GCS Connect: Leaders

Elizabeth Cowper, Founder and CEO of Ludo,works with companies to provide support at all stages of their diversity journey. She explains the business importance of diversity, how it looks in a variety of corporate backgrounds, and the excitement of a startup environment.We also talk about how even the smallest steps can help to improve a workplace.

Elizabeth Cowper has over 20 years of HR leadership experience and is a working mother of 3 and Founder of Ludo. Ludo provides multi-award winning tech for inclusion in the workplace.Elizabeth spent her HR career working for brands such as Planet Organic, Harvey Nichols, LVMH and Tapestry. Tapestry is the umbrella company for Coach, Kate Spade and Stuart Weitzman where Elizabeth was VP HR Europe, Global Head of Wellbeing and on the Global DEI Committee. Elizabeth has been described as the ‘Culture Adjuster’ and was listed in the HR Most Influential Awards 5 years straight.

Elizabeth understands how to engage talent, drive wellbeing in the workplace, power the success of women at work and create a strong culture of inclusion. It’s her thing.

In 2022 Ludo won Inclusion Initiative of the year by Corporate Livewire and Rising Stars in Corporate Wellbeing. Ludo won Global HR Tech of the Year 2023. Elizabeth has been listed as one of 10 Most Futuristic Business Women Pioneering Innovation 2022 and Top Five Unstoppable Women Leaders to Watch 2023.

Pri Alagoda breaks down the nuances of a CISO role and how it has evolved across the industry over the years. He dives into what information security truly means, the further education sector, and building risk capacity.

Pri has over 28 years of experience in the technology industry, with 16 of those years focused on leading, designing and implementing comprehensive organisation wide security programs and transformation projects. He also has a successful track record of achieving and maintaining security certifications for businesses across numerous sectors.​

As a pragmatic security leader, his key personal aim is ensuring that the benefits and aspirations of enhanced cyber security be clearly understood at all levels of the organisation, not just at board level.​

Pri is a firm believer that robust security protection can be achieved whilst maximising budgetary efficiencies, and that fostering an organisation wide ethos of good security practices and improved cyber awareness can continually drive innovation and growth.

Jim joins us for the leader series to discuss developing cyber platforms in a start up environment, building a culture of security, and looking outside the box when it comes to building a cyber team.

He also mentions the essential things that you should be doing when focusing on cyber and security and the ongoing battle of automation in cyber.

Its important to think about cyber within a supply chain and the risk of third parties.

Stepping into the CISO role at Capco in early 2023, Jim leads the internal Information Security Team, focused primarily on supporting business needs. With an eclectic background and diverse skills, Jim brings a distinctive perspective to cybersecurity, solidifying his image as a versatile, dynamic leader. An innovative problem solver, he has built high-performing teams, implemented cost-effective solutions and delivered impactful security programs for startups and scale-ups during periods of hypergrowth.

Jim has spoken at a number conferences, tackling a range of issues including insider threat, incident response, the challenges of hiring cyber professionals in a demanding market and he speaks with passion about his advocacy for diversity and neurodiversity in the industry.

Noted for his ability to distil complex technical risk scenarios into comprehensible terms, often employing unconventional metaphors, Jim has built trust and understanding with a broad spectrum of stakeholders. His capability to execute ambitious programs within tight timeframes and restricted resources have cemented his reputation as a progressive, dependable, and grounded leader.

We speak with Thom Singer, CEO of Austin Technology Council, about building a community through a vision. This work grew the Austin tech market over the last 30 years, resulting in the emergence of Austin as one of the leading tech hubs to look out for in the future. Some takeaways...

Be a part of your community as it drives important collaboration. Building business trust is key and this comes through face-to-face interaction. You can still build connections within a hybrid working model. Thom Singer is the CEO at the Austin Technology Council and a keynote speaker. He is dedicated to promoting community, collaboration, and conversations and helping people find more success with their human connections. He was hired to help the Austin Tech Council to retool their mission and help promote the future growth of tech companies in Central Texas. In today's world we need people more than ever. Thom Singer has been helping people get more engaged in their communities for over 15 years, and deeply believes that a strong network is the secret weapon for success in our digital world.

Suhail Khan, Director of Development, Programming, & Engineering at Huawei, talks with us about working in an agile environment and dealing with the challenges that arise, how software is universal across industry, and learning from yours (and other people's) mistakes as a leader. He also discusses taking a retrospective viewpoint, the importance of culture fit as much as tech fit, and the excitement of working for a global leader. Suhail is a Software industry leader with vast experience in scaling consumer-centric products and services within blue chips and innovative start-ups, having worked across diverse industries such as IoT, Business Software, Renewable Energy, and Telecommunications. Currently, Suhail is transforming the consumer business of Huawei in Europe as the Director of Development, Programming, and Engineering, where he manages cross-regional agile teams. Suhail has also authored columns for international newspapers focusing on digital transformation and is an active keynote speaker at technical conferences and podcasts. If you enjoyed this video, please remember to Like & Subscribe! For further information, please visit: Website: https://uk.gcsrecruitment.com/connect/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/RecruitmentGcs Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gcsrecruitment/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GCSRecruitment

Elizabeth joins us on this episode to speak about using data as an effective tool for business and how the investment that you make in it should provide a good return. She also talks about the problem with buying software products without a real strategy, the excitement of running a blog and an online community, and the dangers of overhiring and the resulting problems it is causing in the tech community. It should be the industry's responsibility to stop this practice.

Elizabeth Press is Creator and Owner of D3M Labs, a data blog and community dedicated to getting value out of data. D3M Labs entails a blog, as well as in-person and online events, including the D3M Labs Stammtisch. 

As a Director of Data and Head of Business Intelligence at Berlin-based scale-ups, Elizabeth built high performing, cross-domain data organizations. 2015-2020 D3M Labs (1.0) was a data innovation and digitalization strategy consultancy. Before D3M Labs, she built up and managed business intelligence and advanced analytics programs for Dell. Previous to working at Dell, Elizabeth worked in management consulting and comes with a background in finance and strategy.

If you are interested in the online and in-person events, as well as insights, from D3M Labs, you can sign up for the newsletter: bit.ly/40m6vAF

We speak to Jake Kimber, Director of Global Talent Acquisition at Pixel United, about how he overcomes challenges as a Talent leader and the difference between gaming and other tech industries. 

He shares his insights on developing more diversity in an industry and how it can benefit society, building on EVP to help grow headcount and the business, and the importance of buy-in at all levels in the talent process.   

Jacob is a Talent Acquisition specialist with over 12 years of experience managing global in-house recruitment departments for large software and gaming companies. Starting at Epsilon, he built the in-house recruitment function from scratch, supporting global recruitment. After winning “best in-house recruiter” at both the IHR and FIRM awards, he has worked for other software companies and now resides in gaming. Currently he is Director, Global Talent Acquisition and Operations at Pixel United, a leading mobile games publisher. As part of his role at Pixel United, he managed the growth of Product Madness from 80 to 500+ employees.

Matt Cook, an accomplished, award-winning sales and inbound marketing leader and expert in all aspects of business development, joins us on the Leaders Series this week! We discuss with Matt how the success of a business can be largely based on sound business processes, using digital and innovation to drive growth, and how to scale up a business in a way that will guarantee positive results. Matt also shares his experience breaking into the relatively new industry such as cannabis in the US and how to use data to make the right decisions.

Matthew Cook is a serial entrepreneur and has over 25 years of sales and management experience in inbound sales and marketing and recruitment. As the founder of SalesForce Search & SalesHub, he has helped small, medium and Fortune 500 companies (Such as Apple, Johnson & Johnson and IBM) recruit, train and get the most out of their sales teams. In short, his career has been focused on helping companies grow revenue.

We speak with Simon Blake OBE, CEO of Mental Health First Aid England, about being aware of using mental health as a catch-all term, how wellbeing can drive productivity and understanding mental health as a leader and how to implement best practices in today's workplace.  

Simon Blake OBE joined MHFA England as Chief Executive in October 2018, leading the social enterprise to achieve its vision of normalising society’s attitudes and behaviours around mental health, through training one in ten of the population. He Chairs the Dying Matters Campaign and the Support after Suicide Partnership.  He is also a Companion of the Chartered Management Institute was awarded an OBE for services to the voluntary sector and young people. He enjoys running, equestrian eventing and his dog.

JaJuan Smart, Founder of Maktub Limitless, kicks off our 2023 season about workplace culture and DEI strategy. He talks about making DEI a people-first strategy, building a collaborative culture through inclusion, having humility and listening when a leader is involved in DEI, and the importance of constantly re-evaluating your goals. JaJuan also speaks about how a military background can form you as a leader and the principles of SEE (to Serve, Enlighten, and Excel).

JaJuan Smart (he/him/his) is a change management advocate and diversity, equity, and inclusion consultant.  As a 14-year Service-Disabled United States Air Force veteran, he has honed high-level leadership, organizational, and multi-level interpersonal communication skills throughout his time serving in the military, and while visiting and living in other countries.  JaJuan’s relational leadership abilities have allowed him to use his experiences and insight to understand the perspectives of other people, form intercultural alliances, and apply learned concepts to business and institutional practices.