Perspectives 22 - Unleashed

With over 27 years of professional experience in diversified functions, Rekha's experience broadly includes sales and marketing, talent management; leadership development and learning. Highly collaborative with strong leadership, influencing and strategic skills. Rekha has worked in multicultural teams in the design and successful implementation of change and integration efforts associated with people development, talent management and internal communication. Rekha is passionate about maximising human talent and have made it my profession.

Experienced CHRO and Human Resources Leader with a demonstrated history of working across various countries globally. Experience covers Hi- Tech, Telecom; FMCG, IT/ITES and Retail & Sourcing industries. Led various roles covering Board assignments and HR leadership for larger SBUs, Business Partnering, Regional HR Operations, HR Consulting, Talent Management, Leadership Coaching, Talent Acquisition, HR Policies, and Labor Relations. A seasoned Global leader with extensive human resource management experience across all domains of HR with a PGDBM in Human Resources Management. Experienced CHRO and Human Resources Leader with a demonstrated history of working across various countries globally. Experience covers Hi- Tech, Telecom; FMCG, IT/ITES and Retail & Sourcing industries. Led various roles covering Board assignments and HR leadership for larger SBUs, Business Partnering, Regional HR Operations, HR Consulting, Talent Management, Leadership Coaching, Talent Acquisition, HR Policies, and Labor Relations. A seasoned Global leader with extensive human resource management experience across all domains of HR with a PGDBM in Human Resources Management.

Potoula Chresomales is the SVP of Product Management and Innovation at Skillsoft, a global corporate elearning company that serves 70% of the Fortune 1000. Potoula is responsible for product development and user experience design and launched the award-winning skill-building platform, Percipio. Potoula founded the Skillsoft Design Partner Program to collaborate with leading global companies to design Percipio to inspire, motivate, and engage learners. She is responsible for Skillsoft’s skill-building framework, using AI to drive personalization and interactivity, and enabling clients to manage, promote, and measure learning. She is expanding Skillsoft’s ecosystem integrations and uses design thinking methodologies to keep the customer at the heart of all that Skillsoft does.

Potoula believes deeply in the power of education to open doors and in the unique position Skillsoft has to help thousands of companies fill critical skill gaps to achieve their strategic priorities and create career opportunities for their team members.

Prior to joining Skillsoft, Potoula held leadership positions in product management and marketing at Kaplan Test Prep, The College Board, McGraw-Hill, and JP MorganChase.

She is a board member of Reach the World, an education non-profit that matches world travelers with K-12 classrooms so they can explore the world together and inspire a generation of global citizens. She is the Chair of the partnerships board for District C, an education non-profit that pairs students with businesses to solve real-world problems. She was a founding member of the Digital Learning Consortium and a mentor with Built By Girls, which aims to prepare the next generation of women leaders in technology.

Potoula was a member of the Forbes Technology Council and was recognized by the National Diversity Council as among the Top 50 Most Powerful Women in Tech in 2021. She was also recognized in HR Executive’s Top 100 HR Tech Influencers in 2022 and in Women in Tech Network’s Top 100 Women in Tech to Watch in 2022.

Potoula has an M.B.A from the Tuck School at Dartmouth and a B.S. from New York University.

Orla Daly is the Chief Information Officer at Skillsoft, where she brings her extensive experience delivering large transformation programs and leading IT & Digital organizational transformation through her passion for applying technology to solve business problems and accelerate business growth.

Orla held several IT and business roles at ExxonMobil, based in Europe, prior to joining EMC in Massachusetts, where she demonstrated a successful track record fostering strong business partnerships, evolving the IT operating model, and leading the company’s largest transformation program to enable Go-To-Market strategies.

As part of the Dell EMC merger, Orla led the IT Integration for Sales & Marketing, before heading up Dell’s global IT Marketing organization. Following Dell, Orla joined National Grid, with accountability for the technology strategy and delivery of IT programs and production operations for the US Customer organization. Most recently, she led IT & Digital Organizational Change Management and served as Chief of Staff for the Chief Information & Digital Officer.

Orla earned a B.A. in International Marketing with French and German from Dublin City University, Ireland, and an MSC in IT from Stirling University, Scotland. She currently lives outside Boston, where she likes to make the most of the New England outdoors with her husband and two daughters.

Sankhdeep leverages his background in instructional design, digital learning, and technical enablement to build and evangelize learning experiences that are engaging, relevant, scalable, and accessible. He currently leads Global Tech Academy function with the charter to develop technical, functional, and retail domain knowledge and skills for ~25k Walmart Global Tech associates.

As the Global Head of L&D, Leadership Development and OD for Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, Sachin is accountable for capability development and future skilling needs across technical learning, compliance, scientific, leadership and professional skills, for more than twenty-five thousand DRL employees spread globally. Prior to this role, Sachin spent time at Novartis as their Global Head of Learning for Operations and Corp. Functions, and before that he was the Chief Learning Officer for Global Consulting at Deloitte.

Sachin has over 24 years of experience within Learning, Talent Management and Organizational Development domains. During this time, he has worked and learnt with organizations as varied as the Oberoi Hotels & Resorts, Amazon, Accenture, and IBM India to name a few. He has developed substantial experience in establishing global learning and development organizations, developing skill sensing networks, and driving future skills agenda, while managing multi-locational and multicultural teams and stakeholder groups.

Ankur is currently working as a Vice President of Marketing at Skillsoft and has been part of the company for over 17 years. In his current role, he is responsible for managing regional field marketing, demand generation, business development, brand management as well as Marketing COE (Centre of Excellence) globally. Prior to Skillsoft, Ankur had worked on marketing and consulting assignments with Fiorano Software, IDC, AMCON and PwC.

Hema is a HR Leader driven by a strong passion to do transformative work with individuals and organizations. She holds multi-sector experience and is currently heading Learning & Development and Diversity & Inclusion functions for Reliance Industries Ltd. She is also a member of Harvard Business Publishing’s Asia Pacific Leadership Advisory Board – Corporate Learning. She is known as a HR professional with a deep business focus and an ability to drive change. Learning & Leadership Development, Talent Management, Employee Experience, Culture Building and Diversity and Inclusion are areas of her interest and expertise.

She enjoys coaching and mentoring diverse set of professionals. She blogs on topics pertaining to Organizational Culture, Positive Living, Learning & Leadership Development. She also speaks at multiple HR forums. She writes poetry in her free time, which she believes is not just a form of creative expression but is also a medium for influencing change.

A Global C-suite HR professional with expertise in large scale transformations, M&A, Change Management, Learning, Organisation Development, Management of corporate Leadership and Technology Academies, Organisation Building and engaging with Senior Business leaders across various sectors like Manufacturing, EPC Projects, Construction, Information and Technology Services, Pharma and Hydrocarbon. MVN Rao is also a certified CEO coach, President - Mumbai/Pune chapter of Coaching Foundation of India (CFI) and Speaker in various management forums including TEDx and numerous leading management institutes.

Vinutha is driven by new challenges posed by building teams which are empowered to deliver, exceeding client expectation. She comes with a rich global experience of over 25 years in information technology covering delivery management, operations management, solution development, creating and building a talent pool on digital skills. She has excelled at delivery management by creating value for the customers through innovative solutions and consistent delivery quality. In depth experience in defining, setting up, and managing end-end business operations, developing digital talent capability@scale. Vinutha has also participated as a speaker on multiple platforms like the Indian Businesswomen Conference, ANZ unconference, part of the organizing committee of ASSOCHAM women conference along with panel discussion, and also in Engineering institutions.

Divyesh is an entrepreneurial business leader with rich experience in helping organizations drive their digital HR agenda. Over the last 2 decades, Divyesh has helped hundreds of organizations leverage technology-led solutions for delivering key business results. In his current role as Regional Vice President for Skillsoft India, Divyesh advises businesses on how to extend their digital agenda, go beyond technology implementations to drive strategic imperatives and create best-in-class employee experience (EX) aligned with current and future needs of organizations. Prior to joining Skillsoft, Divyesh has worked in global technology and cloud-based solutions companies like SAP, Polaris Software Labs and others.

Rajiv is a multi-faceted professional with over two and half decades of experience including Strategy Formulation, Change & Transformation Management, Organization Development, eLearning, Learning & Development, Learning Management System (LMS) & Learning Experience Platform (LXP) implementation, Knowledge Management, Coach, SAP-HR Implementation, IT applications development & delivery centre management, Process Improvement, Assessments as per EFQM Business Excellence Model, and HR Excellence Model.

He manages learning ecosystems that supports current and future workforce skill needs, emphasize agility and foresight when designing and executing learning programs. He created an ecosystem for making eLearning embedded in training agenda of business HR through introducing eLearning platform ATL/Partners/ATL Buddies/Partners meet/Bizathon/Patron Award/Learning Maps. He also created Academy of Digital Transformation and Academy of Quality under the ATLVarsity brand culminating into L&T's own corporate University.

A learning leader in large multinational organizations such as IBM and Conduent (formerly Xerox Services), Govind is adept in establishing and managing multimillion-dollar learning & knowledge operations. He has extensive experience in learning strategy & transformation, performance & learning consulting, design, development and deployment of learning and knowledge solutions/curricula/university, driving social & self-directed learning, branding, content management, project/program management, evaluation, effectiveness & ROI. Govind is accomplished in driving efficiencies, innovating, collaborating with large geographically dispersed teams, demonstrating strong leadership, stakeholder management, client partnering, communication, vendor management and negotiation skills to build deep technical, functional and behavioral competencies through best of class learning interventions evolving for 2020 workforce.

Sonal is a Strategic & Innovative HR Leader acknowledged for translating Organisations vision & strategy into strategic HR initiatives that improves performance, profitability, growth & employee engagement. She comes with an academic background in Organisation Development & rich 22 years of diverse work experience that spans across industries & countries. In her current role, she heads two functions - Organisation Development which works along with the CEO & CXO’s to build a Leadership pipeline, Succession Planning and Culture. She also heads the Organisation Effectiveness portfolio with the responsibility to strategize L&D needs for the organization to ensure capability building & organisation Effectiveness. Sonal has won numerous awards including the SHRM Award 2021 for “Building Leaders of tomorrow”, Femina - Women leader Award, Golden Globe Award for Talent Management & Development (OD), featured in top 6 best Organizations in “Global Leadership Award – 2017” by Dale Carnegie Inc and others.

Binoj Vasu has over 28 years of experience across Learning & Development, Talent Management, Talent Engagement, Talent Creation and Business Development domains. He is Group President & Chief Learning Officer at YES BANK. Over two stints covering ten years at YES BANK (separated by his entrepreneurial venture), he has set up, strategized and scaled the Learning & Development (YES School of Banking), Talent Management, Rewards & Recognition, Talent Engagement, Talent Pipeline Creation (YES Talent Academy), Employer Branding & Campus Talent Acquisition (YES University & School Relationship Management) functions of the Bank.

During his career, Binoj has successfully set up & managed Learning & Development and Talent functions across organizations. He is a Certified Coach for Leadership & Transition Management. He holds a certificate in Human Analytics from Wharton Online. Binoj has been instrumental in setting up Centers of Excellence for L&D across multiple Organizations. During the first decade of his career, Binoj was a Business Development Specialist, having held business leadership roles across organizations like Xerox, ExxonMobil & Exide.