Derrick May is an accomplished talent acquisition and workforce strategy leader with more than three decades of experience shaping high performing teams across the technology, engineering, cyber, and national security sectors. His career has been defined by a commitment to building capability, enabling organisational growth, and championing inclusive, future focused talent strategies.

As a member of the Talent Acquisition leadership team at Thales, Derrick plays a key role in designing and delivering recruitment strategies that support complex, mission critical programmes across the UK. He is widely recognised for his deep understanding of emerging skills, his ability to identify exceptional potential, and his dedication to developing diverse and sustainable talent pipelines. Derrick’s expertise spans executive search, strategic workforce planning and the creation of talent frameworks that align with evolving industry needs. His approach blends commercial insight with a strong people centric ethos, ensuring that talent strategy remains both impactful and purpose driven.

Tania Jesney is the Head of Resourcing and Volunteering at Dimensions UK, where she leads the national resourcing strategy for a 7,000 strong workforce in a highly regulated, high volume social care environment. With over 20 years’ recruitment experience and a decade spent specialising in strategic resourcing, employer branding, workforce planning and assessment design, she has delivered initiatives that have transformed candidate experience and strengthened organisational capability. Her work includes launching an Applicant Tracking System and an industry recognised careers site, implementing an integrated IDSP for safer and faster onboarding, and introducing a personality based assessment tool that led to Dimensions winning Best Assessment & Selection Strategy at The Talent Labs Awards in 2025.

Under her leadership, Dimensions has also achieved multiple external recognitions — including awards for its Careers Site and EDI Strategy, alongside finalist placements for Large Recruitment Team and Best Recruitment Initiative. Tania is known for her data driven, continuous improvement approach to leadership—building high performing teams, modernising processes and embedding evidence based decision making across recruitment. She is currently completing a Level 5 Coaching and Mentoring qualification to further strengthen her leadership practice and commitment to developing others.

Outside of work, Tania enjoys keeping fit and spending time outdoors; she’s someone who is always on the move, a trait that reflects her drive, pace and focus both at home and in her professional life.

Lorna has over 30 years of experience in policing, with expertise in public sector recruitment. Throughout her career, she has been involved in delivering large-scale recruitment campaigns for police officers, alongside specialist recruitment for a wide range of police and support staff roles. This experience has provided her with a strong understanding of the challenges and responsibilities associated with attracting, selecting and appointing individuals to roles that support effective policing and public service. She is now the eRecruitment technology Manager at Police Scotland responsible for the recruitment technology that underpins the organisation’s hiring processes. In this role, she leads the team responsible for managing and operating the applicant tracking system and associated recruitment software that supports the recruitment function.

Her work in recruitment has been recognised at the Talent Lab Awards, and she has collaborated with the Talent Labs by contributing to industry webinars. She is now proud to be supporting the awards community as a judge in 2026. Outside of work she enjoys spending time with her family and her hobbies are baking and card making.

Nicki's 30 year career spans across early days in agency consultancy with exposure to many different industries as a recruiter, then going in-house in 2004, to work across hospitality and various aspects of retail, from quick service and convenience to more specialist product based businesses requiring a more consultative approach to customer service. Throughout that time, she has developed her skill set from starting with the recruiting element of the role, to the full Talent Acquisition cycle and employer branding, taking hiring managers through the journey of how to recruit and implementing systems, process, recruitment materials, policies and documentation and careers sites to support the candidate experience, hiring manager users and the People team / recruitment admin users.

She currently heads up Talent Acquisition for Jollyes Pets, a national pet-specialist retailer that's growing. Here she has established the TA function from scratch, implemented systems and process and started to expand their employer brand to enable the business to attract the right people to scale at pace, and won Talent Labs awards for TA Manager of the Year and Outstanding contribution & impact in 2025, as well as Jollyes support colleague of the year 2025. Prior to this she headed up TA in Bensons for Beds and before that, was Resourcing Manager for SSP UK. SSP are a global retail hospitality business with multiple own brand and franchised branded outlets across the travel sector.

Reward and Learning Director for Group People (Europe) at AS Watson, blending an eye for detail and a passion for data and numbers with a love of people development and an inclusive culture. I enjoy building teams that are kind, confident, curious and ready for whatever comes next.

Before stepping into my current role, I’ve built a career as an experienced people generalist, progressing through a variety of HR and people roles in Superdrug, wagamama and Sainsbury’s, as well as a life changing experience working for the London Organising Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games 2012.

One of my highlights of 2025 was watching the celebration of our wonderful recruitment team winning their Talent Labs Award and so I’m delighted to get the chance to help recognise this year’s winner.

Outside of work the curious part of my mind is currently applying itself to learning languages, mostly Korean but also more recently Cantonese, to better engage with my new colleagues. The confidence in speaking in either hasn’t caught up with my curiosity yet!

Matt Ralphs is an award-winning Talent Acquisition leader with over 20 years’ experience designing and delivering high-impact talent strategies across retail, hospitality and professional services. He is currently Head of Talent at Dignity Funerals, where he leads the organisation’s end-to-end talent strategy spanning attraction, retention and development, building the infrastructure to support workforce transformation and long-term growth.  Previously Talent & Recruitment Manager for Poundland & Dealz (UK & ROI), Matt has led large-scale hiring programmes, award-winning employer branding initiatives and major workforce transformation projects. A previous Talent Labs TA Leader of the Year winner, he is passionate about modern, data-driven recruitment and creating inclusive pathways that help organisations build future-ready workforces. Outside work, Matt is a motorsport enthusiast with a racing licence, enjoys skiing and snowboarding, and is a dedicated West Bromwich Albion supporter.

Elisha is Softcat Plc’s Recruitment Manager and has worked for the FTSE 250 organisation within the tech space for 12 years. Born and raised in Manchester by a single working mum, with an innate and undeniable passion for people from day one, it was no big surprise when Lish ended up pursuing a career in People and Talent. In recent years, Lish’s passion for enabling others, specifically supporting and empowering other women in business, has skyrocketed. As a result, she has been recognised with the technology industry award for CRN Outstanding Returner, was named Recruitment Leader of the Year in 2024 by The Talent Labs and was asked to deliver Softcat’s keynote speech at the tech industry event - CRN Women in Technology Festival - titled ‘The Power of Vulnerability in Leadership’. Lish’s biggest love in life (outside of her tornado 4 year old, Max) is getting people excited about the things that she’s excited about, the main one of which is exploring the impact that strong and effective leadership and community can have on the enablement and empowerment of women in the workplace and supporting other women to realise their full potential.