Born in Malaysia and brought up in Uganda, Michael completed his education in the UK with a degree from Durham University in Chinese Studies. He left the UK to study Japanese language, politics and economics at Nanzan University in Nagoya, Japan on a Rotary Foundation scholarship after which, as the company’s first British employee in Japan, he worked for Toyota as a motor industry analyst for four years. Following his return to the UK in 1988, Michael worked at the University of Bath as Director of the University’s Foreign Languages Centre and in 1993 went to Australia on a Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Fellowship to research the training of Japanese and English interpreters. This resulted in the establishment of the UK’s first MA in Interpreting and Translating for Japanese and English, and Chinese and English. In 1999 he joined the business school INSEAD, based in France, as Regional Director for Japan and Korea, transferring to Singapore in 2001 to become Director of the school’s Executive Education Department. After eight years in Singapore working in executive education and leadership development, Michael joined Roffey Park as Chief Executive in 2009. Michael regularly contributes at conferences on leadership-related topics and has a keen interest in leadership in a global context. He presented at the Singapore Human Capital Summit in 2010 and contributed to the Singapore Ministry of Manpower’s publication Asian Leadership: What Works (edited by Dave Ulrich and Robert Sutton) in the areas of collective purpose, multi-culture and culture, and leadership transition in Asia. He has given presentations on leadership “East-West, North-South” and strategic leadership and change at the University of Cambridge (Judge Business School), International Christian University in Tokyo and the Human Resources (HRDergi) Forum in Istanbul. He contributed to the 2013 publication The 50 Best Business Leaders (Future Publishing) and was named by HR Magazine in the UK as one of the top 20 HR Thinkers in 2013. He is currently developing ideas around balancing compassionate and caring leadership with delivering results and achieving targets.

Val Hammond (Valerie Berry) was Chief Executive, then Chair of Roffey Park Institute, previously Director of Research for Ashridge after earlier career in industry. She has many years’ experience in setting up and running not for profit and charitable organisations in sectors ranging from education, through health to women’s development. Currently, Val is a Trustee for Taunton Citizen’s Advice and local organising Fellow for RSA.