The Thinkfluencers
Meet the team of industry leaders ready to share their insights and expertise.
Julia Harvie-Liddel | Global Head of Recruitment, The Access Group
Julia Harvie-Liddel is Global Head of Recruitment at The Access Group. She was previously Director, Talent Acquisition, EMEA at AWS, and Group Head of Talent Acquisition (TA) at BP.
Julia Harvie-Liddel is Global Head of Recruitment at The Access Group. She was previously Director, Talent Acquisition, EMEA at AWS, and Group Head of Talent Acquisition (TA) at BP. For the latter role, her responsibilities included developing and overseeing the implementation of BP’s resourcing strategy in service of the capabilities required to deliver the long term BP strategy. This included all recruitment at BP globally from school leaver to board room level.
Julia joined BP in 2011 as the Global Vice President for Upstream Resourcing, with a focus on driving standardization, modernization and quality of global hiring. This role expanded over time to cover all businesses and levels. Julia is based in London but travels for large parts of the year.
Julia spent the early part of her career working at Accenture. There she held a variety of resourcing and HR generalist roles – with both local and global remits.
Ed Kitchen | Managing Director, Uber Eats Australia & New Zealand
Prior to this, Ed was GM Operations, Grocery & New Verticals (ANZ) at Uber. He also worked as a management consultant for KPMG.
Ed Kitchen is Managing Director, Uber Eats Australia & New Zealand. He was previously, GM Operations, Grocery & New Verticals (ANZ) at Uber.
He has had the opportunity to work and study in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. Prior to joining Uber, Ed worked as a management consultant for KPMG, focusing on strategy and supply chain. He also worked as Group Projects Director for Common Purpose in London from 2014 to 2015.
Ed holds a Master in International Relations from Monash University, with a focus on conflict resolution and political economy. This included a semester on exchange at King's College London. He also has a Bachelors degrees in Commerce (Finance) and Arts (Politics and History) from the University of Melbourne.
Ed's passionate about cities, sustainability and helping young leaders thrive in an increasingly complex and technology-driven world. He lives in Melbourne with his girlfriend, Steph, and little puppy, Rosie.
Riaz Shah, OBE | Partner, Global Learning Leader, EY
Riaz Shah is a Partner at EY LLP, formerly Ernst & Young, and is responsible for learning. He leads strategic programs that help prepare EY's 315,000+ people for the Future of Work.
Riaz is passionate about social enterprises, particularly those focused on entrepreneurship and education. He is an active supporter of several social enterprise projects including Bright Ideas Trust, Prince of Wales' Mosaic programme and the Adab Trust.
Riaz chairs the One Degree Academy, a free school in North London.
He is a Chartered Accountant, and an alumnus of the University of Bradford and Harvard Business School. He and his wife, Jade, live in central London.
Riaz presented a TEDx Talk in 2020
Allan Ang | Regional Head of Talent & Leadership, Yum! Brands
Prior to his current role at Yum! Brands. Allan was the Director, Head of Talent UK & Ireland at Estee Leader Companies. He is a senior HR and Talent Executive with 15+ years HR experience.
Allan Ang is currently the Regional Head of Talent & Leadership at Yum! Brands. Prior to this, he was the Director, Head of Talent UK & Ireland at Estee Leader Companies. In this role he was responsible for all facets of the talent lifecycle (acquisition, learning and development, talent management, employee engagement, performance management and employer brand). He is a senior HR and Talent Executive with 15+ years HR experience working across multiple industries including Technology, Consumer & Beauty and Financial Services.
He is experienced in driving innovative HR & Talent interventions that deliver commercial impact. He is adept at aligning Talent strategies with business needs and has a track record of building and developing high-performing and diverse teams across multi-regional (Europe, Middle-East, Asia-Pacific) markets having worked and lived in several countries including Japan, China and Singapore.
Allan values and operates with a strong sense of partnership, trust, humility, transparency and empowerment.
Angela Bee Chan | Head of Operations Transformation and Culture, Operations and AI North America
From founding Hackathons International to creating her own role as Head of Innovation and Growth for Asia-Pacific at Schneider Electric, Angela stays ahead of the game.
From founding Hackathons International to creating her own role as Head of Innovation and Growth for Asia-Pacific at Schneider Electric, Angela has always found ways to stay ahead of the game. She firmly believes that innovation is in our DNA and of course no one’s more equipped to tell this story than Angela Bee Chan herself.
Angela is an Innovation Hacker. When she founded Hackathons Australia in 2014, it started out as a simple Facebook group with a big vision to activate Australian innovation and make Australia the world’s largest innovation hub. During COVID19 it branched out to create Hackathons International. She is also passionate about sustainability to allow people, buildings, and communities to reduce their carbon footprint and is currently Schneider Electric's Microgrid Sales Engagement Leader for North America.
Watch Angela's TED Talk on hackathons - how everyone can contribute to innovation.
Diana Janicki | Creative Director, Global Business Creative - CreativeX, Meta
A fearless happiness hunter, Diana has led the creative offering for Facebook's Global Business marketing and advertising community in EMEA for over three years.
Over the last two decades, Diana has championed digital creativity at some of the UK’s top agencies, including Agency.com, DLKW, Iris, Tribal DDB, RAPP, Publicis, and for many of the world’s top brands, including British Airways, Barclays, Dulux, IKEA, Unilever and Philips. Her work spans pure communications, through to transformational service design and branded utility. As you'll see below, she's won a few awards along the way too.
Outside of work, Diana's passions include mobile street photography, urban gardening, terrorising London on her Vespa, and escaping it all whenever humanly possible.
Awarded Creative Director with 18 years focused on digital innovation.
Cannes Lions and Eurobest Juror 2017, 2018, IPA convenor of judges 2017, and Creative Circle juror 2018, 2019.
Portfolio consisting of many of the world’s top brands.
Global brand-building experience across Europe, Australia and North America.
Proven track record of pitch winning creative.
Strong and inspiring team leadership.
Always passionate for beautiful, innovative, and engaging creativity.
Helen Webb OBE | Chief People Officer, WHSmith
Helen Webb is currently the Chief People Officer at WHSmith. Before, she’d joined the executive team at Co-op in April 2017 having previously been the HR Director for Food.
Helen Webb is currently the Chief People Officer at WHSmith. Before, she’d joined the executive team at Co-op in April 2017 having previously been the HR Director for Food.
Prior to joining the Co-op, Helen held a variety of senior roles for FTSE 100 companies including Sainsbury’s, Marks and Spencer and Aviva.
She’s passionate about diversity and is a strong women’s advocate, winning an ‘Everywoman Retail Ambassador’ award in 2015.
Sarah Cant | Senior Change Partner, Asos.com
Previous to this, in her role as Lead Associate at Willis Towers Watson, Sarah worked within the Communication and Change Management team.
Sarah Cant is currently the Change Partner at Asos.com. Previous to this, in her role as Lead Associate at Willis Towers Watson, Sarah worked within the Communication and Change Management team where they provided expertise to clients in change management and organisational effectiveness to drive employee engagement and help align behaviour with business results.
Sarah is an ambitious Organizational Psychology graduate, passionate about developing organisations, prioritising people and wellbeing; and a skilled project manager, taking a personable approach with clients.
David Chua | Chief Executive Officer, National Youth Council Singapore
David Chua is the Chief Executive Officer of the National Youth Council (NYC) Singapore, an agency under the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth (MCCY).
David Chua is the Chief Executive Officer of the National Youth Council (NYC) Singapore, an agency under the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth (MCCY). It coordinates youth policy, development and empowerment across government and partners with NGOs that run youth engagement and development programmes. NYC also operates Outward Bound Singapore (OBS) and Youth Corps Singapore to build resilience, a spirit of service and social cohesion in school cohorts of Singapore youth. Prior to joining NYC, David served for 22 years in the Singapore Armed Forces.
Hsern-Wei Ling | Partner, PwC's Academy
Hsern-Wei is a Partner at PwC Malaysia and has over 13 years experience in the areas of leadership development, organisational development and talent management.
In PwC, he drove "Future Skills" (an upskilling initiative), covering both digital skills and essential skills. He also led the transformation of the career journey framework, putting in place a new performance management framework, a new people value proposition and fostering a culture of continuous learning. Amongst other recognitions, PwC Malaysia has been awarded an HR Excellence Award in Learning & Development and in Leadership Development in 2018.
Hsern-Wei is a frequent speaker and thought leader in the field of learning & development and was selected as one of the "30 under 30" learning leaders at Elliott Masie's Learning 2011, a programme aimed at developing and spotlighting the next generation of learning leadership.
He holds a Master’s of Science in Occupational Psychology from University of Surrey, United Kingdom and is a member of the British Psychological Society. Before PwC, Hsern-Wei spent his working career in consulting and leadership development in London.
Amelia Carrozzi | Business Manager, Customer Service & Technology Transformation, Westpac
Amelia is a technology professional with over three years’ experience both domestically and internationally at Westpac.
Amelia is a technology professional with over three years’ experience both domestically and internationally at Westpac. She is a Change Manager in the Chief Operating Officer’s office at Westpac Banking Corporation, as well as being the Project Lead for the Westpac Young Technologist’s Scholarship.
Amelia is passionate about promoting the importance of diversity in the STEM and particularly Young Technologists.
Alvin Ng | Chief Operating Officer, ADI, APAC
Alvin Ng is currently the Chief Operating Officer, Smart Cities, APAC for Aboitiz Data Innovation. Previous to this, Alvin was the regional VP & General Manager of Johnson Control.
Alvin Ng is currently the Chief Operating Officer, Smart Cities, APAC for Aboitiz Data Innovation. Previous to this, Alvin was the regional VP & General Manager of Johnson Control, responsible for JCI’s Digital Solution across Asia Pacific & Japan. JCI Digital creates self-conscious, self-healing and occupant-driven building that unlocks new possibilities of how enterprises discover new insights, find efficiencies, and create other sources of value and sustainability.
Prior to JCI, Alvin was the General Manager of GE Digital chartered to lead GE Digital’s industrial software solutions and services that bring together brilliant machines, data, insights, and people to drive real-time connectivity and data intelligence through a digital thread in Asia.
He has over 20 years experience in sales management, business and market development, and has held a series of global leadership roles. Three of those years were spent in Europe.
With his extensive experience and passion for Digital Transformation and Advance Technologies (IOT and AI), he serves as an Adjunct Associate Professor at NTU Nanyang Business School and as a founding member of World Economic Forum’s Digital ASEAN Skills Task Force. He is also a Senior Career Fellow and plays the role of an executive coach Global Executive MBA and Full-Time MBA programme at Nanyang Business School.
Before joining Johnson Control and GE Digital, Alvin Ng was the Regional Vice President, Banking Products & Solutions, for Wincor Nixdorf. He leads the Software Business Unit for Asia Pacific & Japan and have the overall P&L responsibility for sales, consulting and professional services.
Alvin began his leadership journey in Cisco Systems as the Managing Director of Cisco Systems Global Enterprise Sales with responsibility over Cisco Systems’ largest Global Enterprise customers.
