2021 Winners Volunteer of the Year

With an early career as a Chartered Accountant, followed by a variety of finance and transformation roles with global remits, Catherine has spent the last decade as an independent transformation consultant, helping clients to shape their vision and strategy, and then designing transformation initiatives to deliver the desired outcomes.

Focussing on process excellence, efficiency, human-centred design, and delivery at pace, to help clients to unlock the potential in their organisations.

Catherine has a strong appreciation for the value that diversity and inclusivity bring to an organisation; not only in financial performance, but also employee engagement, mental health and wellbeing, and robust, effective, innovative and disruptive design solutions.

Catherine gained Chartered Manager status after completing her MBA with Leicester University. She truly believes in the CMI’s values – Professional, Progressive, Passionate, and Practical – and the benefits that membership of the CMI delivers, and is proud to be rejoining the East Midlands and East Board as Diversity and Inclusion Champion, and Vice Chair.

Gary is a high performing Organisational Development Practitioner, with a broad expertise in needs analysis, design, delivery and evaluation of interventions. Expert coach and mentor delivering focussed, critical-friend style support to leaders at all levels in both large and small business environments.

He works with charity leaders across Wales in his role as a volunteer consultant with Cranfield Trust.

He is a strong advocate of raising the professional standard of leadership in Wales and in recent years has seen him speaking at student events with Future Leaders and events to encourage women into leadership roles to address the gender imbalance on boards and in business. He is an End Point Assessor for Leadership and Management Apprenticeship, as well as a Chartered Manager Advisor and Assessor and works with experienced leaders to reach the highest professional accolade in leadership and management.

Gary stepped down as Chair of CMI Cymru/Wales, on 1st March 2021, after many years supporting CMI and leaders in Wales. He will remain as the Wales Board Education expert advisor.

Jo joined CMI as a young team leader looking for additional thinking, insights and resources on management and leadership best practice and to build her support network. A volunteer regional board member since 2015, Jo has had the opportunity to perform a number of regional roles: Diversity and Inclusion Lead, Events Lead and acting Finance Lead. Currently she is Board Secretary for the newly formed CMI South East Region Board.

Her management and leadership experience includes strategy, marketing, product management, operational delivery, acquisition integration and change management for global IT Services organisations. Jo particularly enjoys ‘first-of-a-kind’ roles where she can address business needs and opportunities in unique and creative ways. Most recently she combines management consultancy with running a hand-crafted jewellery business and supporting local artists.

People, teamwork and learning are central to Jo’s approach: "It is people who generate new ideas and put them into action. Developing and supporting the best team is at the heart of success, whether you work for a global organisation or for yourself. It is joyous to see individuals learn, grow and achieve far more than they believed they were capable. I see a manager's success as how much the members of their teams have achieved."

Katie is a passionate and dynamic Business Transformation leader who is obsessed with the human side of change and continuous improvement. Katie has successfully led numerous change management workstreams for Digital, IT, process, and cultural Transformations across a breadth of industries both as an external consultant and through change management lead roles internally.

Katie has been a CMI member since 2014 and operates on the CMI London Board as the Women’s Network Hub lead and is a consultant at Oaklin. Katie is passionate about ensuring traditionally under-represented groups have a voice and support network in the workplace, particularly in industries and functions where challenge of workforce diversification may be further compounded, such as Digital and technology.

As a woman who came to the UK without knowing one word of English and having nobody to rely on for help Nina is on a mission to show people that (regardless of your background!) you can create your dream and desired life.

Nina started her journey with Lush Cosmetics 13 years ago and worked her way up from a Christmas Temp in Manufacturing, through Management, Personal Effectiveness Trainer to Senior Leadership & Management Developer.

Having worked with 1000’s of people on their personal effectiveness and 100’s of leaders on business management and leadership skills she is now also running her own Coaching Business.

Nina’s journey with CMI started with Level 5 Leadership & Management Diploma, she then completed Level 7 Strategic Leadership & Management Diploma and in 2017 achieved Chartered Manager status. Nina continues to develop herself through now completing Level 7 Advanced CIPD HR Diploma and working towards CMI fellowship.

Dr Paulina Chan is a global citizen. Her expertise is innovative technology business development and cross-disciplinary collaborations. She is a strong advocator of STEM & M(Management), in particular for young professionals and women.

Paulina received PhD, DIC in EEE specialising in Communications at Imperial College London, MSc (Business) at Birkbeck College, University of London, and PhD (honoris causa) International Open University - WHO/UNICEF Alma-Alta Declaration.

She is Principal and CEO of Global Mutual Innovation Consortium, a think-tank in multiple countries. Her career includes Managing Directors and expatriates of AT&T/Lucent Technologies in the US, Asia/Pacific Region, and the EU; Project Director of Exxon/Mobil Corporation Headquarters, New York NY; China Regional General Manager and expatriate of ICO Global Communications London and Beijing; and Senior Adviser of the EU for Hungary.

Paulina is also Chair, IEEE Hong Kong; Chair-elect, IEEE Public Visibility Committee; former Ambassador of Imperial College London; and Champion, Imperial College Mentoring Programme.

With 25 years in the Management Consulting world, Taranjeet is highly knowledgeable in Business and Organizational Transformation, performance improvement, value realization and employee engagement exercises. Taranjeet has hands on experiences in Due Diligence and M&A work, as well as large scale Business Turnaround.

Taranjeet commenced his consulting career in PricewaterHouse in the Corporate Restructuring Practice. He took on senior regional roles in Hewitt Associates and Hay Group respectively. In recent times, Taranjeet assumed the role of External Consultant to the PM’s Office, Government of Kazakhstan. He concluded his professional stint in Central Asia as GM of KornFerry HayGroup Kazakhstan. Presently, he’s the CEO of Quantum Steppe Advisory, a boutique Management Consulting Firm with a regional footprint.

He is a Regional Board Member of the Chartered Management Institute UK Malaysian Chapter. He also sits on the advisory board of several start-ups including Otherdots which is a social venture builder and is a co-founder of JoOpps, a machine learning driven recruitment platform supported by blockchain technology. Taranjeet is a global Professional Certified Coach with ICF, as well as a Chartered Fellow at the Institute of Managers & Leaders, ANZ. Taranjeet holds an MBA from the UK, an LLM from Australia and a Joint Hon Degree in Computer Science & Law (UK).