We are thrilled to announce the winners of Totum’s Best Business Leaders Awards 2022, representing a small number of exemplary role models who have excelled in business services leadership in 2021/22.
Chosen by our esteemed judging panel of leaders from across the professional services sector, we would like to congratulate our five winners (listed in alphabetical order), who have shown a consistent willingness and ability to go above and beyond:
- Mike Beswick, Business Development, Marketing and Communications Director, Taylor Wessing. Selected for excellent and inspiring leadership, Mike has delivered success across numerous projects including client investment and consultative selling programmes, building the TW brand through distinctive content and driving growth through leveraging tech and data driven decision making. The successful growth of his team from 40 to 60+ people has seen the creation of a market facing BD team focused on strategic sectors, as well as centres of excellence in client insights, digital, design, alumni, marketing operations and global markets. A strong leader who is also highly personable, visible (online and in person), approachable, upbeat and inclusive.
- Elizabeth McGarrity, Senior HR Director, EMEA, Fragomen. Read Elizabeth’s full profile here.
Chosen for transforming her firm’s HR function and putting people strategy at the heart of the business. Elizabeth has undertaken numerous successful projects for her firm including establishing a crisis management task force, designing and rolling out Fragomen’s responsible business strategy, re-designing the firm’s business Operations strategy, and revolutionising the firm’s approach to agile working. Her significant contributions led her to getting promoted to Senior HR Director in 2021. - Brooke Johnston, Head of Communications and Reputation Management, DAC Beachcroft. Read Brooke’s full profile here.
For spearheading one of DACB’s most successful ever campaigns that transformed the firm’s approach to innovation. It included an internal communications campaign to equip colleagues to talk confidently about innovation, followed up by an external marketing campaign entitled ‘What If?’, which was included a 360-degree augmented reality experience – described as the first of its kind for a UK law firm. Credited as a transformational campaign, it was full of firsts for DACB, and was powerful in influencing and changing firm-wide behaviours. - Stacey Rickford, Legal Operations Director, Travers Smith. Read Stacey’s full profile here.
An inspirational leader, credited with playing a key role in transforming business management and the practice of legal service delivery at Travers Smith. In less than six years, she has created, developed, scaled and successfully embedded a new business services function across the firm, a highly specialised business manager role known as “Legal Operations” which exists to drive and deliver change. Her inspirational leadership resulted in her promotion to become the firm’s first firmwide Legal Operations Director in 2021. - Adam Soames, Head of Global Business Development & Strategy, Hogan Lovells. (Read Adam’s full profile here.)
Adam has long been the Marketing & BD leader Hogan Lovells calls upon to lead its major strategic transformation projects – innovating the way the firm engages with clients and markets. He has led the development and roll-out of the firm’s Sales Transformation Programme, which sits at the heart of the firm’s strategic priorities. In under two years, he has established a Sales Academy for lawyer and BD team training and coaching, rolled-out a leading-edge “Pitch-to-Win” best practice approach, and re-positioned and grown the Pitch & Pursuits team to be a highly valued function across the firm. This has been key to doubling the firm’s pitch win rate and contributed to the firm posting record results in 2021.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank our judges for their careful decision-making: James Hacking, Partner, Kindleworth; Kathleen Harris, Managing Partner, London, Arnold Porter; Rachael Heenan, Senior Partner, Capsticks; Suzanne Liversidge, Managing Partner, Kennedys; Chris Lynch, former Global HRD and Non-Executive Director, Totum; Sarah Walker-Smith, CEO, Ampa and Dick Tyler, Executive Coach, Tyler Wilson Limited.
The judging process
Our judges had an incredibly hard job on their hands, choosing our winners from 34 impressive and detailed submissions. It is abundantly clear just how much their firms credit their business services leaders with positively impacting their firm’s fortunes. Given that our nominations were at the most senior level – Chief, Director and Head of – it goes to show how many business services professionals are making their mark at the very top of the professional services sector today.
We were also pleased to receive nominations which covered a variety of functions across HR, BD and Marketing, Legal Operations, Finance and General Management. In terms of gender diversity 45% of the nominations were male, and 55% were female, very much reflecting the gender balance we see in our leadership placements at Totum.
Congratulations!
Huge congratulations to our five Best Business Leaders 2022. We will be posting more details on all of our winners in the coming weeks in recognition of their significant contribution to the professional services sector. We also look forward to celebrating with all of our shortlisted nominees and winners later in the year.
For more information on Totum’s awards for outstanding performance in business services, contact [email protected]
