Speaker and Presenter Biographies

ECC Annual Conference – November 2016

JULIE LLOYD

Chair of ECC

Julie is currently HR Director at Liverpool John Moores University where she has been since 1987 when it was a polytechnic. Prior to that Julie worked in a variety of roles in Liverpool City Council all in Human Resources.

GRAHAM CURLING

Deputy Chair of ECC

Graham is the Head of Human Resources at Leeds College of Art. He has worked in HR for over 20 years and prior to this worked in retail. Born in Kent he has lived in Leeds since 1992. Graham joined Leeds College of Art in March 2010. He holds a BA (Hons) in Consumer Services Management and a Post Graduate Diploma in Personnel Management. He is a Chartered Member of the CIPD.

NICHOLAS JOHNSTON

ECC Chief Executive

As Chief Executive, Nicholas ensures that ECC focuses on members’ needs and balances long-term development goals whilst delivering on short-term priorities.

Nicholas brings 20 years’ experience of developing and delivering practical and successful strategies and business plans in the public, private and voluntary sectors. Before joining ECC he spent a number of years as Head of Strategy and Performance at RNIB, a £120m UK membership charity with 3,000 staff across 40 sites.

Nicholas has direct experience of many aspects of HR, having been a trained job evaluation assessor, chairing grievance hearings and disciplinary hearings and leading the change management and integration of planning and performance across two large merged charities.

Nicholas is a Non-Executive Director of a Scottish health board and Deputy Chair of a university students association. In his spare time he gets worn out by his two young children, fails to find the time to play guitar, and is Vice-Chair of his local Community Council.

PROFESSOR RAMA THIRUNAMACHANDRAN

Vice-Chancellor and Principal, Canterbury Christ Church University

Professor Rama Thirunamachandran is the academic lead and chief executive of Canterbury Christ Church University. He joined the University in October 2013 and has led the institution forward in a number of areas including the development and implementation of the University’s Strategic Framework 2015 – 2020, the acquisition of the former Prison site in Canterbury, and the establishment of an international pathway college on the Canterbury campus. In addition, Rama is Chair of the Higher Education Academy and led the recent review of Supporting Professionalism in Admissions (SPA) commissioned by UCAS.

Prior to this Rama was Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost of Keele University for five years with overall responsibility for Keele’s academic activities. At Keele he was also responsible for its strategic and operational leadership for academic planning, budgeting, and delivery of teaching, research and enterprise, with specific responsibility for leading the University’s Internationalisation Strategy.

From 2002, Rama Thirunamachandran was Director for Research, Innovation and Skills at the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) with overall responsibility for the strategic direction of HEFCE’s research, knowledge transfer, and employer engagement and skills policies, with an annual budgetary responsibility of £1.5 billion. His responsibilities included oversight of the operation of the Research Assessment Exercise and the development of the Research Excellence Framework.

He has also held posts at the University of Bristol, King’s College London and Royal Holloway, University of London.

Educated at Cambridge University in Geography and Natural Sciences, he worked on a United Nations Development Programme project on the effects of flooding in Bangladesh. His current interests are in higher education and public policy, and he is Chair of the Higher Education Academy and is also a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.

EIRA HAMMOND

Chair, Chartered Institute of Payroll Professionals

Having worked in and around the payroll and HR industry for over 25 years, Eira cites getting elected as board director back in 2008 as one of the proudest moments in her career.

Over the years Eira worked as Payroll Manager and then for a Payroll/HR Software House for over 16 years and through varying roles within that organisation, gained wide knowledge and experience working with many different payroll teams across the UK and Ireland. In 2006 Eira joined what is now known as Mouchel, as Head of Payroll and HR Services where for 3 years she took the team in Lincoln through a period of significant growth, changing them from the traditional inward looking public sector team to a truly professional outsourcing organisation. A great personal achievement for Eira was being awarded the CIPP’s own ‘Payroll Manager of the Year’ in 2007.

Eira set up her own consultancy company, Eira Consulting Limited in 2009 which allowed her the opportunity of working with a number of payroll and HR teams around the country, supporting, advising and guiding them to make improvements not only within their working practices but in their systems too.

Although Eira enjoyed working for herself, an offer from one of the leading technology organisations proved a challenge too great to resist and Eira joined BT Global Services late in 2010 in their Local Government Outsourcing sector in a role helping to shape and transform HR and Payroll Shared Services, putting it’s people and customers at the heart of everything they do, not dissimilar to the aims and objectives of the CIPP.

Eira regularly participate in meetings and discussions, writes articles for Professional Magazine and speaks at conferences and meetings, as well as continuing as a tutor for the Foundation Degree in Payroll Management which she has done for nearly 10 years.

ROS HENDERSON

Director, Chartered Institute of Payroll Professionals

Having been a member and fellow of the CIPP for 19 years and a tutor of the Foundation Degree and MSc for the last 10 years, I have seen and experienced personally the dedication