recently with a focus on mental health. Susie holds a Masters in Health and Social Marketing and has co-authored a book on this subject. She has a professional interest in psychology, neuroscience and behavioural economics and is passionate about collaborating on projects to which help people to be at their best.
Manisha Mehrotra
Head of Diversity and Inclusion, Europe Middle East and Africa
Bloomberg LP
Manisha Mehrotra is a subject matter expert in Diversity and Inclusion (D&I), Communications and Organisational Change. She is the Head of Diversity and Inclusion for Europe Middle East and Africa Bloomberg LP. She brings innovation and tenacity to designing and delivering strategic D&I solutions that drive organisational change. She is a mentor and coach to students and professionals through a variety of programs and initiatives. She earned a Diversity Management Certificate from Cornell University, a B.S. in Business Administration with a concentration in Marketing and Communications from the University of Connecticut, and a Master of Business Administration from Cornell University.
Miles Kean
Executive Director, Entrepreneurs Division
Coutts & Co
Miles joined Coutts in 2001 having spent 10 years at Lloyds Private Banking. Since joining Coutts Miles has always worked within the entrepreneurs division looking after clients both from an investment and debt perspective and has lead a number of teams over the years before focussing on regulated lending to Coutts' High New Worth clients.
Miles also am a member of the Diversity and Inclusion Council heading up Wellbeing and involved with a number of wider projects and initiatives at the Bank. Miles graduated with a BSc in Geography and Geology from Cardiff University in 1989 and has since studied at Durham, Cranfield and the Cambridge Judge Business Schools.
Ché Donald
National Vice Chair
Police Federation of England and Wales
Ché was elected in January 2018 to the post of National Vice-Chair of the Police Federation of England and Wales, the representative body for 117,000 serving police officers. In this role, he supports and deputises for the national Chair; drives the strategy of the PFEW, and is a principal spokesperson for the organisation in the media and engagement with external stakeholders. He has since been leading and driving a crucial piece of work looking at the links between demand, capacity and welfare. This work is bringing together decision makers and key stakeholders in policing, to find solutions to improve conditions for police officers and allow them to deliver a better service to the public.
Nick Jemetta
Principal Product Manager, Sainsbury's and This Can Happen Future Leader Awards Winner
Nick is an award winning mental health speaker, campaigner and digital content creator. Alongside his day job as a Digital Product Leader for Sainsbury’s, Nick co-chairs the Sainsbury’s Mental Health and Wellbeing colleague group, and is a member of the Speaker’s Collective.
Nick shares his lived experience of anxiety and suicidal thoughts to demonstrate that mental ill health does not define us or limit our potential. Through his talks Nick shows that we can all proactively manage our wellbeing and build mental resilience.
Winning the This Can Happen Future Leader award in 2019, Nick has been described as an inspiring leader and change agent, with relentless energy to make a difference in people’s lives. Nick is living proof that change is possible.
Jane Austin
HR Director
Jane Austin is Director of HR for Wave. Jane spent the first half of her career in various HR roles in Rover, Land Rover, BMW and Northumbrian Water, she also spent time as Assistant Personnel Director at Coventry University. Jane is part of the Leadership Team of Wave and presents to the Board on HR matters. Jane has established a leading wellbeing offering in Wave via a creative approach to the procurement of support services. Jane’s biggest achievement in the wellbeing area has been embarking on cultural change to breakdown the stigma of talking about mental health in the workplace. Jane is regularly asked to speak on mental health and wellbeing at workshops and conferences and is passionate about helping companies to achieve a great wellbeing package without large budgets.
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.
Monika Misra
Head of Health & Wellbeing EMEA
As head of Health and Wellbeing, Europe at GlaxoSmithKline, Monika's focus is on supporting employees to be at their best through optimising their wellbeing and to assist leaders to engage more in health and wellbeing across their organisation.
With a background in General Practice and drawing upon her experience in workplace health in both the NHS and Private sectors, Monika has developed global wellbeing and mental health strategies.
She has experience in delivering resilience programs to teams in several countries and more recently has recorded manager mental health training material which is being rolled out globally.
In her spare time Monika enjoys slowing down the pace though yoga and mindfulness practices.
Karl Simons
Chief Health & Safety Officer
Thames Water
Karl has 30 years of experience in industry, having worked across all continents and numerous safety critical industries including oil, gas, minerals, rail, roads, construction and Utilities. He holds a Masters degree in Safety, Health and the Environment, is a Chartered Occupational Safety & Health Practitioner, a Member of the Institute of Directors and whose advice on physical & mental health in business is regularly sought by Government. Karl is a regular lecturer at the University of Cambridge and holds a position as Main Board Director for the global organisation Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor.
This Can Happen Friends
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