Innovation Dialogue 5 - The Change Challenge

Sam leads PA's Agile team and has led some of the largest transitions to Agile in the world. Sam has developed PA's transformation approach that combines the PA's world class capabilities in Agile, Change Management, Cultural Change and Business Design. This unique approach is the only one on the market capable of addressing Agile transformation challenges in the world's largest organisations. Sam is expert in all modern delivery approaches and has in the past worked as an Enterprise Architect, Solution Architect, Delivery Manager and developer. This means Sam is able to bring hands-on experience of delivery to bear when working in transformation roles.

Jacqueline Linke currently works as the Manager of Innovation & Strategy for Sydney Trains where she is responsible for designing and delivering an enterprise wide strategy aligned with Transport for New South Wales to spur innovation into every corner of the organisation.

Jacqueline's empowering approach to building culture through developing leaders and realising individuals’ potential, comes from years of coaching and facilitation in the public and private sector in all aspects of soft skills behavioural training, including customer service, stakeholder management, communication skills, cognitive agility, emotional intelligence, storytelling, presentation skills, creative thinking, negotiation skills, influencing and leadership skills.

Shilpa Bhandarkar is the Head of Innovation for Linklaters, responsible for catalysing change and innovation at the Firm. Shilpa started her career as a project finance lawyer but her interest in technology and entrepreneurship led her to found, build and sell a mobile app company as well as grow a LegalTech start-up before re-joining Linklaters in her current role. 

Her responsibilities as the Head of Innovation include fostering a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship within the firm, leading the firm’s strategy on emerging areas such as Artificial Intelligence, Data, Blockchain and Smart Contracts, and engaging with legal tech start-ups and academia to stay at the forefront of legal sector developments and thought leadership.

As SVP of Innovation at Thomson Reuters, Katherine Manuel is helping the company transition from an international holding company to a global innovator creating partnerships and growth opportunities for its customers, employees and shareholders.

Prior to this role, Katherine was a member of the Corporate Strategy team, where she worked with corporate leadership to create a long-term strategy based on market understanding and access to customers and products.

Katherine has been with Thomson Reuters for nearly 11 years, holding senior positions within both the Legal and Tax & Accounting businesses as well as leading Technology Strategy & Enterprise Architecture for Healthcare & Science. From there, she joined the Office of the CEO, where she worked on various projects within the News division and the company-wide Transformation program.

Before joining Thomson Reuters, Katherine worked for Accenture, focusing on the Media, Entertainment and Telecom industries. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from Davidson College and a Masters of Business Administration from Duke University. She sits on the Advisory Boards of Duke University’s The Fuqua School of Business’ Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, as well as SOAR Triangle, a non-profit established to support women-led startups in the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina.

Gavin James is Head of Digital Adoption and Innovation at the Department for Transport. Gavin started his career as a policy professional in 2008. His passion for learning has taken him to diverse areas, including climate change strategy, London Olympics coordination and EU transport law. More recently he was responsible for telecoms, technology and data on the railway. It was in this role that he saw the impact that a few talented technologists can have when given the freedom to experiment. As a result he founded the DfT Lab, an innovation team with DfT. The Lab is working to prototype and develop technologies to make DfT the world leader in the governance of transport. Gavin is also proud to work at DfT, one of The Times Top 50 Employers for Women 2017 and Business in the Community's Best Employers for Race and an accredited Disability Confident Leader.

Amy Dickinson has been an HR and Change Management specialist for over fifteen years, including two years working for an investment bank. She has significant experience supporting large-scale IT-enabled business change programmes, including leading the business change for the implementation of global learning services for 100k learners globally at BP, and leading a team of 35 to deliver business change to support the digital transformation of the UK’s immigration service for 10k operational staff and millions of customers worldwide.

Amy regularly works in agile and digital environments, supporting organisations to build organisational agility. She has delivered agile leadership coaching and development for organisations including the Home Office, BEC, Ofsted and UK Security Services. She is an accredited Scaled Agilist and ICP Certified Professional in Agile Talent.

David Mitchell  (or Mitch as he’s more commonly known) is a business growth consultant with 16 years’ experience of driving growth at some of the world’s most cutting edge digital product and innovation consultancies including ustwo and Futurice.

His specialism lies in creating collaborative working relationships with global brands and
guiding them to develop the mindset, culture and capability needed to drive and sustain digital innovation at scale.

Mitch has led highly strategic and complex technology and culture change projects for a collection of the UK’s leading finance, automotive and publishing brands. This experience brings with it a well developed understanding of the major challenges faced by large organisations today, in terms of adapting to the rapidly changing environments in which they operate.