Securing your A-Team

Jon is Sales Director and Director of People, Places & Purpose at Tyler Grange, and Environmental Consultancy, with offices in Manchester and across the UK. Jon has been instrumental in building the company culture at Tyler Grange and champions their employer brand. He’s been key in launching many initiatives including a Tyler Grange Partner Network, community projects and most recently, moving the company to a 4 day week model as part of the national 4 day week pilot programme. Jon has a wealth of experience in building a fantastic place to work, and how to use this as a competitive advantage to attract the best talent.

Lorna Culpin is the Co-Chair of the newly launched EY Social Mobility Network. She comes from a career in DE&I most recently working in EY’s neuro-diverse centre if excellence. Having previously spent 7 years with Teach First, a Social Mobility focused charity she is passionate about Social Mobility and supporting those within the work place from all backgrounds.

As a joint venture between EY and the EY Foundation the Network aims to provide a belonging and wellbeing space to those who identify from a lower Socio-Economic background at EY and for allies to learn. In doing so EY have taken an important step forward for their DE&I agenda and well being agenda. Already we are seeing a number of important topics being addressed including accent bias, cost of living and career progression.

For the last 6 years I led the Co-op’s wellbeing team and revolutionised the Co-op’s approach to supporting the wellbeing of its c62,000 colleagues across retail, logistics, funeralcare and support functions. We put wellbeing on the map at the Co-op and saw positive growth, year-on-year, of our colleagues feeling empowered to take control of their own wellbeing using the tools, products and services we provided. In late 2022 I joined the team at YuLife where I’m now using my experience to help others evolve their wellbeing thinking and supporting the YuLife mission to help everyone to live their best lives.

Nikki O’Sullivan is the Chief of Staff for BNY Mellon, London & Manchester – a region of 5000 people, working closely under the Site Executive’s overseeing the Management Office team. This involves overseeing a plethora of projects, organising a variety of events, hosting senior visits and activities across the two locations in order to: maximise employee engagement, develop the BNY Mellon presence within the cities and most importantly, ensure that our clients’ needs are met by supporting the Leadership Team to execute on the overall site strategies. Nikki achieves results directly through her team and by influence and collaboration.

Nikki joined BNY Mellon in January 2011 within Human Resources as a Recruiter. Since then, she has progressed within the bank through several increasingly senior roles, including Group HR Service Delivery Manager, where she led a large service operations team, and as Principal in Third party Governance, where she had oversight responsibility for the operations team across Inter– Affiliates and External Vendor Engagements, ensuring compliance with local regulation within each jurisdiction.

Her background and skills very much focuses on, clients, people and service delivery. She is passionate about equality, diversity and inclusion and is the executive sponsor for our internal employee resource group ‘HEART’ which focuses on elevating awareness of disabilities, promoting a safe, respectful welcomed working environment where all employees feel included.

Zoe is director at Agent Academy, a North West based social business, that is focused on upskilling future talent, especially helping those from underrepresented groups, to secure employment in emerging job roles.

Zoe champions a people-powered approach to overcoming the skills challenges faced by employers, that’s why all of Agent Academy’s programmes are practical and industry-led.  Over 500 leaders and experts contribute to the design and delivery of curriculum and learning.

Agent Academy recently hosted a Climate Change Careers event which was attended by over 300 young people and showcased emerging ‘green jobs’ across all sectors. Zoe works with leaders to identify the retraining needs of future talent and as such has gained insight into the scale of opportunities that exist as decarbonisation continues to transform business practices.