Best Customer Experience Programme

Sarah Cook 

Managing Director, The Stairway Consultancy Ltd

Sarah Cook has over 20 years’ consulting experience specialising in customer experience and leadership development. Sarah began her business career in Marketing with Unilever where she worked in European marketplaces. Having completed an MBA, Sarah moved into consultancy. 

As Managing Director of The Stairway Consultancy, Sarah has worked with a wide range of international clients to help them create a customer-focused culture and enhance business performance.

Sarah is the author of many books on customer experience including: ‘Leading the Customer Experience’, ‘Customer Care Excellence’ and ‘Complaint Management Excellence’.

Sarah is an accredited executive coach, Fellow of CIPD and a Chartered Marketeer. 

Best Leadership Development Programme​

Neville Pritchard

Founder & Chair of HR in Flow , People in Flow. Executive Director of Neuro-Link Europe
Co-Author of ‘Go Beyond’ – Your Workplace = Your World (May 2018)

@nevillejp 

Neville has over 30 years in HR, L&D, OD, and Leadership Development from his corporate and consulting roles. He began corporate life with Legal & General, then Abbey National and Barclays. He, and the teams he has worked with, have won 23 industry awards. He now focuses on the impact of culture, leadership, management, and their development, on the working environment and performance.

A coach, mentor, consultant and speaker, he provides organisations support in all people related considerations including organisation health, operational and strategic HR or People Support and People Development. He has developed a range of frameworks that enable new thinking and potential impact from people support and development including leadership. Within HR in the wider sense, he has served as a CIPD group mentor, been President of ASTD (now ATD) UK, chaired the ATD Orlando conference programme committee in 2015 and been a member of Reed Learning’s Advisory Group. He is now an Advisory Board member for Washington DC firm Wordsmith Rapport and was previously Chairman of the FSSC Major Employer Advisory Forum and a Board member of the IFS Schools faculty.

Beyond work he managed the Bucks Academy cricket side and now represents Buckinghamshire in Seniors cricket. He is a trustee for the Bucks Youth Cricket Trust.

Best Commercial Programme

Joe Tidman

Head of Learning Operations, GSK

@joetidman

Joe’s passion is in making learning easily accessible, simple and impactful on a global scale. Joe currently Leads L&D at Johnson Matthey.  His experience majors on leading strategic Learning and Development projects, including developing company-wide Leadership Development programmes, L&D standards, enterprise learning curricula and global on-boarding. He has nearly 20 years industry experience, and has previously designed and set up a Global Supply Chain Academy, ran international graduate programmes and led various other Talent, OD and HR activities.​

Best Leadership Development Programme

Guy Bloom

Creator of Living Brave

Twitter: @Contactbloom

Guy Bloom is the author of Living Brave Leadership, he is a keynote speaker, executive and team effectiveness coach, working with individuals, teams and organisations striving for high performance. His focus is on how Trust, Accountability, Bravery and Connection define personal brand and culture so that it impacts on commercial and cultural drivers.  Guy is the driving force behind the Blue Sky Performance Improvement leadership proposition. Guy’s  focus is on enabling leaders, teams and cultures to perform at their best in a way that adds value to people, profits and society.

He believes the world is in danger of losing its bravery as commercial, political and media agendas drive behaviours that harm people through a need to submit to the speed of change and ultimately this adds less value to the very structures that are driving the behaviour; believing, “it’s time for the individual as part of a collective to steer the ship, at the moment the ship is steering us and we are submissive to its wants and this is the wrong way around.

Best Commercial Programme

Sue Bradshaw

Sue is an experienced human resources and learning professional skilled in Organisational Development, Change Management, Executive Coaching, Learning Strategy, design & delivery. Sue has deep experience as a Learning Leader and Chief People Officer with a demonstrated history of adding value across large pharmaceutical multinationals and SMEs in the venture capital and private equity industry. Sue is currently co-owner of a management consultancy and is provided training consultancy to the pharmaceutical industry. Sue is applying her business skills in the voluntary sector as chair of Home-Start Watford and Three Rivers, a charity supporting families with young children.

L&D Team of the Year

Adrian Snook

Director, Learning Accelerators Limited

Adrian Snook has worked close to the cutting-edge of innovation in learning and development for most of the last 28 years, having held roles within award-winning multimedia, virtual reality, elearning, performance consulting, technology and soft-skills training providers as well as senior positions within  FTSE100 corporates like Babcock International Group and Capita plc. Adrian graduated in 1996 with a BA Degree is Communication, Culture and Media from Leeds University.  He built his first career in the world of residential property with Hambro Countrywide plc, rapidly progressing to become a manager,  running a succession of branch offices at Congleton, Middlewich, Northwich and finally at Nantwich in Cheshire. In 1992 he moved into the learning space, setting up the independent video production provider Dragonfly Communication, specialising in producing MPEG digital video to service what were then ‘Computer Based Training’ (CBT) companies. Adrian went on to join one of his major clients as an employee in 1996 and then joined Stevenage-based Skillchange Systems in 1997, helping to grow this innovative CBT business to the point this was acquired by VEGA Group plc. In 2000 he was headhunted by US SaaS e-Learning pioneer DigitalThink Incorporated to extend their reach to the UK. One year later he joined The Training Foundation as Director of Corporate Development.  At that point this new organization was being spun-off from the Institute of IT Training as a start-up brand, twinned with the TAP framework of train-the-trainer courses and the brand-new new Certified e-Learning Professional (CeLP) programme. Several years of success culminated in the business being awarded its first Queen’s Award for Enterprise: Innovation in 2005.  Adrian was successively promoted to become Operations Director, Director of Professional Services and finally Deputy CEO.  In 2009 Adrian founded Learning Accelerators Limited, an independent consultancy offering specialist advice and support for learning, training and learning technology providers and their investors on strategies for commercial success.  Babcock International Group plc and Skills2Learn Limited,  a market-leading specialist in Virtual Reality learning solutions, were both valued early clients. After providing an increasing level of support as an external consultant Adrian joined the Skills2Learn team as Director of Learning Solutions in 2012, helping to grow the business to the point of acquisition by Babcock International Group in late 2013. He spent the next five years as Head of Consultancy for Babcock, leading an outstanding team of learning and development professionals working on challenging international learning and performance projects across land, sea, air and nuclear environments. Following  a six month role as Client Director with Capita Plc Adrian re-launched the Learning Accelerators brand in June 2019 and is now free to offer support as an independent consultant once again.

Best Apprenticeship Programme

Fay Gibbin 

Chief Executive Officer, Avail Learning Academy

Fay’s passion for quality, accessible training has driven her ambition to develop the UK’s workforce, through the delivery of apprenticeships and CPD, especially within childcare, care and clinical care.

Since starting her career as a childcare practitioner, Fay’s dedication to training has seen her champion courses and qualifications for more than 18 years. She has held many key roles within the training sector, including chairing the trailblazer group to develop the Early Years Educator Level 3 Apprenticeship Standard, qualification development for awarding organisations and undertaking EQA roles.

While CEO of BB Training (formerly Busy Bees Training), it received an ‘Outstanding’ by Ofsted, expanded into health and social care and clinical care and was awarded the prestigious Royal Princess Training Award.

In 2019, Fay founded Avail Learning Academy which provides online courses for early years, health and social care, clinical care, education, residential childcare and management. Fay launched Avail Learning Academy to provide online learning that inspires practitioners and carers to deliver outstanding care every day.

Fay is also a judge for the Training Journal Awards. In 2018 she was on the panel for the ‘Best Apprenticeship Programme’ and in 2019 she is the category’s champion, taking on an active role to encourage nominations of those employers who are leading the way to develop their team. 

Best Training Partnership

Melanie Lepine  

Group Head of Learning, Development & Talent | Domestic & General

Having worked in the HR & L&D world for over 20 years, across the Retail, Finance & Travel sectors, Melanie has developed a real passion for employee experience, strategic people development and leading through change. She has worked across multiple matrixed blue chip organizations both globally and locally.  Now working for Domestic and General as Group Head of Learning, Development & Talent, she is bringing together many facets of her previous experience.