Meet the 2025 Speakers

Alyson Fadil has been the Chief People Officer at Matalan since February 2024. She was previously  the Chief People Officer at N Brown Group for just over five years and is also a part time Non-Exec Director & Chair of Remuneration for Marks Electrical Group. She was previously Group People Director at Missguided and before that, she was Group People Director at Sofology for nearly five years. She started her career as a Dual Site – Senior HR Manager with Selfridges in 2006. A true business partner to the executive team – working tirelessly to ensure that the people strategy is aligned to the commerciality of the business – she is accountable for the overall HR/ people proposition, including Learning & Development and Internal Communications, within a fast paced, customer service, commercially driven business. Alyson is a mentor for the Women Leaders Association and the MBA Gold programme for Manchester University, and also a visiting Fellow of the Business School at Bolton University.

Perry Timms has over 30 years of experience in business change and performance, with the last 21 in HR/Organisation Development. He ranked Number 1 in HR’s Most Influential Thinkers 2022 (his fifth inclusion in that list) and is now in the HR Most Influential Hall of Fame. He is a 4x Engagement 101 Global Influencer, a 4x Guest Professor, a 2x TEDx speaker, and a 2x Author (with his third book published in August 2025). Perry is a Chartered Member of the CIPD, a Fellow of the RSA and in 2024 was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award for his work in self-managed, democratic organisations. and a Global Culture Icon Award.

Faye Ryder-Humphries is the Head of People at Wingstop UK, where she oversees the brand’s growing workforce, cultivating a positive and engaged culture. She leads on areas such as talent acquisition, DE&I, and wellbeing, and is passionate about nurturing career development within the hospitality industry via Learning & Development frameworks. Prior to joining Wingstop UK, Faye held senior HR & operational roles in several retail and hospitality businesses, including EG Group and TGI Fridays, and worked across America and Australia. Faye holds a MA in Human Resources Management.

Sanish Mondkar is the founder and CEO of Legion. He has over 20 years of leadership experience in products, technology, and cloud operations. Before founding Legion, Sanish was the EVP and Chief Product Officer at SAP with responsibility for all procurement and business network areas, representing over $1B of annual revenue.  Prior to SAP, Sanish was Chief Product Officer and EVP at Ariba, where he was responsible for the creation of several market-leading enterprise products, including the Ariba Network from the ground up, which is the largest business network in the procurement space. Sanish holds a Bachelor of Computer Engineering from Pune University and a Masters of Computer Science from Cornell University.

 

Darren Sanderson-Williams has been General Manager with Specsavers since March 2024. He was previously the Global Head of Leasing for Impress where he led site selection, negotiation and legals to lease in all seven markets. Darren is the Founder of Williams Harding Consulting working with start-ups, expanding and distressed businesses, primarily in retail and hospitality, but also outside of these sectors. In addition, he is Non-Executive Chairman of men’s skincare company Scrubd and a Trustee at Action 4 Youth. Darren has formerly held senior roles in several retail and hospitality businesses, including Hotel Chocolat and Unilever. He currently holds two ambassadorial roles, including Schools Role Model for Stonewall, and fundraising and awareness for Target Ovarian Cancer. Williams Harding also partners with a Bulgarian dog rescue centre.

David Nottage is the Head of the Employer Brand and Talent Acquisition Department at Footasylum. A former professional footballer, who went into marketing and then into talent acquisition, he has a degree and masters in Public Relations and Marketing, as well as being CIPD Level 7 qualified. David has always loved tech, he has coded and built websites – even as far back as using Dreamweaver. He is an RL100 Core member – passionate about candidate experience, employer branding and creating campaigns to attract the best talent.

David Anderson is Rough Trade’s Head of People. He joined Rough Trade over two years ago as Head of Retail, marking the beginning of a new chapter – transitioning into his current role as Head of People, where he redefined what it means to manage people in retail. David’s ethos is to focus on learning and development, integrity, and community engagement. His efforts underscore a commitment to the growth of the business and every individual within it. David prioritises learning and development to ensure that Rough Trade’s staff are empowered individuals with a clear path to growth. His work extends beyond the internal mechanisms of HR, improving aspects like mental health and wellbeing. Their partnership with the Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) to combat suicide was a proud moment showing the power of community engagement and support. Before joining Rough Trade, David spent 15 years at Gap Outlet, where he managed stores across the UK.

Narinder (Nick) Singh is a seasoned professional with over 15 years of dedicated service to IKEA. Starting as a part-time sales assistant at 19, Nick’s journey within the company has been marked by dynamic leadership and a commitment to fostering diversity and inclusion. Through various roles, including that of People & Culture Manager and his current position as Deputy Market Manager, Nick has implemented innovative initiatives to increase representation of underrepresented groups within the IKEA workforce, earning recognition for his positive hiring practices.

As founder of Six Connections, Dave Scholes is a conversation starter. Tackling mental health as a legacy for his mate, he drives a purpose to make the conversations that we all need from time to time a normal part of the everyday. Starting with one conversation, Six Connections have helped 1000’s of people to open up with family, friends and colleagues and start healthy conversations in their space. Conversations before crisis – in the pub, in work or at the football. Incorporating creative training sessions and ‘conversation starting’ retail products, Six Connections are doing this differently. Creating genuine cultures of care with sustainable and practical outcomes – they save lives.

Liz Jewitt-Cross was until recently interim Chief People Officer with Pepco, she is also an HR and organisation change adviser, with a global career spanning multiple industry sectors including retail and fashion with many of our best known and loved business brands. Most recently, Liz assisted New Look, the UK’s largest value fashion retailer for 18-45 year old women and Drapers retailer of the year 2022, as their Interim Chief for People and Transformation, leading the reset of the company’s people strategy to a new omnichannel operating model. Prior to this, Liz worked for two years as Interim Chief HR Officer for McArthurGlen,the UK and Europe’s largest designer shopping outlet centre group who host over 1000 luxury and retail brands and 30,000 retail employees, supporting their digital transformation, market growth and the transition to a new HR operating model with new Workday systems. Liz has enjoyed a successful career specialising in roles and projects helping to lead or advise upon rapid growth, acquisitions and turnarounds as well as major change including one of the largest IT outsourcing ventures of its time for Sainsbury’s; the creation through acquisition of the Mosaic fashions group; American Express’ industry-first multi-lingual global Corporate Travel Centre in France; the successful relicensing and restructuring bid for National Lottery, and the successful past rescue of Jaeger.

As Partner & National Head of Employment at Irwin Mitchell, Elaine Huttley has considerable experience of contentious and non-contentious employment work including tribunal litigation and advocacy, advising clients on day to day employment issues including disciplinary and grievance issues, drafting contracts and policy documents. She also deals with corporate transactional work and has a particular interest in high level employment disputes involving shareholders and/or senior executives.

Matthew Gough joins the event as a HR professional but also in his capacity as a local primary school governor, of which he has been doing for the last year and a half. In this role and his day job, Matthew comes across many of the challenges that will be discussed at this event, from AI to D&I. He has been working in HR for seven years across a multitude of industries including retail.