• Kerstin James
• John Mclellan
• Sally Muir
• Ann Musser
• Vivianne Näslund
• Valerie Russell Emmott
• Alexis Walmsley
• Tony Warner

• Robin Schneider
• Rachael Ross
• Anjana Nathwani
• Freddie Alves
• Sheridan Allman
• Susan Angoy
• Patricia Chalé
• Catherine Hamilton

Robin Schneider (Managing Director),was born to a Swiss French mother and a Swiss German father and brought up in the UK,so had an early interest in cross-cultural issues!

Twenty years ago, Robin co-founded Schneider~Ross as a consultancy specialising in equality and diversity. With his partner Rachael Ross, he wrote the UK’s first business textbook on diversity, which was published in 1992.

As a consultant, Robin works with a wide range of organisations to help them develop strategies to integrate equality and diversity into their organisational culture. Clients include AstraZeneca, Aviva, BP, BT, Cambridge University, The Cabinet Office, Cranfield, Lloyds TSB, MoD, National Grid and Rexam, Vodafone. Robin has broad international experience and has worked with clients across continental Europe, the US, the Middle East, South America, Africa and Asia.

Recognised as a leading authority on diversity, in addition to his client specific work, Robin has worked on a number of projects commissioned by the UK government. Earlier this year he led on research for the Government Equalities Office to assess the cost effectiveness of equality legislation in the public sector. The report was published by the Government in June 2009 as part of their consultation on the new Equality Bill.

More recently Robin has been developing a guide commissioned by the Equality and Diversity Task Group of the Public Services Forum. “The Equality Duties at Work” is an online tool designed to simplify the process of implementing legislation and help public sector organisations take action on improving equality for service users and employees. Already presented to the Public Services Forum, the Guide’s formal launch is planned for December 2009.

In 2000, he helped BP found the Global Diversity Network which include a range of prestigious multinationals who are committed to taking a leading-edge approach to diversity globally (including Barclays, BP, BT, Pepsi Co International, Shell, Tyco, Unilever). He continues to work closely with the GDN.

In addition to being a Director of Schneider~Ross, Robin is also Chairman of The All Inclusive Dining Club – which brings together senior leaders, in a social setting, to discuss different “stands” of diversity – and what they need to do as leaders to “walk the talk”.

Robin has a hearing impairment. He is a graduate of Oxford University and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts.

Rachael Ross (Director) is an experienced team and individual coach, working in the field for over 20 years. She is an accredited coach with the Coverdale Organisation, and an NLP practitioner – to Masters level.

She has always been interested in cultural differences, has an MA in Modern Languages from Cambridge University, and has lived and worked in Austria, France and Germany. She is married to a Swiss - Robin Schneider, and speaks french and german.

Her career started in HR in the oil industry and she then spent a number of years as a change consultant and coach with the Coverdale Organisation. In 1989, she co founded Schneider~Ross, the diversity practice, now regarded as one of the leading diversity consultancies in Europe.

She has published a leading book on diversity “From Equality to Diversity”, 1992, and articles for leading journals in the UK and in Europe.

She inspires leaders and teams to explore their own values - and their organisation’s, to build confidence in managing change and diversity, and to find ways of releasing their own - and their organisations’ creativity.

Her approach is influenced by client needs and learning styles – it has been described as “both challenging and supportive at the same time.”

She has worked with a variety of clients in the private and public sectors including most recently: the Equal Opportunities Commission, BOC, The Crown Estate, Pearson plc, Southampton University, Cambridge University, MOD, Scott Wilson, Taylor Wessing, and HM Revenue and Customs.

Recent appointments include, membership of a development group, chaired by Sir David Bell of the Pearson Group, which is working closely with Cambridge University on gender and communication.

She is a member of the European Coaching and Mentoring Council, a member of CIPD, and a member of RSA.


Other Languages: French & German

Anjana Nathwani (Director, Knowledge & Practice) is a Business Psychologist with extensive experience in Leadership and Organization Development. Prior to joining Schneider Ross she was Director of Learning Design at Cass Business School. Her experience in enabling leaders and organizations to manage change has proved to be invaluable in helping our clients to acknowledge the business benefits of equality and diversity.

She has led on several high profile projects and has worked with reputable clients. These include: University of Cambridge; Birmingham City University, SOAS, UBS, Lloyds TSB, Cadbury Schweppes, Aviva, Cabinet Office, Learning and Skills Council, HMRC, Law Society, Ministry of Defence, Department for Communities and Local Government, Government Equalities Office, Transport for London, The Pensions Regulator and the Pensions Ombudsman.

She led on our recent research projects: Diversity and Inclusion – A lever for solving talent pool dilemmas in India and China (this research involved members of the Global Diversity Network; as well as Merrill Lynch, J P Morgan, Bank of America and Standard Chartered Bank); and The Public Sector Equality Duties Making an Impact.

She specializes in diversity and cultural audits, policy reviews and development, building senior management commitment, employee engagement; public sector equality duties and impact assessments.

Anjana contributes at conferences periodically, including the Diversity and Inclusion Conference in Asia (2007).

She is currently authoring a book on how senior female leaders can be successful by working with their own unique attributes. She is a yoga teacher and offers life coaching and yoga therapy to cancer patients. She has a passion for trekking and enjoys holidays in the Himalayas.

Other Languages: Italian, Hindi & Gujarati

Freddie Alves (Director, Global Diversity & Inclusion) is responsible for driving the consultancy’s expanding global work and client base as well as leading on the Global Diversity Network. Freddie draws from his five years of experience of the network with Dow to build on its success to-date and its capacity to help leading multinationals benchmark and push the boundaries of best practice.

He has a wealth of global, private sector experience having worked in senior corporate diversity roles for Mobil and most recently The Dow Chemical Company. His responsibilities for mainstreaming diversity and inclusion across these organisations have given him an impressive track record of in-house consultancy across continents – most recently in continental Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific. He has played key roles in helping geographical leaders to translate global vision and goals into locally relevant strategies and actions. This experience is key to the consultancy work he leads in Schneider~Ross.

Having spent the last 12 years living in The Netherlands, the U.S and Switzerland, he has now moved both his working and family life back to the UK.

Sheridan Allman, is a Senior Associate Consultant with Schneider-Ross, who has had an extensive career in the fields of education and organisational development, working in both the public sector and the private sector. Her recent clients include the University of Southampton, the Learning Skills Council, Enterprise Rent-a-Car and MFI.

Sheridan’s previous work centred on the development of corporate strategy, particularly within her last post in a Global company based out of the United States. Her speciality is the integration of diversity and inclusion into Human Resources and Organisational Development – taking Inclusion strategies into mainstream management development. Sheridan has extensive experience both the management and the delivery of training; working with employees across all levels, including Board executives. Sheridan has developed particular expertise in 'selling’ the Business Case for diversity and inclusion to senior and middle management. She has extensive experience of managing teams and coaching and mentoring across cultures within a global framework.

Sheridan is an Associate member of the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development and has a BSc (Hons) in Geography from University College Swansea and a Postgraduate Diploma in Education from Durham University. She takes great pride in her Welsh origins.

Susan Angoy specialises in the areas of corporate social responsibility; neighbourhood renewal and regeneration; and diversity issues. Her experience is both UK-based and international working with clients such as BP; Allied Domecq; International Business Leaders Forum; Department for Communities and Local Government (formerly Office of the Deputy Prime Minister); the Government Office for London; East of England Regional Development Agency; Goldsmiths University of London Centre for Urban and Community Research, and the United Nations Development Programme. Susan has held many Board level Public Appointments and is a Non-Executive Director on Camden NHS PCT, the London Development Agency and the Advisory Panel of City University. Previous NDPB appointments include: Docklands Light Railway, Beacon Council Advisory Panel and the Homerton Hospital NHS Trust.

Before becoming a consultant, Susan was Chief Executive of Deptford City Challenge - a neighbourhood-based, multi-sector partnership, regeneration programme with a budget of £37.5 millions. Earlier in her career, she was a senior investigator with the Commission for Racial Equality, where she was a team leader on the Formal Investigation into the UK’s Immigration Control Procedures. Susan’s academic background is that of an economic sociologist, specialising at post-graduate level in the Sociology of Development at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. She has lived and worked in many countries. Susan is married with one son and now lives in London. For relaxation she is passionate about salsa dancing, music and writing fiction.

Other Languages: Spanish & French

Patricia Chalé, has over twenty years' experience as an HR practitioner in a variety of organisations, both public and private in the UK and overseas. She has worked on a number of strategic high profile projects, examples include work with the Department of Labour, Government of South Africa in relation to the Labour Market Skills Development Programme shortly after the country’s accession to democracy and research for the Law Society and Black Solicitor’s Network in relation to race and gender diversity in the Legal Profession in England and Wales. She specialises in organisational development, and is an international assessor and adviser of the Investors in People Standard. Patricia is a visiting lecturer at the Westminster Business School and is a Senior Associate Tutor with the National School of Government and the Leadership Academy for Policing of the Central Police Training and Development Authority. Patricia is also a Governor of Hillcroft College, the National College for Women in the UK.

Other Languages: French & Swahili

Catherine Hamilton has spent over 20 years in the private sector and has significant experience of working as an internal consultant on identifying and implementing both learning and development and inclusion and diversity solutions to a wide range of clients.

Catherine has worked in partnership with coaching experts to deliver training programmes and partnered with live theatre forum to deliver an inclusive leadership experience. As an operational line manager Catherine is able to base her development ideas on real scenarios. She has a broad experience of developing competency frameworks for new business, and innovative learning solutions to meet personal and business needs. Catherine is passionate about developing others and providing accessible and memorable learning.

Catherine’s key areas of expertise include:

• Inclusion and Diversity
• Coaching
• Leadership Development
• Competency development

Catherine has an honours degree in Sociology, an NVQ in Learning & Development and has subsequently studied for a Coaching Diploma.

Kerstin James has over 19 years experience in equality and diversity, of which 15 years has been in senior positions in policy development and policy management in the public sector. Her experience covers both employment and service delivery. She is an experienced trainer and facilitator and has contributed to many conferences as a speaker.

Kerstin is Swedish by origin and bilingual and has worked in both countries. She has recently trained staff in the Civil Service, London and Metropolitan Councils and the University sector to comply with new equalities legislation and undertaking equality impact assessments. Kerstin is a Member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, has a Masters Degree in Employment Relations and Law, a Politics Degree and a Certificate in Workplace Mediation Skills.

Other Languages: Swedish

John McLellan, is an experienced consultant with expert knowledge of equality and diversity together with broader management and leadership know-how gained across the public, private and not-for-profit sectors.

In addition to assignments with Schneider-Ross, John is currently working as an equality and diversity adviser to the NHS, dealing with strategy and implementation within leading hospitals. In this capacity, he is also one of team working with the Equality and Human Rights Commission on non-statutory guidelines for the new Equality Act 2010 to be applied to the UK health and social services sectors.

John has led and been part of teams working on many E&D projects within a variety of public and private organisations, including Lloyds-TSB, Cambridge University, Oxford University, Scottish Widows, The Privy Council and the MoD. These projects have included strategy determination, change management interventions, diagnostics around inclusion and exclusion, and action planning. In all cases, John’s focus has been on making sure the client gets real value from the work and an understanding of how to take things forward that fit with the client’s overall ambitions.

Before working as a consultant, John had a successful management career in the BBC, the National Freight Consortium during privatisation, and running his own video and film production company. He has held senior management positions and been responsible for large-scale change management, team management, strategy and implementation planning.

Other Languages: French

Sally Muir, began her career in nursing before moving on to counselling in family therapy. While living in Washington DC, she qualified in Systematic Training for Effective Parenting, which she has since introduced in Britain.

Now self-employed and operating in both the corporate and voluntary sectors, Sally runs workshops for clients such as BP and the BBC on family, work-life balance and diversity issues.

Ann Musser grew up in a small rural community in central USA. She knew from an early age that she wanted to reach out and experience a broader world. So, she chose a large multi-national company, Royal Dutch Shell, and spent 29 years there in human resources, organization development and talent management. The combination of these experiences eventually led her to diversity and inclusion.

She became Global Head of D&I in 2004, stationed in London. She pulled heavily from her experience working with senior leaders in large-scale change efforts to mainstream D&I into the various global business streams within Shell. This included strengthening leadership accountability for D&I, as well as integrating it into the organisation’s culture and HR systems/processes. This was critical given Shell operates in over 130 countries and territories with a workforce of over 100,000 people.

During 2005-2006, she led a global study dealing with the progression and retention of women in Shell. The assessment, and recommended pathway forward, culminated in Shell being recognized as an “exemplar company” in the UK by the Women and Work Commission and the then Prime Minister Tony Blair.

After retiring from Shell, Ann established a consulting business, DiversityWorks, to assist multi-national organizations in the development and implementation of their diversity and inclusion strategies. She approaches this work from a belief that D&I is not a separate stream of activity but rather a part of the overall business strategy, talent management, and the day to day way of working together.

She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and a Masters in Industrial Relations from Purdue University. She and her husband, Bob, currently reside on the eastern shore of Maryland and enjoy travel, having visited over 35 countries worldwide.

Vivianne Näslund is a consultant, facilitator and executive coach and specialises in global leadership development, multi-cultural teams, executive coaching and mentoring, cross-border change and global diversity. She works with senior leaders and their teams from Global 500 companies across four continents and multiple industry sectors and has so far worked with executives from more than 35 countries.

Her corporate background as a manager and ‘serial entrepreneur’ has given her extensive business acumen gained from her roles as a senior manager in a fast-growing company, setting up and launching a division for a FTSE 100 and ‘Top Global 500’ company – and founder of a start up-business which she managed successfully for 10 years.

A Swedish national, she is based in Britain but has also lived in France, Switzerland and Germany and has a British and German MBA.

Other Languages: French, German & Swedish

Valerie Russell Emmott, was born in Germany to an American father and a French mother, and was raised in a half-dozen countries around the world. She has lived in the UK since 1993, not including a recent four-year stint in Brussels.

With Schneider~Ross since 2001, Valerie has worked on global diversity, corporate social responsibility and organisational culture change programmes for such clients as Rexam, O2, Imperial College, Lloyds TSB and the Learning and Skills Council.

An accomplished facilitator, she is presently focused on the inter-linked areas of culture, faith and belief. She is certified in multifaith diversity and anti-discrimination, and is bringing this work to clients in the public and HE/FE sectors.

Her previous career included work for Cable and Wireless plc and British Telecom. Valerie currently serves on the committee of the Bristol Inter Faith Group, and manages community cohesion projects for Radio Salaam Shalom.

Valerie has an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and a BA from Yale University. An American by origin, she has lived around the world, in the UK for the past ten years. She is currently based in Bristol, with her English husband and two sons.

Other Languages: French & Spanish

Alexis Walmsley, Alexis joined Schneider~Ross in 1998 and as Research Consultant she has a range of responsibilities including being the central point for all internal and external research projects; leading on survey development and data analysis for all client diagnostic projects as well as having a key role in the management of the business, with a special interest in IT.

Over the years, Alexis has led on many of the ground-breaking surveys that Schneider~Ross has carried out – particularly in Higher Education (at Cranfield and the Institute of Education) and Whitehall (the largest survey conducted in the UK on sexual harassment for the Ministry of Defence).

In this role, Alexis has had wide experience of the Equality Duties. She was part of the research team that published Towards Racial Equality in 2003 – the review for the CRE into the first year of implementation of the race equality duty. Building on this, Alexis worked with Anjana Nathwani on The Public Sector Equality Duties – Making an Impact and is currently very much involved in research for the Government Equalities Office on the costs and effectiveness of the public duties.

In addition to her work with public sector clients, she also works regularly with the private sector and is part of the team that has undertaken the Benchmarking exercise for the Global Diversity Network since 2004.

A Director and Trustee of the national charity Working Families, Alexis particularly enjoys writing and has contributed to IDS Diversity at Work and Positive Parenting’s specialist manual for professionals working with the parents of newly diagnosed disabled children. She also contributes to the newsletter published by Working Families as part of their ‘Waving Not Drowning’ initiative for working parents of children with a disability.

Tony Warner, is a highly regarded diversity trainer with experience in the public and voluntary sectors. He has delivered training extensively in the police and criminal justice sectors. Other commitments include membership of the NHS south-east London race equality network and working on 12 and 26 week long in school mentoring programmes to raise self esteem and academic performance.

For Schneider~Ross Tony has led major programmes for the Museum of London, Enterprise-Rent-A-Car and Southampton University. As part of both of these contracts he has been transferring his expertise to itnernal trainers so that they are equipped to cascade Schneider~Ross programmes further down the organisation and support line mangers in the process of change.