Best Startup
At Best Startup UK we track over 130,000 UK startups and over 500,000 people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top United Kingdom based VP’ operating in the Human Resources space. If you think a VP’ is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.co.uk.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Companies House UK, Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Pavel Kilovatiy
VP Engineering of Beamery
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About Beamery: Beamery is a talent acquisition, engagement, and retention platform that manages sourcing, hiring, and retaining of people.
Robert Symons
Regional Vice President, UK and Northern Europe of SmartRecruiters
Robert Symons is an HCM cloud software evangelist and passionate about helping companies transform the way they engage, hire and retain top talent. Robert has 22 years’ experience within the recruiting marketplace. He previously spent 9 years scaling an HCM software business from 11 employees to over 700 employees as part of their senior leadership team. Robert joined SmartRecruiters in 2016 as the first sales and marketing hire in Europe with responsibility for UK/Northern Europe.
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About SmartRecruiters: SmartRecruiters is an end-to-end recruiting platform that helps companies with talent acquisition.
Kriti Sharma
VP of Artificial Intelligence of Sage Group
Kriti Sharma is VP of bots and AI at Sage. She was recently named in Forbes magazine’s 30 under 30. She built her first robot at the age of 17, designed to bring chocolates to its controller. The software bots she works on at Sage today are designed to helping business builders do less admin, and more of what they love. Sharma is a trailblaser for smart machines that work and react like humans to help to make business admin invisible. Sharma is the creator of Pegg, the world’s first accounting chatbot, launched to market in 2017 which now boasts users in 135 countries.
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About Sage Group: Sage Group provides small and medium sized company business management software and services.
Colin Cooper
Sage People Vice President & Founder of Sage Group
Colin Cooper serves as sage people vice president and founder at The Sage Group.
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About Sage Group: Sage Group provides small and medium sized company business management software and services.
Adam Parker
EVP Data of Sage Group
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About Sage Group, Sage Group: Sage Group provides small and medium sized company business management software and services.
Liam Waite
Vice President UK of Talentful
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About Talentful: Talentful specialises in helping companies to elevate their talent acquisition strategy.
Annette Burgard
VP of Marketing of Coople
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About Coople, More Than Carrots: Coople operates as a staffing platform that connects companies and workers.
Marcus Sawyerr
Global Head of Digital & Innovation / Senior Vice President of The Adecco Group
Marcus Sawyerr, global head of digital & innovation at The Adecco Group.
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About The Adecco Group: The Adecco Group is a provider of talent solutions and staffing services to automakers and aerospace companies.
Debbie Ashton
Founder; SVP, Strategic Customer Experience of FinancialForce
With more than 16 years of experience in enterprise software development, customer experience management and product management, Debbie leads product strategy, R&D, and customer advocacy as the Vice President of Product at FinancialForce.com. Under Debbie’s leadership, the company’s Accounting and PSA products have been honored with accolades such as British Accountancy Awards’ Software of the Year and 2012 CRM WatchList’s Broad Brush Winner while customer satisfaction reliably exceeds industry average. Debbie and Jeremy Roche, while at CODA Group, realized a market gap in cloud applications for financial management and collaborated in the founding of FinancialForce.com with the backing of UNIT4. Prior to creating FinancialForce.com, Debbie served as the Head of Product Management for CODA Group and held senior research & development and product management responsibilities for CODA. Earlier in her career, Debbie held positions in client management, consultancy and presales for Science Systems and was part of the team who acquired CODA in the year 2000. Following the acquisition of CODA, Debbie led the team that designed and delivered CODA’s award-winning financial applications and was a core member of the team that conceived CODA’s SaaS accounting concept. Debbie began her career in microbiology and has a degree in Applied Biology from Sheffield Hallam University. Outside of work, Debbie is a proud mother of two boys and enjoys spending time with family and participating in triathlons.
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About FinancialForce: FinancialForce develops cloud back-office applications for salesforce CRM.
Sheila Sheldon
Senior Vice President of EMEA of Michael C. Fina Recognition
Sheila Sheldon serves as Senior Vice President of EMEA for Michael C. Fina. She is responsible for overseeing operations at the UK headquarters in Wokingham, England, as well as operational management for all regions outside North and South America. In her role, she ensures best practice applications of our services worldwide that reflect consistent, appropriate, and efficient employee recognition programs to Michael C. Fina’s multinational customers. Sheila joined Michael C. Fina in 2005 when the company purchased her employer, Longservice.com. She began with Longservice.com in 1990 and has held several positions, starting as a part-time Sales Associate and Account Manager, and later serving as Office Manager and Operations Director. With an extensive background in HR, her previous experience includes tenure as an HR Generalist for British Airways, as well as work in the Telecommunications industry. She began her career with an engineering company, where she met her husband. Sheila was born in Taplow and educated at St. Bernard’s Convent School. She attained her degree in Business from Thames Valley University. Married with two daughters, Rebecca and Laura, Sheila has a passion for good food and enjoys cooking and entertaining with family and friends. She dreams of someday owning a “Michelin Star” restaurant.
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About HALO Recognition, Michael C. Fina Recognition: Michael C. Fina Recognition is a third-generation leader in the recognition and incentives industry.
Dorothy Mead
VP Marketing and Brand of Talmix
Dorothy is a technology and b2b marketing veteran who has worked with multinational organisations, consultancies and with early stage businesses in London and Cambridge UK to drive commercial traction and growth. Blending a deep knowledge of traditional and digital marketing techniques, she currently is responsible for building the Talmix brand globally and creating programmes to support revenue growth and market share in the Enterprise, Private Equity and Management Consultancy segments.
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About Talmix: Talmix has built a Business Talent Marketplace to allow companies to unlock the power of the extended workforce.
Dorothy Mead
VP Marketing and Brand of Talmix
Dorothy is a technology and b2b marketing veteran who has worked with multinational organisations, consultancies and with early stage businesses in London and Cambridge UK to drive commercial traction and growth. Blending a deep knowledge of traditional and digital marketing techniques, she currently is responsible for building the Talmix brand globally and creating programmes to support revenue growth and market share in the Enterprise, Private Equity and Management Consultancy segments.
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About Talmix: Talmix has built a Business Talent Marketplace to allow companies to unlock the power of the extended workforce.
Chris Wakely
Executive Vice President, Global Enterprise of Benify
Chris Wakely has been working in global benefits technology for the last 15 years. He has seen the changes taking place both in insurance provision and the increasing importance of the employee experience. He is based out of the Benify London office.
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About Benify: Benefits Management and Total Rewards platform – SaaS
Craig Sweeney
SVP, Global Strategic Talent Solutions of WilsonHCG
Craig Sweeney is Senior Vice President, Global Strategic Talent Solutions, at WilsonHCG.
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About WilsonHCG: WilsonHCG is a RPO and human capital consulting firm that offers talent consulting and executive search services to its clients.
Betsy Kendall
Vice President of Programmes, Delivery & Content of OPP Ltd
Betsy has responsibility for OPP’s Consultancy and Learning business and has global responsibility for programme development for the CPP Group. She has worked in OPP since its foundation in 1989, and in that time she has led almost every function within the company. Betsy was responsible for setting up OPP’s qualifying training division, and was pivotally involved in designing and developing qualifications workshops for MBTI® Step I, Step II, FIRO® and CPI 260®. For many years she ran the majority of OPP’s training events. She led the Research and Development team that created the 11 European language versions of the MBTI Step I, and she oversaw the development and standardisation of the European versions of MBTI Step I, FIRO-B and CPI. She is the author of the European MBTI Step I Manual Supplement and co-author of the FIRO-B User’s Guide and MBTI and Culture. Betsy has worked around the world, particularly in Europe and the USA, running leadership development interventions, team development processes and assessment centres. She also regularly speaks at national and international conferences on on mid-life development and culture. Betsy is a Chartered Occupational Psychologist and an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society.
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About OPP Ltd: OPP Ltd is one of Europe’s top business psychology product and services providers.
David Godden
VP, Sales & Marketing of Thymometrics
David Godden is VP, Sales & Marketing at Thymometrics and Co-Founder at KeyEngage. David is responsible for Thymometrics’ marketing activities including strategy, corporate marketing and product marketing. Thymometrics provide SaaS-based always-on employee engagment surveys for global blue chip organisations. He became joint Managing Director at eTrigue Europe in 2013. eTrigue provide world leading Marketing Automation software solutions to SMBs. David is also a founding Director at KeyEngage. KeyEngage assist US-based high-end marketing SaaS companies establish a presence in the EU. This involves establishing the company, building a sales and support team and providing all marketing activity. Companies included Pardot, DocuSign, Baynote and Bronto Software. Before setting up KeyEngage, David was a founding Director with Keymail Marketing, established in early 2005 to represent email marketing specialists ExactTarget. Keymail Marketing was wholly acquired by ExactTarget in 2009 as the launch pad for their international expansion. Prior to this he was Client Services Director at Bluestreak (formerly e2Communications) for over 5 years, responsible for the management of all major European accounts. His former work includes several Project Management roles in internet and other sectors.
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About KeyEngage, Thymometrics: Always-On & Pulse Employee Engagement Surveys and Employee Feedback Solutions
