RDR Monthly Event: Leadership in Resilience: Thriving in Your Early Career

Dr Gianluca Pescaroli is Assistant Professor (Lecturer) in Business Continuity and Organisational Resilience at University College London (UCL). His research investigates how to build and improve the continuity of operations during disruptive events, how to minimise their impacts, and how to increase the resilience of the public and private sectors. This includes managing complex challenges such as cascading risks, critical infrastructure failures, systemic and compound dynamics.

Richard is Head of Resilience at Holcim, Switzerland. He undertook his MPhil in parasitology with a specialisation in the lower gut, at which point he decided to move swiftly into the world of resilience. He has been the head of resilience with Rio Tinto, the mining conglomerate and now works with Holcim who operate in 60 countries in the world. In the context of managing many hundreds of crises from kidnap to Covid, to conflicts and civil disturbances, he has generated an encyclopedic knowledge of mistakes to avoid. He will be sharing some of these mistakes, how to make them, and most importantly how to get yourself into a position of sufficient responsibility where making them can have a material impact.

Kristen has been head of the City Resilience Team at the Greater London Authority since March 2022. Before that, she worked for more than 15 years coordinating partnerships supporting climate change adaptation, as Manager of the London Climate Change Partnership, Director of Climate South East, and Chair of Climate UK. Her major interest is in bringing together people and ideas from across sectors to respond to social and environmental resilience challenges. In particular, she is interested in the social justice issues raised by climate change and the need to incorporate equity in resilience policy and planning. Previously, she worked on human rights, as a Senior Researcher on political rights, civil liberties and press freedom at Freedom House in New York.

Eugene Washington Walker is a lecturer at the UCL School of Management and both Head of Careers and Immersion Coordinator for the UCL MBA. Eugene brings diverse public, private and third sector experience as a corporate trainer and facilitator for business and professional programmes, an executive coach, and a professional actor of stage and screen. Eugene is a member of the Academy of Management (AoM), and the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development (CIPD). As an actor, Eugene has starred in productions for the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Netflix. He has also worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Royal National Theatre and toured theatre shows in more than 20 countries including America, China, Japan, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and across Europe.