2019

Farida Gibbs

Farida Gibbs

Gibbs Hybrid
Founder & CEO

Farida Gibbs founded Gibbs Hybrid in 2005 as a globally certified woman-owned and ethnic minority-owned business. She successfully guided the firm through a challenging UK business environment last year, overseeing a management buyout and investing in overseas operations across Dublin, Luxemburg, Poland and the US. Gibbs Hybrid in 2018 won four major contracts with a combined value of £30 million over the next five years that support Fortune 500 clients including a bank, a digital technology company, a multinational biopharmaceutical company and a financial services corporation. Gibbs also sits on the WBE Council’s advisory board for WEConnect International.

Shona McManus

Shona McManus

Osborne
CEO

Shona McManus is CEO and owner of Osborne. Under McManus’ leadership, Osborne has more than quadrupled turnover, profits and headcount and has become a certified Great Place to Work. Over her 18 years in the recruitment industry, McManus has successfully led and transformed recruitment businesses in both multinational and indigenous Irish recruitment firms. Since taking the helm of Osborne in 2013, she guided it through the still-rocky economy to see it emerge in a strong market position. In January 2019, Osborne opened its sixth operation with a new office in Cork. McManus is also president of the Drogheda Chamber of Commerce.

Adrian Adair

Adrian Adair

Morson Group
Group COO

As group COO, Adrian Adair drives Morson Group’s diversification into new markets and transformation of the technical recruiter’s brand as a UK engineering expert into a global specialist in permanent and interim talent-based solutions. With 19 years’ industry experience, Adair identifies the right internal talent to drive Morson International and the wider Morson Group toward its goal of becoming a £1 billion business. Since he was appointed as COO in October 2018, business turnover is up 39% and profit is up 131%. Adair facilitated Morson International’s partnership with the Girls’ Network and the launch of its Salford division. He’s also involved with Northern Power Women, an organisation that promotes equality in the workplace.

Stefano Scabbio

Stefano Scabbio

ManpowerGroup
President, Southern and Eastern Europe

Stefano Scabbio, president of Southern and Eastern Europe for ManpowerGroup and global brand leader for ManpowerGroup Solutions, is passionate about helping people become more employable and developing in-demand skills while connecting businesses with the talent they need to succeed. He was appointed president of Mediterranean, Northern and Eastern Europe for ManpowerGroup in June 2017, responsible for driving innovative solutions, including digital, while leading the company’s largest region. Scabbio regularly leads discussions on workforce strategy, skills development and upskilling people in Europe for the digital age, including at the World Economic Forum annual meeting and in media including Financial Times, Reuters and Bloomberg.

Sebastian Lazay

Sebastian Lazay

President, BAP (Federal Employers’ Association of Staffing Services)
Managing Director, Extra-Personalservice GmbH

Sebastian Lazay has been president of the Federal Employers’ Association of Staffing Services (BAP) since 2017 after serving as vice president since 2011. Lazay is also managing director of Hamburg-based Extra- Personalservice GmbH, and has been closely involved with temporary work for more than 20 years. For many years, he also participated in collective bargaining for temporary employment. Lazay is a member of the executive committee of the BGA, the Federal Association of Wholesale, Foreign Trade, Services, and since 2015, he has been vice president of large-scale services for the BGA.

Peter Holliday

Peter Holliday

Intelligent Resource
Executive Chairman

Peter Holliday became chairman of Intelligent Resource when it rebranded from Sopra Steria in September 2019. He was managing director of Sopra Steria since 2008, at which point his focus was on continuously aligning the company’s organisational model, capabilities and people development to the needs of the customer. He pioneered the “Optimum Vendor Recruitment” managed recruitment model which enables the recruitment model to be tailored to each client’s specific circumstances. He is currently chair of the Association of Professional Staffing Companies (APSCo). Having led multiple APSCo Award wins for Sopra Steria Recruitment, he is now engaged in challenging complex and impractical legislative impacts and helping disabled job seekers find work within his business.

Ingrid Hofmann

Ingrid Hofmann

Hofmann Corp.
Founder & CEO

Ingrid Hofmann is one of Germany’s most successful temporary work entrepreneurs. She is CEO of Hofmann Corp., parent company of global staffing and recruiting agency I.K. Hofmann (also known as Hofmann Personal), which she founded in 1985 in Nuremberg, Germany. Guided by her philosophy that growth occurs by word of mouth, Hofmann Corp. has become one of the largest staffing agencies in Europe with more than 20,000 employees and more than 100 international branches located in the US, England, Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic. I.K. Hofmann ranks fifth on SIA’s 2018 list of largest staffing firms in Germany.

Miles Hunt

Miles Hunt

Benula Capital
Director

Miles Hunt launched private equity investment firm Benula Capital in 2013; it now has nine investments in the staffing sector including staffing companies, HR consulting firms and providers of recruiting technology. Prior to Benula, Hunt founded UK-based international staffing specialist Empresaria Group in 1996 and led its IPO in 2004 before stepping down as chief executive in 2011. Hunt became the first-ever chairman of Cobalt Recruitment in 2019. He also serves as chairman at Darwin Recruitment, Oasis HR and Australia-based Davidson. Additionally, for the past three years he has been chairman of APSCo Global, which represents staffing in Germany, Singapore and Australia as well as the UK.

Alan Savage

Alan Savage

The Orion Group
Founder & Chairman

Alan Savage formed Inverness-based Orion Group in 1987 to serve the booming engineering sector. The award-winning group now operates across a number of industry sectors — oil and gas, power and utilities, energy, rail, IT, mining, office and commercial and construction and infrastructure — placing over 4,000 contractors every year via its offices throughout Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, Asia Pacific and Africa. In the last three years, Orion has supported and donated over £1.5 million to worthwhile projects and charities. Early in his career, Savage worked his way through the engineering ranks as a mechanical technician followed by a stint as a sales and marketing consultant.

Jean-Philippe Papin

Jean-Philippe Papin

Actual Leader Group
General Director

Jean-Philippe Papin is general director of France-based Actual Leader Group, established in 2018 after the merger of temporary employment firms Groupe Actual and Leader Intérim. He had been the CEO of Leader Intérim, the French staffing firm he founded in 1992; that firm had ranked 10th on Staffing Industry Analysts’ list of largest staffing firms in France with €426 million in 2017 revenue. Pursuing international development and moving toward its objective of 20% turnover abroad while strengthening its positioning on the European continent, Actual Leader Group in July 2019 acquired a majority stake of Dutch HR services firm Flexfactory.