THE JUDGES

I'm Lisa. I've been around for a while and had many hairstyles during that time, this years look is grey old lady chic.

I actually started my ad career doing a YTS (social mobility at its best before it became a term). Affiliated to Communication Advertising and Marketing (CAM) Diploma it was a 2 year foundation course working in an agency part-time but gave me a great grounding in full service agency life. Then I fell into recruitment advertising (don't we all), and spent a number of years at a few different agencies. CMS, Barkers, Work Comms and Penna before I took the plunge with a couple of my colleagues and set up Chatter Communications in 2011. I love sport, watching, heckling and playing. I live in Nora Batty land with my husband and sloth like teenager and I'm a frustrated art director, loving all things creative - especially fonts and typography.

I'm so giddy about being the Chair of the RAD's this year – it really is an honour. No idea what to expect, but looking forward to the ride with my fellow judges.

I’m Afy Rezaei, a British-Iranian multi-award winning Copywriter. I joined 33 as a grad soon after finishing my degree in Ad & PR, and began my journey with the agency in the Social Media team, later moving to Creative. Almost 4 years later, I’ve won multiple awards, hosted 33’s feminist podcast ‘The F Word’, and founded Rising Figures – a diversity and inclusivity initiative created to bring more Black and Asian talent to our industry.

Alex helped build one of the largest social media agencies and media publishers in the world (Social Chain Group), opening offices in Manchester, London, Berlin, Munich, and New York within 5 years, reaching 2.2 billion people each week with the content they produce and scaling the teams globally to over 700 employees. He joins Wiser as Marketing Director, with a wealth of content creation, social platform, and growth marketing knowledge, and is creating a world-class social media community management team that helps clients build highly engaged talent communities and recruitment marketing campaigns.

With more than 25 years’ experience in talent acquisition and employer brand, Ali’s career started at recruitment communications agencies before moving into RPO and in-house roles. Ali then spent time working as an independent TA and employer brand consultant across many industries. Ali founded recruitment technology business Meet & Engage in 2015 with a vision to shape a business that provides award-winning products to a market she knows well. As CEO, it’s her role to lead a team of brilliant people and empower them to be their best.

As ECD at Havas People, I lead creative and work with brilliant colleagues and clients worldwide. Conjuring up creative ways to better engage people and brands across all sectors and creative disciplines. For over two decades as a RADS regular, I’ve enjoyed being on numerous judging panels and up on stage with a tasty haul of shiny awards and some random celebrities.

As a judge, I’m looking forward to seeing original and meaningful creative that’s surprising and well executed.

David’s worked in employer marketing for over 20 years helping to shape employer brand strategies for a host of well-known blue-chip companies including Asda, LV=, The Telegraph, Autoglass and AXA as well as a number of important government offices and local authorities. He’s led some of the most respected employer marketing agencies, winning a host of creative awards along the way. A regular podcast and webinar guest, David is Founder and Lead Consultant of Employer Branding Made Easy, providing employer branding consulting, coaching and online courses to help businesses build and develop their employer brand capabilities.

As Head of Employer Brand at EY, Farrah leads a team of creative designers and employer brand strategists to attract, engage and retain exceptional talent across the UK and Ireland firm. Outside of her core role, Farrah is also Co-Chair of the EY Women’s Network which serves 3,200+ members across the UK to accelerate gender parity at EY and beyond.

Farrah regularly speaks at industry events on topics such as gender equality, inclusive hiring, and innovative employer branding. With over 10 years’ experience in the field, she has a real passion for purpose-driven brands and meaningful storytelling.

I'm Greg, I have worked in People for a decade, I lead the Global Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Strategy for Flutter Entertainment; it's demanding but so rewarding. I count myself pretty lucky because I've never stagnated in my people career, I have worked on and led some exciting work & teams across Employer Brand, Engagement, TA & DEI. I am a Rebel at heart and believe the function's future should not always be dictated by traditional ways of working. We should embrace agile HR & design thinking to create real human-centred experiences for people to impact and add value where it really matters to people.

I live in Manchester with my partner Josh and moved here from Ireland 11 years ago (temporarily), then got a mortgage, engaged, and stuck in a city I now call home. I am so excited and feel privileged to be immersed in the exceptional talent the RADS bring.

Heather has 16 years experience leading Talent Acquisition and People teams across a range of sectors and has recently joined Third Bridge as Global Head of Talent Management.

Over recent years, she has centred her career in customer centric companies and has been focused on supporting organisations to scale as they go through periods of rapid growth. This includes leading Talent Acquisition for Amazon Customer Service across Europe and, most recently, leading the People and Talent Acquisition organisations for Customer operations at Monzo as they grew from 200 to over 1000.

Ilinca is joint Creative Director at Symphony Talent with Sophie Rogers and together they lead a team of brilliant art directors, designers and writers, ensuring creative solutions are always innovative, different and quality-led. With over 16 years’ experience Ilinca is a passionate leader with a proven track record for translating complex ideas into slick, successful campaigns for her clients. Working across a multitude of sectors and media her skillset is diverse and includes brand strategy, brand visual identity, art direction, typography, graphic design, digital design, user experience and beyond.

Keshia is a Board Director at Blackbridge Communications, with 10 years’ experience in the world of employer branding and recruitment advertising. During her career in client services she’s worked with a broad range of organisations including the likes of Amazon, Aviva, Babcock International, KPMG and Lloyds Banking Group. Keshia’s extensive knowledge and experience has always been key in developing great client partnerships, bringing their ideas to life and delivering measurable, meaningful impact in line with shared goals.

Hi I’m Kirstie I’ve been in our industry for many, many years! Coming up to 22 to be exact! I started out as recruitment consultant before falling into the world of recruitment communications and employer brand and have never looked back. I’ve had the opportunity to work with some fantastic organisations over the years supporting them with their employer branding and recruitment strategies. As another string to my bow, I’m MCIPD qualified and the Branch Chair of the East Midlands for CIPD. I’m a born and bred Nottinghamshire lass with a 10-year-old (going on 16!) daughter. I’m really excited about being a judge this year – it’s been on the bucket list for a while! Looking forward to seeing some great work and being part of our fantastic judging team.

Libby is a Strategy Lead at Pink Squid and has worked there for two years. She leads the strategy function and has worked with clients in Technology, Healthcare, Retail and Finance. She has a background leading Employer Brands in house for ASOS, Harrods & Arcadia and understands the importance of candidate experience, the employee lifecycle and approaching employer branding creatively and authentically. She is also extremely passionate about Inclusion, Diversity and Equity and champions this both internally and with her clients.

Matt is the Global Social & Content Lead for IBM and has worked there for nearly 5-years in various leadership roles. He leads the strategy and day-to-day operations behind IBM’s talent marketing social media presences (@LifeAtIBM) and content across channels primarily focussed around attracting tech talent.

He has a background in media and digital marketing. Previously running a large technology YouTube channel with over 100k subscribers and writing for various nationwide tech review publications. By his own admission, he is a geek at heart! He has worked with some of the largest tech brands including, Nvidia, Intel, AMD, MSI, and Asus, to name a few. His specialty in talent marketing sees Matt leveraging employee-generated content, storytelling, social CX, and data to engage audiences in unexpected ways. He is very passionate about candidate experience and believes employer branding spans far broader than some imagery it is every touchpoint a candidate ever has with the brand. Outside of work, he loves a gin and tonic and traveling.

With over 18 years industry experience working with global brands across a multitude of sectors, nobody is more passionate than Nicola when it comes to building meaningful relationships with her clients, helping them to understand and appreciate the value of their people and their future talent.

Whether it’s working with a fortune 500 organisation to help them align their global employer brand locally, or a cosmetics company to consult on their volume hiring strategy, Nicola has an innate ability to look at things through a unique set of eyes and tirelessly work to find the best, innovative solutions out there to solve her clients needs.

Throughout her career Nicola has worked through complex organisational structures, economic challenges and fast, changing technology to effortlessly deliver record breaking results for her clients time and time again.

Her ability to look at the ‘bigger picture’ and apply a strategic, creative approach to her work has delivered first class employer brand strategies and award winning campaigns, making her an expert in her field.

After graduating and a brief career as an Illustrator, Russell discovered Recruitment Advertising over 20 years ago. After a spell at Hodes, as the Head of Digital Design, then Havas People as the Digital Creative Director. He’s worked on far too many brands to mention.

Joining Penna in 2015, he became Creative Director in 2018. Recently he’s been involved in projects for The Bank of England, Homes England, The British Transport Police, The Office for National Statistics and The Security Services.

Russell loves cooking but dislikes wearing t-shirts and writing his bio.

Sally spent the beginning of her career in London, working in a variety of recruitment advertising agencies and as a consultant in the Recruitment Process Outsourcing world. An originally short-term role in Singapore turned into an exciting eight year stay in Asia before returning to Europe as the Head of Talent Attraction for Lonza in Basel, Switzerland. Here she is accountable for Lonza’s global positioning and ensures the company’s reputation as an employer of choice as well the appropriate tools and strategies are in place to attract and secure talent. “I am very excited to be a judge for RADS 2022. It is an event that I have followed throughout my career, even while in Asia. Now with me being back in Europe, the stars aligned and I cannot wait for us to start."

Scott has recently joined AMS as a Senior Employer Brand Strategist, aiming to drive business growth and share his experience with the EMEA team across a varied group of Global clients. Scott describes this move as ‘like going back to your first love’ moving back to work on the employer brand, where everything starts when it comes to TA.

Prior to joining AMS, Scott’s career in recruitment has spanned more than 25 years, moving through the ranks of client service with agencies like TMP, McCann Erickson and then Work Group. In 2009, Scott moved towards digital, becoming Digital Solutions Director and finally heading up the Digital team within Work. After its sale and merger with ThirtyThree, Scott continued his focussing on digital, delivering a number of award-winning careers websites for a range of different clients.

In 2018, Scott moved to Havas People with a clear view to complete his ‘full candidate lifecycle’ experience, leading the team within its ATS offering and developing a deeper understanding of the breadth and serious challenges faced by recruiters and recruitment software platforms.

Over her 10 year career in social media, Stephanie’s seen it all. From sparking Twitter conversations that were shown in E4 sponsorship idents 15minutes later, to launching nationwide Snapchat lens activations. Now specialising in employer brand, you’ll find her celebrating the power of online conversation; championing the value of employee generated content; and convincing you to step outside of your comfort zone.

I have more years of experience than I care to remember of recruitment marketing and employer branding, but can honestly say I’ve loved every minute of it. Having decided that I wanted to help organisations change for the better I co-founded SMRS over 20 years ago. Over that time I have overseen work for many clients, across most industry sectors and have revelled in the development of my colleagues and clients. With a passion for helping clients attract, engage and retain the right talent, I have been lucky enough to have been a judge for many of the leading industry awards. I can’t wait to get stuck into this year’s RADs entries.

Working closely with clients to grow their social accounts, creating conversations and connections that count, Vanessa Kerr joined Radancy in 2019, bringing her eye for all things creative, and a passion for social! Whilst only being in talent just shy of two years, her work has won a Rally award and a RMA.