Face-to-face Events

Exclusive in-person boardroom sessions designed for senior HR leaders to share insights, debate challenges, and build lasting connections.

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Where Conversations Become Connections

Our face-to-face HR Director Boardroom events offer a unique opportunity to connect in person with fellow HR leaders. Set in carefully chosen venues, these sessions create a focused and engaging environment where open discussion, real collaboration, and meaningful relationships can thrive.

What to Expect:

Small, curated groups of HR Directors for high-quality discussion
Inspiring guest speakers and expert facilitators
Interactive sessions held under Chatham House rules
Networking over breakfast or refreshments in premium venues
A chance to build trusted connections that last beyond the event

Why Attend:
Face-to-face sessions are designed to deepen connections, encourage candid conversation, and allow for more personal interactions. They provide the perfect balance between thought leadership and peer-to-peer exchange.

Upcoming Events

Date: Thursday 3rd December 2026

Time: 8:30am – 10:00am

Topic: Two Firms, One Culture? Making M&A Work for People, Not Just the Balance Sheet

Venue: Eversheds Sutherland – London Office

HRDB Dec 2026

Overview

Acquisition and merger activity is accelerating across professional services, and the deal is often the easy part. The harder work starts afterwards: bringing together firms with different cultures, different appetites for change.

This session brings together HR Directors to share what is working, what isn’t, and what they would do differently. We’ll explore how to win hearts and minds, spot resistance before it surfaces, build the infrastructure to support growth, and have honest conversations about fit, including the reality of restructures and redundancies. We’ll also look at how the partnership itself is changing, and what it takes to build a stronger, more diverse pipeline of future partners.

Laura Pharez-Zea

Laura Pharez-Zea is a Legal Director in the Employment, Labor and Pensions practice group in the Eversheds Sutherland London office. Laura advises employers on all aspects of contentious and non-contentious employment law across a variety of sectors, but with a particular focus on financial services and international employment law.

Laura’s contentious experience includes defending high-value and complex Employment Tribunal claims relating to unfair dismissal, discrimination, whistleblowing and TUPE. Laura has also acted for employers in the High Court regarding breach of contract and restrictive covenant issues.

On the non-contentious side, Laura has experience drafting and advising on service agreements, settlement agreements, consultancy arrangements, staff handbooks and other employment policies. She regularly advises on dismissals, redundancies and business reorganisations, performance management, disciplinary and grievance matters and enforceability of restrictive covenants. Laura also advises on the employment aspects of corporate and real estate transactions and has significant experience in managing international projects on topics including changing benefits, redundancies, collective consultation obligations and the application of TUPE/ARD.

Laura has significant in-house employment law experience, having undertaken three client secondments to a financial institution, a transnational consumer goods company and most recently, a FinTech company.

She regularly delivers training to clients and contacts on a variety of topics and speaks at seminars.

Maria Hawley

Maria Hawley, FCIPD is an accomplished People Director with extensive experience leading people strategy, organisational change, and complex mergers and acquisitions within professional services environments. Throughout her career, she has successfully guided businesses through every stage of the M&A journey, from initial due diligence and integration planning through to bringing teams, cultures, and organisations together following acquisition.

Known for her pragmatic and people-focused approach, Maria specialises in helping businesses navigate change with clarity and confidence. She is passionate about clear communication, honest conversations, and ensuring that employees understand and engage with organisational transformation. Her expertise spans organisational design, cultural integration, talent strategy, employee engagement, and broader business change initiatives.

Maria is particularly valued for her ability to build strong relationships with senior leaders, quickly understand business challenges, and develop practical people solutions that support both commercial objectives and employee experience. Her collaborative style and deep HR expertise have enabled organisations to successfully manage periods of significant growth, transformation, and change.

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Past Events

Date: Wednesday 25th February 2026

Time: 8:30am – 10:00am

Topic: The Talent Equation: Competing for Engagement When You Can’t Compete on Pay

Venue: Eversheds Sutherland – Nottingham Office

HRDB 25.2.26

Key Takeaways:

How to sustain motivation, engagement, and retention when market pay pressures are high.
Leveraging purpose, career development, and inclusion as key differentiators.

Shirley Miller

Shirley is an experienced HR Leader and Engagement Specialist with over 15 years of leading people strategy across pharma, technology, retail, manufacturing, and professional services. She’s highly regarded for sustaining engagement and retention in environments where pay is not the primary differentiator, with a proven track record of navigating restructures, ownership changes, and periods of rapid scaling. She’s known for uncovering the real issues behind performance, culture, and motivation, and for delivering industry-leading retention through a strong focus on purpose, development, and inclusion. She brings a coaching-led approach that strengthens leadership capability and psychological safety, underpinned by a belief that organisations win through purpose, growth, and belonging — not just pay.

Vanessa Kelly

Vanessa Kelly trained at Eversheds Sutherland LLP and qualified as an employment lawyer in 2009. Vanessa is now a Principal Associate in the Employment, Labor and Pensions Practice Group in the Nottingham office.

Vanessa is highly experienced in TUPE and has advised a number of both public and private sector clients in respect to major outsourcing projects and business acquisitions and disposals. She advises on and negotiates the TUPE and employment-related provisions in the contractual documentation for various types of outsourcing arrangements and mergers and acquisitions. Vanessa works closely with her clients to ensure that a smooth TUPE consultation process is implemented in respect of such transactions. She has prepared TUPE protocols and provided TUPE training for clients for these purposes.

Vanessa is highly experienced in advising clients on large-scale business reorganizations and restructures and guiding clients through collective consultation processes.

She is also experienced in equal pay and gender pay gap reporting. Vanessa has assisted clients with equal pay audits and high-profile multiple claimant equal pay claims on behalf of public sector clients.

More recently, she had advised a number of clients on the new requirements under the IR35 legislation, which has recently come into force for the private sector.

Access Summary Notes

Date: Wednesday 29th April 2026

Time: 8:30am – 10:00am

Topic: Why Authentic Intelligence is the Leadership Skill AI Can’t Replace

Venue: Eversheds Sutherland – Leeds Office

HRDB F2F 29.4.26

Key Takeaways:

Where has the rise of AI come from?
What does the rise of AI mean for the world of work in 2026 and beyond?
What are some of the impacts that AI can have on our ability to connect as humans who need to work together?
What does Authentic Intelligence look like, and why is it increasingly becoming a critical skill?
What can leaders / HR teams do to stay human and connect with their teams?

Simon Rice-Birchall

Simon is a Partner in Evershed Sutherland’s Employment group. Simon has considerable experience in employment tribunal litigation and has a reputation in the marketplace for his discrimination law knowledge. Simon has been responsible for a number of high-profile discrimination cases over the last 20 years and continues to build this area of his practice. In addition, Simon’s contentious workload includes unfair dismissal, whistleblowing and executive terminations.

Simon qualified in 1992 and has been an employment litigator all his career. In addition to his contentious practice, Simon also gives advice in relation to non-contentious matters such as the implications of the TUPE regulations in many different change situations, issues relating to proposals to change terms and conditions of employment and large-scale redundancy exercises.

Steph Evans-Hill

Steph is an experienced senior HR leader with a pragmatic, optimistic, and long-term mindset. She is passionate about delivering business results through progressive people strategies that enable teams to reach their full potential and enjoys challenging the status quo! Her strengths lie in her commercial acumen and ability to influence through clear, actionable business activity.

With an HR career spanning almost 20 years across multiple industries, including food manufacturing and FMCG, Steph has worked for household names such as Nestle, PPG and is now the Group People Director at the William Jackson Food Group. She has significant senior HR experience across the UK and international markets and has led a number of large-scale, complex transformations. Steph is an ICF-qualified coach and also acts as a non-employed Director of a family-founded design business in the UK.

Access Summary Notes

Date: Tuesday 9th June 2026

Time: 8:30am – 10:00am

Topic: Succession by Design: Building Leadership Capability from the Inside Out

Venue: Eversheds Sutherland – Manchester Office

HRDB F2F June 2026

Key Focuses

Succession as a core value, not a process
Growing leaders from the shop floor – credibility, trust, and continuity but also the challenges associated
Internal succession vs external hires in specialist environments where competition is high

Andy Scott

Andy is a Chartered Fellow of the CIPD with over 15 years’ HR experience, including five years at executive leadership level. Holding both an MSc and BSc in Human Resource Management, he is also an official CIPD mentor, supporting students and professionals through their own HR journey. His expertise spans the full employee lifecycle, including recruitment, employee relations, TUPE, redundancy, organisational design, and strategic workforce planning.

Andy has worked across highly regulated industries including aerospace, marine, nuclear, and motorsport, covering both commercial and defence sectors. He currently leads a team of HR Business Partners and is passionate about developing people-focused strategies that support business growth and resilience.

Date: Tuesday 30th September 2026

Time: 8:30am – 10:00am

Topic: Why Good Intentions Are No Longer Enough

Venue: Eversheds Sutherland – Cambridge Office

HR Director Boardroom Sep 26

Roundtable Overview

As employment rights expand, HR leaders face a critical challenge: risk no longer arises purely from poor decisions, but from inconsistent process execution. Organisations may have strong policies on paper, but when managers fail to follow them consistently, issues relating to performance, conduct, absence, wellbeing, neurodiversity, and workplace adjustments can quickly escalate into significant employee relations and legal challenges.

Constanze Moorhouse

Constanze is a Partner in our Employment Labor and Pensions Group and co-leads our Cross Border Employment Team. Constanze is dual qualified in England & Wales and Germany which gives her a unique insight into the approach to employment law in both common law and civil law jurisdictions.

Victoria Currey

Victoria is a qualified solicitor of England and Wales, dual-accredited workplace mediator and senior HR interim, with over 25 years at Director and Head of HR level across insurance, investment management and professional services.

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Date: Tuesday 13th October 2026

Time: 8:30am – 10:00am

Topic: Leading Through Constant Change – Equipping leaders to navigate and deliver transformation.

Venue: Eversheds Sutherland – Birmingham Office

HR Director Boardroom 13th October

Roundtable Overview

Organisations are experiencing an almost continuous cycle of transformation, whether driven by AI, technology, cost pressures, acquisitions, or evolving employment legislation. Change is no longer a programme with a defined beginning and end; it has become part of everyday business.

While organisations invest heavily in strategy, technology, and delivery, many change initiatives still fail to achieve their intended outcomes. The difference is rarely the change itself; it is how leaders bring people along with them.

This roundtable will explore the role HR Directors play in enabling successful transformation by building leadership capability, creating compelling change narratives, maintaining trust and engagement, and enabling leaders to navigate uncertainty whilst sustaining business

Mark Hammerton

Mark is an employment law partner within Eversheds Sutherland’s Employment, Labor and Pensions Group. Mark has focused on employment law since qualifying in 1994 and has been a partner since 2005. Mark advises across the full range of employment and labor issues globally. This includes the people aspects of transactions, having worked on hundreds of outsourcing and corporate deals. Mark has many years’ experience helping clients taking a commercial approach to the challenges of TUPE. Mark works on cross border and UK only deals.

Elizabeth Potter

With over 18 years of HR leadership experience, Elizabeth has partnered with senior executives across complex, multi-country organisations, shaping and delivering significant transformation and change.

Her experience spans organisational redesign, technology-enabled transformation, restructuring, market exits, culture and performance change, and workforce transformation across the UK, Europe and Asia. She has seen first-hand that successful change relies not only on a clear strategy, but on leaders having the confidence and capability to bring people with them.

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Join the Conversation from Anywhere

Our online HR Director Boardroom events make it easy to connect with senior HR leaders, no matter where you are. Engage in meaningful discussions, gain fresh perspectives, and be part of a trusted community – all from the convenience of your screen.

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