HR Director Boardroom

Date: Thursday 20th March 2025
Time: 8:30am – 10:00am
Topic: Busting Gender Myths and Taking Action to Elevate Women into Senior Leadership Roles

Key takeaways:

1. A deep dive into one of the common myths and misconceptions about women in leadership,
2. Concrete steps for HR leaders to identify and eliminate conscious and unconscious biases in hiring, promotions, and career development.
3. How to design and implement leadership development initiatives that specifically nurture and support women’s advancement within organisations.
4. Equip HR leaders with strategies to engage men as allies in the effort to elevate women into senior leadership roles
5. How to create measurable goals and hold senior leadership accountable for progress toward gender diversity in leadership.
6. Address how gender intersects with other factors like race, ethnicity, age, and disability, which can create unique barriers to leadership.

Simon Rice-Birchall

Simon is a Partner in Evershed Sutherland’s Employment group. Simon has considerable experience in employment tribunal litigation and has a reputation in the marketplace for his discrimination law knowledge. Simon has been responsible for a number of high-profile discrimination cases over the last 20 years and continues to build this area of his practice. In addition, Simon’s contentious workload includes unfair dismissal, whistleblowing and executive terminations.

Simon qualified in 1992 and has been an employment litigator all his career. In addition to his contentious practice, Simon also gives advice in relation to non-contentious matters such as the implications of the TUPE regulations in many different change situations, issues relating to proposals to change terms and conditions of employment and large scale redundancy exercises.

Iain Lewis

Iain Lewis is an inspiring and accomplished Chief People Officer with over 25 years of experience delivering commercial value and driving transformational change across some of the UK’s most prominent organisations. A Fellow of the CIPD, Iain has established himself as a thought leader in the HR field, with a proven track record of creating inclusive cultures, leading HR transformations, and embedding Diversity & Inclusion strategies that deliver measurable results.

Throughout his career, Iain has held senior HR leadership roles at industry-leading organisations, including Connells Group, Priory Group, Howdens Joinery, and Travis Perkins. Most recently, as Chief People Officer at Connells Group, Iain was instrumental in redesigning the Group Executive, integrating central functions following a major acquisition, and spearheading a Group-wide Diversity & Inclusion strategy. Under his leadership, the organisation implemented proactive talent mapping, succession planning processes, and bespoke leadership models, ensuring its future readiness and commercial success.

Iain’s expertise spans creating value-driven HR strategies, fostering leadership development, and building high-performing People teams. Notably, at Priory Group, he restructured the Learning & Development function, creating a bespoke leadership model and driving compliance and safety during the COVID-19 crisis. His approach to HR transformation has consistently enhanced performance and retention while safeguarding organisational culture during periods of rapid change.

An advocate for progressive leadership, Iain emphasises the importance of engaging male allies, challenging unconscious biases, and designing adaptive work environments to support women and underrepresented groups in their career journeys. He combines strategic insight with operational excellence to inspire HR leaders to drive meaningful change.

Iain shares actionable strategies and real-world insights to empower HR leaders to create sustainable, inclusive workplaces. His commitment to advancing talent development and fostering equity in leadership roles makes him a powerful voice in the HR community.

We appreciate it is not always possible for all our HR leaders to attend our popular Boardroom events and therefore after each debate notes are collated and shared with the HR Community to help inspire thought leadership and conversation with likeminded people.