People Partner for organisations that grow across borders.
Over 6 years of experience supporting software and financial technology organisations in hiring, developing and engaging their people across EMEA, the Americas and Asia-Pacific. Choose a project to view the full story.
I sit with senior leadership on organisation design, workforce planning, succession and the difficult decisions in between, and I stay for the delivery.
Change handled with care
I have led three restructures across three countries, with legal counsel, clear communication and real support for every person affected.
Programmes that grow people
Career frameworks, leadership programmes, sales and management academies, and the learning platforms underneath them.
Operations that scale
Onboarding, documentation and people data across more than 50 legal entities, designed so growth never outruns compliance.
One thread through every role: practical AI
I started using AI in people work early, and each role took it further. Always as an accelerator, always checked by a person before it reached anyone.
10x Banking
2022 to 2023
Drafting and improving job descriptions, and creating employer brand material for careers fairs.
HICX Solutions
2024 to today
Bringing AI into everyday people work: drafting, analysis, learning content, and an automated internal newsletter.
Revolut
2025 to today
AI-assisted response automation, reusable answers and country guidance that let onboarding scale without extra headcount.
Earlier orbits
Where the foundations came from: recruitment, research and frontline support.
Morgan McKinley
Recruitment Consultant, 2021 to 2022
Full hiring cycles across technology, financial services, biotechnology and automotive, including market mapping, salary benchmarking and package negotiation.
Hays
Human resources internship, 2019 to 2020
Employee relations, confidential records, payroll and benefits, recruitment, training coordination and reporting.
University of Surrey
Research Assistant, 2019 to 2021
International research across six European countries: participant recruitment, interviews, surveys and data analysis, plus Romanian and French translation.
National Centre for Domestic Violence
Advisor, 2019
A confidential caseload, support planning and coordination with caseworkers and community services. It taught me how to handle sensitive situations with care.
Education and credentials
Master's in Strategic Human Resource Management in Europe
Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași, in progress since 2024.
Bachelor's degree in Psychology, Upper Second-Class Honours
University of Surrey, 2017 to 2021. Focus on organisational and occupational psychology, with a dissertation on burnout and wellbeing in frontline hospital staff during the pandemic.
Other certifications
Certified Mental Health First Aider, Mental Health First Aid England, 2022.
How I work
Three things I keep coming back to, whatever the company.
Design the decision, not the policy
Most people problems repeat. The job is to make the right decision easy to make again, through clear rules, good guidance and managers who know what to do.
Fairness is a process, not an intention
Calibration, benchmarking and consistent documentation are what make people believe a decision was fair. Good intentions without a process do not survive scrutiny.
Change is a communication problem first
The legal steps have to be right, but what people remember is whether their manager could hold the conversation. That is where I spend the preparation time.
Automate the repeatable, protect the human part
Automation and AI belong in drafting, documentation and reporting. The conversation, the judgement call and the difficult message stay with a person.
Hiring the people who built the platform, then helping them grow.
10x builds core banking technology for banks. It was scaling fast in a regulated industry, so every hire and every programme had to meet strict security and audit standards while keeping up with growth.
Talent Development Partner2023
Talent Partner2022 to 2023
4learning platforms run as one library
3partner networks for inclusive hiring
3hiring markets researched in depth
2hiring regions: Europe and Asia-Pacific
01 · The brief
Hire fast in a regulated industry, then build the capability to keep up.
10x builds core banking technology for banks. It was scaling through funding rounds while meeting the security and audit standards its customers demand, so hiring and development had to move quickly and stand up to scrutiny at the same time.
I joined to hire, and ended up owning talent development: the academies, the leadership programmes and the learning platforms behind them.
The full story
Open any chapter to see what I did.
Hiring the teams that built the product
End-to-end hiring for product, engineering, sales and operations across Europe and Asia-Pacific, through key funding rounds.
Ran every stage of hiring, from the first briefing with the hiring manager to the signed offer and a smooth first day.
Worked to the strict security and audit standards a banking technology company is held to, so every hiring record was complete and defensible.
Supported relocation and immigration for international hires, working with Legal and external providers.
Built talent pipelines through targeted research, referral programmes and sourcing campaigns on LinkedIn, Otta and Cord.
Designed structured interview processes with hiring managers and ran workshops on fair, objective assessment.
Building the academies
Sales training, management development and learning academies, built with the business and external partners.
Led the global talent development strategy, joining learning, performance and succession planning into one plan.
Designed sales training programmes and a sales academy to build the skills of the commercial team.
Built sales development and management development programmes, delivered together with external training providers.
Created learning academies and training materials for different parts of the business.
Ran the new-joiner induction and weekly people inductions for everyone joining the company.
Managed the learning budget and the relationships with external training vendors.
Seeing talent clearly
Giving leaders an honest picture of skills, potential and succession risk.
Created an organisational heatmap showing development needs, skills gaps and succession risks across key teams.
Designed a streamlined process for identifying high-potential people and presenting them to business and people leaders.
Produced reports on talent reviews, learning plans, learning outcomes and succession readiness.
Presented progress at monthly town halls and senior leadership meetings.
Making hiring fairer
Opening the doors wider, so more people could see themselves at 10x.
Ran focus groups to rewrite job descriptions in inclusive language.
Delivered internal workshops on reasonable adjustments during the hiring process.
Built partnerships with Coding Black Females, Code First Girls and CodeBar to reach under-represented talent.
Led early careers work with universities: student placements, graduate schemes and internships.
Organised events and external workshops to raise the company's profile with candidates.
Deciding where to hire next
Research that helped leadership choose new hiring locations with confidence.
Analysed potential offshore hiring locations: salary levels, technology hubs, economic data and competitor presence.
Wrote internal research guides on the legal requirements for hiring in Europe, Australia and East Asia.
Built workforce dashboards and skills tables that showed gaps in the existing team and guided hiring priorities.
One learning library
Bringing every learning platform into one place people actually used.
Ran 360Learning, Udemy, O'Reilly and Insights Discovery as a single, curated digital learning library.
Set standards for how content was organised and measured, and tracked adoption and engagement.
Where AI came in
10x is where I first put AI to work in people processes, long before it was common.
Drafting and improving job descriptions so they were clearer, more inclusive and quicker to publish.
Creating employer brand material for careers fairs and external events.
From building learning to running the people function of a global software company.
HICX makes supplier management software for large enterprises. Its team works across the United Kingdom, the United States, the Philippines and more than twenty remote locations, through growth, restructuring and new systems.
Senior Human Resources Business Partner, on contract2026 to today
Human Resources Business Partner2024 to 2026
Global Talent Development and Talent Acquisition Specialist2024
100%self-assessment completion in the annual review cycle
99%manager review completion
3restructures led across three countries
2people platforms implemented
The projects
Four pieces of work with their own pages.
Each one opens in full: the problem, the design, what it looks like in practice and what came out of it.
Revolut is a global financial technology company. Every new joiner has to start compliant and on time, in any one of more than 50 legal entities, and every record has to stand up to an audit.
People Specialist, Global People Operations2025 to today
1,500+onboardings supported since August 2025
100+onboardings a week
30+countries
50+legal entities
01 · The challenge
Global hiring does not break because of one process. It breaks at the handoffs.
Every person who accepts an offer needs a contract, background screening, right-to-work evidence, immigration clearance, payroll readiness, sometimes a medical check, and equipment in their hands, all in the right order.
I have supported more than 1,500 onboardings since August 2025, across more than 30 countries and more than 50 legal entities, at over 100 a week.
The difficulty is not the volume. It is that every country asks for something different, and a rule that works in one market is wrong in the next.
Romania
Medical check, right to work, payroll set-up, contract
Spain
Residence number, social security number, tax registration, banking, immigration
Portugal
Tax number, social security number, contracting
United Kingdom
Right to work, screening, payroll
Philippines
Medical check, police clearance, equipment
United States
Employment eligibility, payroll, documentation
02 · Where the time goes
From signed offer to signed contract, the clock is already running.
14.5
days from signed offer to signed contract in the second quarter, against an internal target of 8.5 days. My work sits inside that gap: turning signed offers into compliant, contract-ready hires and finding blockers early enough to protect the start date.
Offer signed
→
Documentation
→
Screening
→
Local compliance
→
Contract
→
Payroll
→
Equipment
→
Day one
A delay at any one of those stages moves somebody's first day, so the whole chain has to be visible at once.
03 · Finding the friction
I treat onboarding cases as a system, not a queue.
Across hundreds of cases the same blockers keep coming back. Once they have names, you can design around them instead of firefighting each one.
Local bank details, tax and social security information
Medical and equipment
Country-specific certification, shipping lead times, relocation
04 · Turning what people know into infrastructure
From solving the same problem twice to a workflow anyone can follow.
61
process steps mapped across the Romanian pre-onboarding journey, covering two employing entities.
I mapped the full Romanian lifecycle and translated the legal and operational requirements into one structured workflow: candidate documentation, medical clearance, right to work, background screening, contracting, people system updates and pre-start readiness.
Candidate data
→
Documentation
→
Medical referral
→
Background screening
→
Contract readiness
→
People system validation
→
Payroll readiness
→
Day-one clearance
8 hoursto update the people record after a change
16 hoursto confirm pre-start readiness
3 to 4 weekstypical background-check lifecycle
05 · Designing for exceptions
Global processes need rules. Global people operations needs judgement.
A few anonymised examples of the calls that do not fit the standard path.
Spain · immigration
Residence approval delayed past the planned start date.
Assessed the impact on employment readiness
Coordinated a revised start date
Kept the candidate informed throughout
Realigned documentation and relocation dependencies
Portugal · social security
Tax and social security numbers blocking progression.
Identified the correct order of prerequisites
Clarified the documentation route
Prevented premature contracting and a start date that could not hold
Background screening
An employer reference unavailable through the standard corporate channel.
Reviewed the alternative evidence permitted
Validated contract and payslip documentation
Employment verification approved without weakening the control
Contract data
Offer and employment contract carried different job titles.
Spotted the discrepancy before signature
Escalated for correction
Corrective annex initiated
06 · Operating at scale
Speed, candidate experience and compliance, at the same time.
1,500+onboardings supported
100+onboardings a week
30+countries
50+legal entities
99.79%operational excellence score
100%delivery score, against a 97% target
The balance is the job: none of those three can be traded away, and a mandatory employment control is never weakened to protect a start date.
07 · What I built
Four things that outlast any single case.
Country playbooks
Market-specific requirements turned into structured operational guidance.
Decision logic
What counts as a blocker, what can run in parallel, and what has to be escalated.
Candidate communications
Standard messages for documentation, screening, immigration, contracting and start-date changes.
Knowledge base
Recurring questions and edge cases turned into reusable answers and guidance.
08 · What I take from it
High-volume people operations is not about processing faster. It is about designing systems that make the right decision easy to make again.
Working across this environment sharpened how I spot operational risk, turn complex employment requirements into processes people can follow, and protect the candidate experience inside tightly controlled conditions.
Where AI and automation came in
High volume only works when the repeatable parts run themselves.
AI-assisted response automation for onboarding questions, so new joiners and teams get fast, consistent answers.
Reusable communications, frequently asked questions and country-specific guidance.
The result: more consistent onboarding and better audit readiness, without adding operational headcount.
From a yearly review exercise to a continuous operating system.
Redesigning performance management so that goals, feedback, development, calibration and reward reinforce each other across the whole year.
100%self-assessment completion
99%manager review completion
41people in the review population
4connected processes
01 · The challenge
Make performance part of how the company operates, not an event in December.
The objective was never just to run a review cycle. It was to build a rhythm where goals, feedback, development and reward decisions reinforce each other all year.
Move beyond year-end evaluation
Regular conversations so people get direction and coaching while the outcome can still change.
Strengthen accountability
Clear ownership of goals, when they are refreshed, and how managers follow through.
Connect the decisions
Performance evidence, calibration, development and pay brought into one coherent annual system.
02 · The annual operating rhythm
One year, four connected processes, visible to everyone.
Employees and managers can see when each conversation happens, how the cycles connect and what has to be finished before the next decision point.
January to March
April to June
July to September
October to December
Performance
Year-end 360-degree review in January, leadership calibration in February
Quarterly check-in in April, calibration in May
Quarterly check-in in July, calibration in August
Quarterly check-in in October, calibration in November
Goals
Company, team and individual goals aligned
Individual goals refreshed
Individual goals refreshed
Individual goals refreshed
Reward
Compensation and promotion cycle in March
Approved changes take effect in April
Development
Personal development goals set in January
Development goals reviewed in April, full plan reviewed in June
Development goals reviewed in July
Development goals reviewed in October
Portfolio note. This is a representation of the operating model I designed. Months illustrate the rhythm and can vary between cycles.
03 · The architecture
Four processes with explicit handoffs between them.
Performance · review and coach
A full 360-degree review closes the prior year, followed by lighter quarterly check-ins and ongoing manager coaching.
Goals · align and refresh
Company priorities cascade into team direction and individual contribution, with individual goals revisited every quarter.
Reward · calibrate and decide
Performance evidence informs structured compensation and promotion discussions, supported by leadership calibration.
Development · build capability
Development goals stay active all year, with the longer-term plan formally revisited each year.
04 · The goal cascade
Strategy you can trace to one person's week.
The architecture keeps a clear line of sight from company priorities to individual contribution, and keeps development goals separate from delivery goals.
Company goals, set by department leaders
→
Team goals, set by managers
→
Individual goals, agreed with the manager
Company goals
Define the strategic priorities for the year, aligned to company direction.
Team goals
Translate those priorities into measurable direction for each team.
Individual goals
Business goals connected to team delivery, plus separate development goals for skills and growth.
05 · Adoption
The process only works when managers know exactly what to do.
The transformation paired system design with enablement, clear deadlines and calibration, which removed ambiguity about who owned what.
Clear cycle communications
Process requirements turned into simple milestones, owners and deadlines.
Manager enablement
Guidance and training on reviews, goals, feedback, performance conversations and pay recommendations.
Leadership calibration
Calibration after each review point to challenge outliers and support more equitable decisions.
06 · Results
The cycle completed, by the people it was designed for.
100%self-assessment completion
99%manager review completion
41people in the annual review population
4connected people processes
A performance system is only as good as the number of managers who finish it properly.
A scalable career architecture for a global software company: clearer expectations, consistent progression criteria and one reference point for performance, development and leadership.
10functions covered
4career tracks
10levels
3capability dimensions
01 · The challenge
Creating clarity as the organisation scales.
As teams and roles evolve, people and managers need a shared understanding of expectations, progression and what genuinely separates one level from the next.
Career clarity
Transparent paths, so people can see what development and increased scope look like in their discipline.
Consistency
A common reference point for managers judging capability, performance and readiness.
Scalability
One architecture that works across functions while keeping each discipline's specialist expectations.
02 · Three dimensions of capability
Progression measured by capability, not tenure or job title.
Knowledge
The depth and breadth of functional expertise needed to operate effectively at each level.
Delivery
How responsibility, autonomy, complexity and organisational impact increase with progression.
Communication and leadership
The path from effective collaboration through influence to formal people leadership.
03 · The career architecture
Progression without forcing everyone into management.
Individual contribution, team leadership and people management are separate tracks, so a promotion reflects real scope rather than title inflation.
Individual contributor
IC1Developing capability
IC2Independent contributor
IC3Senior contributor
Team leadership
TL1Emerging leadership scope
TL2Established team leadership
TL3Advanced leadership scope
Management
M1People management
M2Broader organisational scope
M3Senior functional leadership
Executive
M4Vice-president and executive leadership
04 · What it looks like in practice
Open a level to see the expectations behind it.
Each functional framework translates the common architecture into observable expectations, so development, performance and progression conversations start from the same place.
Associate, developing contributor
Builds foundational functional capability, delivers defined work with guidance and grows confidence inside established processes.
Knowledge
Develops understanding of core functional concepts, tools, processes and relevant product or domain knowledge.
Combines strong functional capability with responsibility for coordinating others and developing team capability.
Knowledge
Applies broad functional expertise to guide decisions, resolve complex issues and strengthen the team.
Leadership signalEnables expertise in others.
Delivery
Coordinates delivery across several contributors and balances individual execution with team outcomes.
Leadership signalOwns collective outcomes.
Communication and leadership
Provides direction, constructive feedback and day-to-day leadership, creating clarity on priorities.
Leadership signalBuilds team effectiveness.
People manager
Accountable for team performance, capability and development, translating company priorities into clear team outcomes.
Knowledge
Maintains enough functional and organisational understanding to guide the team and make sound decisions.
Management signalConnects expertise with organisational priorities.
Delivery
Creates accountability for team outcomes, allocates resources and manages performance against objectives.
Management signalDelivers through others.
Communication and leadership
Sets direction, coaches team members, manages performance and builds an environment that supports development.
Management signalBuilds sustainable team capability.
Portfolio note. This is an illustrative, sanitised version. Company-specific competency statements and confidential organisational detail have been intentionally abstracted.
05 · One architecture, many disciplines
Standardise the architecture, not the profession.
The core model creates consistency across the company, while the expectations inside it are written for the realities of each function.
Product
Implementation
Project management office
Support
Security
Marketing
Engineering
Quality assurance
Development operations
Front end
Every function shares one philosophy of progression while keeping the specialist capabilities it actually needs.
06 · From architecture to adoption
Writing competencies was the easy part.
The framework had to be understandable, credible to functional leaders and usable inside real people decisions.
Diagnose
→
Architect
→
Functionalise
→
Validate
→
Embed
Diagnose
Review roles, organisational needs and the progression problems people actually raise.
Architect
Set the levels, the progression logic and the shared capability dimensions.
Functionalise
Translate the architecture into relevant expectations discipline by discipline.
Validate
Partner with functional leaders to challenge and refine what good looks like.
Embed
Connect the framework to performance, development and talent processes.
Maintain
Keep it current as roles and the organisation change.
07 · Why it matters
More than a career framework.
It became the layer everything else could rest on.
Clearer progression
People can see what is expected as responsibility and impact increase.
Better manager conversations
Managers have a structured reference point for performance, development and career discussions.
More consistent decisions
Shared expectations support stronger conversations about readiness and progression.
Connected people systems
Career expectations feed performance management, learning pathways, leadership development and succession.
Practical leadership development, built around the moments managers actually face.
A recurring manager development forum combining live learning, peer discussion, realistic people scenarios and digital reinforcement, for new managers, experienced leaders and the future senior-leadership population.
80%+participation in every live session
3audiences served
4stages in the learning loop
6recurring session themes
01 · The purpose
From manager onboarding to sustained leadership capability.
ELEVATE closes the gap between knowing a management process and being able to lead through it. The curriculum follows the real manager lifecycle: taking on people responsibility, running one-to-ones and goals, managing performance, giving feedback, making fair decisions, delegating, hiring and leading distributed teams.
New leaders
A practical operating model for one-to-ones, goals, performance, underperformance, salary reviews and the systems around them.
Established managers
Live scenarios and peer discussion to sharpen feedback, delegation, accountability and difficult conversations.
Senior pipeline
Leaders who can coach others and make consistent people decisions across functions and locations.
02 · The learning rhythm
A session that continues after the session ends.
Each live workshop sits inside a wider curriculum: managers meet a model live, practise it with peers, apply it in their teams and return to digital material afterwards.
Learn, in a live facilitated session
→
Practise, through scenarios and peer discussion
→
Apply, back in the team
→
Reinforce, in the learning platform
03 · Inside the curriculum
Sessions built on the company's own management moments, not abstract theory.
New manager essentials
The manager rhythm across the year: how day-to-day management connects to goals, one-to-ones, quarterly performance discussions, the annual review and the salary cycle.
Why one-to-ones matter
Recurring one-to-ones used for alignment, coaching, feedback, development and spotting blockers early, rather than status reporting.
Performance and pay
How the 360-degree review brings together self-reflection, peer input, manager assessment and progress against goals, and how an in-year salary change differs from the annual review.
Difficult conversations
Feedback built on situation, behaviour and impact, practised live: what happened, what was observed, and the effect it had.
Quarterly light-touch reviews
Shorter check-ins that keep goals, feedback and development current between the annual review points.
A space that keeps going
ELEVATE as a recurring forum: learn from peers, discuss real scenarios and turn management challenges into shared learning.
04 · Participation
Managers kept coming back.
80%+
participation in every live session, across a globally distributed manager population.
Portfolio note. Session content is described at a level that contains no confidential company material.
Twelve months. Five phases. One sponsored project.
An invitation-only programme for people nominated by their manager and confirmed by a panel, designed to turn potential into evidence of change.
12months end to end
5development phases
48curriculum items
2mentor sessions a month
01 · The design
Twelve months, five phases, in a deliberate order.
Participants are nominated by their manager and confirmed by a panel of people and senior leaders. The sequence matters: you lead yourself before you lead people, and you understand the business before you are handed a strategic project.
Phase 1 Months 1–2
Self and foundations
A 360-degree leadership assessment and debrief, a kick-off workshop and leadership philosophy, communication and emotional intelligence, and a mentor matched with a first session held.
Phase 2 Months 3–4
People leadership
Hiring, one-to-ones and performance, feedback and difficult conversations, inclusive leadership and team culture. Deliverable: lead a short cross-functional initiative.
Phase 3 Months 5–7
Business understanding
Finance, strategy and customer insight, shadowing across Finance, Product and Sales, stakeholder management and influence. Checkpoint: a mid-programme review with the sponsor.
Phase 4 Months 8–10
Strategic project and execution
A team project with an executive sponsor, execution planning and risk, storytelling and executive presentation skills. Deliverable: charter, plan and a leadership-panel presentation.
Phase 5 Months 11–12
Reflection and next steps
A capstone workshop and peer coaching circles, a second 360-degree assessment against the baseline, career pathing. Deliverable: a 12 to 24 month development plan.
02 · The commitment
An investment in the participant, and from them.
Roughly four to six hours a month outside the day job, plus project time in phase four.
Live sessions
Attend the workshops for the current phase.
Digital learning
Complete each phase's courses before the phase closes.
Mentoring
Two sessions of 45 to 60 minutes a month, with an agenda the participant prepares.
Project
Own a workstream on the cohort's sponsored initiative.
Reflection
Keep the development plan current and act on the feedback received.
Ownership
The programme gives structure; the participant drives it.
03 · How growth is measured
Nothing here is pass or fail. The point is evidence of change.
360-degree feedback, twice
Manager, peer and team ratings at kick-off and at close. The baseline stays private to the participant and their coach.
Formative checks
Short quizzes and reflection prompts after modules, plus coach and peer check-ins.
Simulations and role-play
Live conflict, crisis and feedback scenarios observed by assessors: skill in application, not theory.
Project evaluation
The phase four project reviewed against a published rubric by the sponsor and the panel.
04 · Mentoring
A senior leader outside the reporting line, for the full year.
Mentors are briefed and trained on remote mentoring. The participant drives the agenda; the mentor brings perspective, not homework.
The mentor brings
Guidance towards stated goals, honest feedback, exposure to strategic conversations, introductions and accountability.
The participant brings
Clear goals, a prepared agenda, ownership of their development, action on feedback and respect for the mentor's time.
The rhythm
At least two sessions a month, 45 to 60 minutes, logged as a recurring meeting, with a quarterly check-in with the coordinator.
