THE
ENGAGE FIFTY
2024

Jo has been a volunteer with the Engage for Success movement since its launch.  As Strategy Director she sits on the Core Team and co-hosts the weekly Engage for Success radio show. EFS radio draws guests from across the engagement world with interesting stories to share. The Engage for Success agenda is absolutely aligned with Jo’s vision ‘to make workplaces better places to be’. Jo’s ‘day job’ is MD and founder of Woodreed, a specialist ad agency who use the tools, techniques, creativity and insight of the advertising world to engage employees inside organisations. Jo is passionate about brands and their power to move people.  She is equally passionate about employee engagement and its vital role in delivering a high performing organisation. Put the two together and she becomes almost evangelical about the power a well-positioned and consistently delivered brand has as a catalyst for employee engagement and business success.

Sarah founded Happy Coffee Consulting after 9 years building award-winning customer service and customer experience. Sarah has spent the last 10 years researching and training in Happiness at Work after becoming a Certified Chief Happiness Officer in 2018 she now provides Happiness at Work training and programmes. In 2019 Sarah co-founded the first Global Summit for Happiness at Work. In the two years it has been running we have had over 2000 participants from 62 countries and more than 60 leading expert speakers from around the world. In July 2020 she became co-leader of the Woohoo Partnership Network, a group of over 100 happiness at work experts, from 26 countries around the world. Woohoo partnership has helped to train over 100,000 people worldwide on being happier at work and provided training and keynotes to companies like Accenture, KPMG, LEGO, Shell, Microsoft, Nespresso and many others. Recently Happy Coffee has with companies like WDHB, L’Oreal, FUTR, Abcam Life Sciences, Teleperformance, and Woohoo Inc. and provided international keynotes and workshops in Canada, U.K., Denmark, France, Ireland, Spain, Belgium, Poland and NL.

I'm a customer engagement and digital business strategist. Also an author and international keynote speaker. Working under my own brand, Brainfood Consulting, I design masterclasses and transformational change helping clients evolve their social and digital capabilities. Current topics include omni-channel design, proactive, low effort customer experience, social customer service and customer hubs. All themed around service innovation.

Charlotte is a director at specialist advertising agency Woodreed. She's an accomplished speaker, writer and facilitator, with a unique view on employee engagement and internal communications, having spent equal parts of her career in consumer, then employee communications. Having worked for clients spanning every industry sector, including Marks & Spencer, The National Lottery, Volkswagen Group, Jaguar Land Rover, Guinness World Records and the NHS, she brings the rigour of consumer marketing into internal communications. She is passionate about raising the profile, standards and effectiveness of internal communication, believing employees AND customers deserve the same reverence, effort and creativity in communication. Appearing on stages at home and abroad, she's talked for senior leadership summits and in-house teams as well as for the CIPD, Institute of Internal Communications, Engage for Success and at ABTA's travel convention in Malta. She's a regular chair for Engage Business Media's events and delivers training for the IoIC.

Gerry Brown, aka The Customer Lifeguard, is on a mission to save the world from bad customer service. He helps businesses save customers at risk of defecting and breathes life into their customer service operations and customer experience strategy. Gerry has provided organizational leadership on people development, business transformation, customer engagement and technology enablement for some of the largest companies in the UK, Canada, and EMEA. These include National Express, Nutricia, The Royal Albert Hall, Endsleigh Insurance, O2, Screwfix, Sage, Sky, Bell Canada and TELUS. He is a frequent speaker, chairperson, panellist and facilitator at conferences, webinars, company events and other business gatherings, where his many years of business and customer service experience provide stimulating, thought-provoking engagement and audience participation. He is also a published author and his new book When a Customer Wins, Nobody Loses is available on Amazon to help business leaders to create winning and memorable customer experiences.

Mark Hillary is a British writer and blogger based in São Paulo, Brazil. His industry analysis and research focuses on forward-looking CX, technology, work, and globalisation. This year he has published two books, one focused on how C-level executives are using blogs and social media to interact with customers and one a complete re-write of all Shakespeare’s sonnets reduced to Twitter format. In the past decade he published another dozen books exploring business strategies. He is presently working on a new book focused on how content marketing with LinkedIn can dramatically improve customer relationships and lead to increased sales. An IT director in the City before writing professionally Mark has a pragmatic view on how technology is shaping executive decision-marking today and he is often asked to ghostwrite for several leading international CEOs, diplomats, and politicians. Mark has worked with the UN and several governments on outsourcing strategies in locations such as India, Bangladesh, and Nigeria and he is well-known as a live blogger of major events, including the 2010 UK general election for Reuters and 2012 London Olympic Games as an official storyteller. Today his media work can usually be found in the Huffington Post, LinkedIn, and on the Engage Customer blog.

Currently the CEO of Initiative for Social Entrepreneurs Cathy has wide ranging experience across the public, private and third sectors in raising awareness and providing practical guidance to organisations looking to improve employee engagement through many different business models. With a background in delivering strategic transformation programmes for a FTSE 100 company, she recognises the importance of values, good management, authentic leadership and the ability to listen in creating environments where people can bring the best of themselves to work every day. Cathy engages and energises audiences around business change, leadership and innovation. She passionately believes that helping people find a better way to work can make a big difference to people’s lives, their organisations and ultimately to the country

As co-Strategy Director of Engage for Success, Jo is focused on spreading the word about employee engagement and shining a light on good practise, inspiring people and workplaces to thrive. She also co-hosts the long running weekly Engage for Success radio podcast talking all things employee engagement with a wide range of guests from all over the world. Her corporate background is in regional and national HR and training roles within large retail and leisure organisations. She started her own business in 2005 and has since worked with people and organisations to take advantage of the digital and social media opportunities to create engagement with customers, employees and other stakeholders.

Nicholas Brice is our Guest Editor and CEO of Soul Corporations®. He is seasoned managing consultant, speaker coach and masterclass facilitator. He has helped deliver human-centred development and culture change programmes to achieve customer and employee experience KPI outcomes for major brands including British Airways, American Express, Unipart, Toyota, Wickes, Brighton and Hove Albion FC, Tottenham Hotspur FC, Progress IT, Servier Pharmaceuticals. He is a triple winner of National Training Journal Gold Awards, a winner of Engage Media Award for Best Customer and Employee Engagement Programme and four times finalist.

Chris leads a team in Microsoft Customer Services and Support leading on employee experience - with focus on the key pillars of culture and environment. The team are at the forefront of transformation in support; leveraging employee engagement, work health balance and work place design for customer success. Chris is passionate about helping businesses deliver results through an engaged and thriving workforce. Her team partners with corporate global programmes and local stakeholders to create a portfolio of experiences and opportunities to connect and belong at Microsoft. Her hobbies are tennis and camping.

Karine Cardona-Smits coaches and mentors experience design leaders and their teams to drive impact. With over 20 years of professional experience in digital and a background in psychology, she provides guidance to leaders in Customer Experience, Digital, Design, and Product to tackle their biggest challenges and stay ahead in a constantly changing landscape. As a former Senior Analyst at Forrester Research, she conducted extensive research and authored actionable reports on customer experience, service design, UX, and experience design. She is also a sought-after keynote speaker at customer experience and design events, sharing her expertise with a wider audience.

LinkedIn Profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/karinecardona/

Website https://www.karinecardona.com

A highly accomplished facilitator, speaker, coach, and NED, I've been at the forefront of new thinking around conscious leadership development and culture change for over 30 years.
I have extensive experience in blue-chip multi-national companies, working in the US, emerging markets, Europe, South America, and Asia-Pacific across a variety of sectors including energy, O&G, water, banking, PR, pharmaceutical & luxury goods.
My focus is on making workplaces psychologically safer by bringing enlightened practices to senior leaders and management around inclusion, diversity, harassment and the use of power.

Founded and launched Work Unlocked, an innovative HR consulting firm led by psychologists, specializing in creating happier workplaces and enhancing employee happiness, engagement, and well-being.

We all want to be happy at work, not only because we spend a significant part of our life working, but also because it is a source of meaning. I find meaning in helping create psychologically healthy workplaces where people feel happy being at work and engaging with their work.

Hans van Dam is the founder of Conversation Design Institute, the world's leading training and certification institute for people working in conversational AI. Hans has trained more than 5,000 professionals in conversational AI and works with Fortune 500 companies to make their chatbots more human-centric, effective, and inclusive. He also leads CDI Foundation, a non-profit that develops design standards and provides scholarships within the industry. Hans is a frequent guest lecturer at universities worldwide. He is currently based in Amsterdam, where he lives with his family.

As an award winning successful CX, Transformational, Digital, Commercial & Distribution Leader with an extensive track record of consistently delivering growth, customer engagement and competitive advantage; I’ve had the opportunity to collaborate with, disrupt and grow some of the most recognised global brands.

I spend my days making sure our people have the right technology, capabilities, support and enablers to be the best in today’s experience-economy and digitally savvy world through cultural, proposition and performance re-engineering.

I’m a seasoned global leader with an entrepreneurial, innovative spirit and a passionate believer in creating exceptional experiences every day to create value and make an impact.

Karen's voice was unique on the Lewes FC Board as she had no interest in football before encountering the club’s equality initiative in 2017. Since then she regularly gives talks at business and sports conferences on inclusion in football and its effect on driving gender equality in the wider world. Karen led on campaigns and created the club’s SisterShips initiative – including Sussex Police’s ‘He For She’ campaign, a feminist art gallery WIA, 'Rise' the domestic abuse charity, and The Girls' Network - which is building a network of organisations keen to support the club in solidarity with its equality stance, whilst the club promotes the member organisations’ work in return. Karen is a trained counselling therapist, including creating and managing an internal counselling service for PolyGram Records (now Universal). Prior to this Karen has also worked as a fashion model. A co-owner and volunteer at the Club since 2010, Karen led on the Lewes board for its ‘Impact on the World’ from 2019 until 2022, and is currently writing a book on her unlikely experiences in football and complete lack of imposter syndrome.