Speakers

Rt Hon the Baroness Hale of Richmond DBE

Lady Hale retired as President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom in January 2020, after a varied career, first as an academic lawyer at the University of Manchester, then as the first woman member of the Law Commission, where she led the team responsible for proposing reforms of Family Law, and finally as a Judge in the Family Division of the High Court, the Court of Appeal of England and Wales, the House of Lords and the Supreme Court. She has specialised in family law, welfare law and equality law and taken part in many notable cases, most famously presiding over the unanimous decision of the Supreme Court that Boris Johnson’s attempt to suspend Parliament in September 2019 was unlawful. Her memoir, Spider Woman, A Life, was published in 2021.  

Advising on the largest international and Polish companies in labour and employment law for 30 years. A leading Polish employment lawyer. 

Past Chair of the European Employment Lawyers Association, the organisation of leading European labour and employment law practitioners. 

Member of American Bar Association’s Labour and Employment Law Section. Member of the American Employment Law Council, the most prestigious American organization of employment lawyers. Member of the International Bar Association, the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Member of the Editorial Board of the Polish Employment Law Monitor.
Founding member and the first Chair of the Employment Committee of the Warsaw Bar. Founder and first President of the Employment Law Association. He was also a member of the Steering Committee of the International Forum on Employment Law. During his studies, he served as Vice-President of the International Board of the European Law Students Association (ELSA) and President of ELSA Cracow.  

He was an assistant professor in the Jagiellonian University’s Department of Labour Law. Author of many academic and popularizing publications. 

For many years, individually mentioned as a leader in labour law by all reputable Polish and international publications such as Chambers&Partners, The Legal 500, Who’s Who Legal, and Rzeczpospolita. 

Principal of Brasenose College, Oxford 

After attending Clee Grammar School, Cleethorpes, John studied at Lincoln College, Oxford.  

John was called to the Bar in 1979 and took silk in 1998. He has practised primarily in employment law and human rights. He has been described in a review as “an employment law rock star”.  

He has acted in most of the major industrial disputes over the past decades. His landmark cases include a European Court of Human Rights application on the employment of gay servicemen and the largest ever Employment Tribunal application by 12,000 retained firefighters.  

A frequent lecturer on employment law, John has written 16 books including the recently published ‘Downward Spiral’ on the collapsing public standards in Britain. He is a CEDR trained mediator. He sits out of term as a Deputy High Court Judge. Since 2005 he has been a Bencher of Middle Temple.  

Wendi Lazar is the founder and CEO of C-Suite Strategies, LLC., a strategic advisory firm that leverages her 30 years of business and international legal experience to advise executives, founders, businesses, and law firms on compensation, negotiations, complex transactions, and risk management. 

Wendi is a top-ranked and award-winning employment law attorney with nearly two decades of experience at the Chambers-ranked law firm Outten & Golden LLP. She focused her practice on complex executive compensation challenges faced by Fortune 500 and private equity management teams, specifically related to M&A, IPO, divestiture, and spin-off transactions. 

As a member of her former firm’s Executive Committee, Wendi had board-level fiduciary accountability, encompassing governance, risk, audit, strategic planning, executive compensation, and succession planning. She was instrumental in conceptualizing and shepherding the firm’s long-term growth and digital transformation strategy. Additionally, Wendi helped to overhaul the firm’s successorship model and helped source a new COO and professional management team. 

Eleanor Sharpston KC has combined a career in practise at the Bar (specialising in European Union and ECHR Law) with an academic career: first as a lecturer at UCL (1990-1992) and then in Cambridge as a University Lecturer from 1992 to 1998 and an Affiliated Lecturer from 1998 to 2006. She is an emeritus fellow of King’s College and was previously joint head of Hailsham Chambers. In January 2006 Dame Eleanor took up the post of Advocate General at the European Court of Justice. She retains her links with the Law Faculty, currently as Yorke Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Cambridge Law Faculty, and, in 2023-2024, as the Arthur Goodhart Visiting Professor in Legal Science. 

Eleanor Sharpston was made a Dame Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George in the 2024 New Year Honours Overseas and International List for services to Justice and to the Education of Law in the UK and Europe. 

Doc. PhDr. Michal Vašečka, PhD. (1972) is sociologist by background, he studied at the Masaryk University in Brno and at the New School University in New York. Michal focuses his interests on issues of political sociology, radicalization of modernity, and resilience of modern societies. He has been a program director of Bratislava Policy Institute since 2017 and associate professor at the Paneuropean University in Bratislava since 2018. Since 2012 Michal has served as a representative of Slovakia in the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) of the Council of Europe and as a member of the EU Knowledge Hub on Prevention of Radicalization. Michal is a chairman of the Editorial Board of Denník N, a major daily newspaper in Slovakia. He operated at the Masaryk University in Brno in 2002-2017, at the Comenius University in 2006-2009, and he served as a program director of the Institute for Public Affairs in 1999-2006.   

Burkard Göpfert is a Certified Employment Lawyer admitted in Germany. He attended the Law Schools of Passau, Geneva, Munich, and New York (Master of Laws (LL.M.), Columbia University). As a lawyer he has been working in Warsaw/Poland as well as in Asia. Burkard is a recognized advisor on complex HR transformation and restructuring cases and has been leading as well as coaching all kind of negotiations with Works Council in Germany and abroad. The legal press has just called him the “architect” of labour negotiations and recent engagements have been with advising Siemens Energy, Zalando, Lanxess and Bosch Siemens on their HR performance programs. In addition, Burkard is acting as the Chairman of an Employers’ Association and is coaching a wide range of Union negotiations. Burkard is an author and (co-)editor of numerous books on HR Restructuring as well as a lecturer at the University of Passau. He has been chairing the annual conference “Restructuring” of the German Handelsblatt for 20 years. 

Gry Myklebust, Head of future work life, Abelia, Oslo 

Gry Myklebust is Head of future work life in Abelia, which is the trade and employers association within Norways largest employers’ organisation; the NHO (The Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise). Gry is master of Law 2002, and specialices in labor law and policy.  

Gry Myklebust has extensive experience from both public and private sector, as well as several years within employers’ organisations. Myklebust has until recently been legal councel and Head of HR Stakeholder management in Telenor Norway, Norway’s largest telecom enterprise. Her responsibilities in Telenor included both colletive and individual labor law. She also headed negotiations and collaborations with the trade unions. For more than 10 years, she has worked continiously with change- and restructuring processes, including several downsizings. Myklebust has also been a court appointed lay judge with expertise of industrial life for several years. 

María Royo is an employment & labour lawyer specializing in strategic advice to companies and start-ups, senior management, restructuring and collective dismissals, litigation and labour M&A. 

She studied law at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) and obtained a master’s degree in business law at the Centro de Estudios Garrigues. She has also taken specialisation courses at the UCM School of Legal Practice and at Georgetown Law (Washington DC). 

In 2008 she began her career at Uría Menéndez and in 2013 she continued to work as an in-house lawyer for multinationals such as Procter&Gamble, Globalvia and Gestamp Renewable Industries, where she was director of industrial and labour relations.  

In 2020 she continued her career by founding her own firm, Maroy Legal, which merged with AGM Abogados in September 2024, to form its Labor Law department in the Madrid office. Since then, María leads the firm’s labour practise in Madrid. 

She has received several industry awards, including Lawyer of the Year in the Senior Management category (2021, 2022 and 2025), Forty under 40 (2023) and Rising Star (2024). 

She has been a professor at Sagardoy Business School, at the Antonio de Nebrija University and at the Rey Juan Carlos University, teaching Labour Law classes in the master’s degree for access to the legal profession. 

She is a member of numerous associations in the sector: Foro Español de Laboralistas (FORELAB), International Bar Association (IBA), European Employment Lawyers Association (EELA), International Employment Lawyers Association (IELA) and the Asociación Nacional de Laboralistas (ASNALA), where she was co-founder and coordinator of its youth club from 2020 to 2022. 

She also collaborates with associations such as Women in a Legal World (WLW), Women Start-up Community and the Quiero Trabajo foundation. 

Past Senior Vice President Legal, General Counsel, International Operations 

FedEx Express 

Roel Staes most recently held the position of Senior Vice President Legal, General Counsel, International Operations at FedEx. In this role, he was responsible for FedEx Express’ legal, regulatory, compliance and government affairs in Europe, Canada, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. In June 2023, he was appointed Head of Sustainability for Europe, in addition to his General Counsel role.   Roel studied law at the Universities of Leuven and Antwerp, holds a Diploma in Aviation Law and a MBA from Henley Business School. 

Nick De Marco KC is a leading sports law barrister, with particular expertise in commercial, employment, regulatory and media law. He is recognised as one of the leading sports lawyers in the UK, was named UK ‘Sports Silk of the Year’ in 2022 by Legal 500 and featured on ‘The Lawyer’s Hot 100’ list 2021.  

As well as acting for international and national federations, premier league and international football clubs, players, athletes and their unions, Nick sits as an arbitrator across a number of sports. 

He is a member of the Editorial Board of Law In Sport and writes and lectures regularly on sports law issues. He is the author and General Editor of “Football and the Law” (Bloomsbury, 2018), a director of the British Association for Sport and the Law (BASL) and a Bencher of the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple. 

Antoine Duval is a Senior Researcher at the Asser Institute, where he heads the Asser International Sports Law Centre. He holds a PhD in law from the European University Institute in Florence and has widely published on the intersection between transnational sports governance and European Union law. His latest edited volume ‘The European Roots of the Lex Sportiva’ was published in 2024 by Hart Publishing. 

He holds a degree in law from the university of Rome ‘La Sapienza’ and an LL.M in International Business Law from King’s College London.  

He has practiced civil and employment law in Italy for several years and worked at the Asser International Sports Law Centre in the Hague, carrying out research in the field of international sports arbitration, before joining FIFA in 2017.  

Until May 2024, he was a senior legal counsel within the Litigation Department, representing FIFA before the Court of Arbitration for Sport in more than 150 proceedings.  

In the spring of 2024, he has co-founded SP.IN Law, a Zurich based international sports law firm. 

He regularly publishes articles on issues related to sports law and lectures in international sports law programmes. 

Hermine Voûte, born on April 4, 1964, worked as a Dutch lawyer specializing in employment law until 2025. She has been with the law firm Loyens & Loeff since 1988, where she also chaired the Diversity Committee. In addition to her legal career, Voûte co-founded Better Place to Work BV, an agency dedicated to advising organizations on safeguarding matters. Her commitment to fostering inclusive and safe work environments is evident through her involvement in this initiative. Voûte’s interests extend into the sports sector; she has served as the team manager for the men’s first team at Hockey Club Amsterdam. In 2024, Voûte was nominated as a candidate for the Supervisory Board of AFC Ajax, reflecting her esteemed reputation and the trust placed in her expertise within both legal and sports communities.

Natasha has over a decade’s experience in advising clients on employment relations issues and is an accredited trainer certified by the Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM). She has a particular passion for diversity, equity and inclusion training in the workplace.  

Natasha has a wealth of experience in delivering effective employment legal training to clients, on issues including anti-discrimination, handling complex disciplinary and grievance matters, harassment, hiring and firing, employment tribunal claims, witness preparation and managing sickness absence. 

Natasha frequently writes for legal and HR publications and is recognised as a key lawyer in the Legal 500 (2025). 

She is an accredited trainer, a member of the Employment Lawyers Association (ELA), Black Solicitors Network, PEN PSL Network and a member of ELA’s Race Equality Committee. 

Ming Evans is Group Associate General Counsel, Employment at Smiths Group plc, a British multinational FTSE100 diversified engineering global company headquartered in London. For over 170 years Smiths has been improving the world through smarter engineering and it employs around 16,000 employees in 50 countries.  

Ming has the global responsibility of employment law matters for all Smiths divisions. She is a bilingual and dual qualified counsel (England & Wales Solicitor and Paris French Avocat) with extensive cross-border knowledge in employment law spanning over 25 years, uniquely combining Senior in-house experience and Partner level private practice. Ming has held in-house roles in a range of industries, from Finance, Tech, Retail to Engineering giving her a diverse experience of practises and trends for global employers. She has successfully managed many complex multi-country employment projects and has a particular interest in DEI, Reorganisation and M&A, Employment Litigation and labour law compliance. 

Hellmut Gohde looks at EWCs from an employee perspective. Graduated in social sciences in 1989 Hellmut started his career at Hildesheim University (Germany) with training and advising trade union officials and employee representatives on the European single market (Maastricht Treaty) and its impact on cross-border business growth. In 1993 he was retained by the ETUC as the then first EWC-Officer in Brussels. In his role as a trade union official, he contributed both to the making of the 1994 EWC-Directive and the negotiations of a multitude of ´voluntary´ pre-Directive EWC Agreements. Since 1999 Hellmut works as an independent EWC trainer and expert in most European countries. Over the past decades he was involved in the negotiations of over 100 EWC Agreements, in a variety of legal disputes under different country jurisdictions and a countless number of EWC training events. He permanently provides guidance on subjects such as cross-border collective redundancies, transfers of undertakings, outsourcing or other forms of company restructuring and the protection of employees.   

David Hopper is a Parter at Lewis Silkin who is qualified in England & Wales, Hong Kong and Ireland. His practice now focuses exclusively on advising employers on collective employment law. His experience includes successfully representing clients at the UK Supreme Court in the fields of both trade union recognition and European Works Councils, whilst in Ireland he has been involved in test case litigation before the WRC, Labour Court and High Court as the courts begin to grapple with the influx of EWCs to the jurisdiction following Brexit. 

Ottilia Boström is a Partner at Lindahl’s Stockholm office, advising on both contentious and non-contentious employment and incentive matters. Her expertise spans the entire employment lifecycle, from hiring to firing. Ottilia advises clients on their day-to-day employment issues and regularly handles internal investigations, union consultations, and employee disputes. With a career that began at Linklaters, Ottilia has extensive experience in advising on employment and incentive matters arising in connection with large-scale cross-border transactions, restructurings, and reorganisations. Additionally, Ottilia possesses a deep knowledge of the regulatory framework governing remuneration in the Financial Services Sector.“ 

Managing associate at GT Legal, Prague, Czech Republic 

Martina Šumavská is a managing associate at GT Legal, specialising mainly in employment and immigration law. She has more than 13 years of experience in advising on all aspects of employment law, including experience from working at the State Labour Inspection Office of the Czech Republic. Martina is also on the board of the Czech Employment Lawyers Association (CzELA) and regularly engages in publishing and lecturing activities. 

Sharon is a Partner in the Employment department with over twenty years’ experience of helping clients address the full spectrum of contentious and non-contentious employment issues and is renowned for her commercial and strategic approach. She is a seasoned litigator and is adept at conducting all forms of employment-related litigation. Her contentious practice covers everything from handling Employment Tribunal claims, involving allegations such as discrimination and whistleblowing, to claims in the High Court, involving team moves, the theft of confidential information and the enforcement of restrictive covenants.  

Sharon works with clients to address all their day-to-day employment issues, to put in place strategic HR solutions and to resolve internal disputes, often being called upon to conduct, and advise on, investigations and special situations. She also has a wealth of experience of advising on the employment aspects of domestic and multi-jurisdictional corporate transactions and the implementation of restructurings and international projects that involve complex legal and commercial issues. 

François Funck-Brentano is a Managing Director of Lazard and European General Counsel. He joined the Firm in Paris in 1999 and became a Managing Director in January 2004. Beside his role as general counsel for the Firm’s French operations, he is often involved in client’s engagements, particularly those involving public M&A transactions. Prior to joining Lazard, François was Director & Legal Counsel of GE Capital Europe in London (the financial arm of General Electric) from 1995 to 1999 where he was principally in charge of supporting GE Capital’s rapid expansion in Western and Eastern Europe and building GE Capital’s European legal infrastructure. Before joining GE Capital, he was an attorney with the law firm Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton first in New York then in Paris.

François is a graduate of ESCP Business School and holds a JD from the University of Paris (Panthéon-Sorbonne) and a Master in Laws from Harvard Law School. He was admitted to the Bar in New York in 1988 and in Paris in 1991. 

Costanza Posarelli is a European counsel in the London office of Sullivan & Cromwell’s General Practice group. She has experience in a broad range of practice areas including mergers and acquisitions and equity and debt capital markets. Costanza’s practice also involves advising on ongoing public company matters such as SEC compliance and corporate governance as well as other corporate matters. Costanza advises clients across a range of industries, including consumer & retail, automotive, luxury, financial services, insurance and energy. She is New York-qualified. Costanza is a member of Sullivan & Cromwell’s Diversity Committee and of the Firm’s Italian practice. 

David Mendel is a Partner in the People and Reward department of global law firm Freshfields and is based in London. He advises clients on all areas of employment law and employee incentive arrangements. David has an active contentious and investigative employment law practice. He regularly conducts external investigations into allegations of employee misconduct and advises on difficult disciplinary and grievance issues. In recent years he has also secured injunctions to restrain the breach of restrictive covenants by former employees; successfully defended claims for breach of contract in the High Court and Court of Appeal; and has defended discrimination claims in the Employment Tribunal. 

David is an Ambassador to both the Freshfields Social Mobility Network and its Black Affinity Network, and is a member of the firm’s LGBTQ+ network, Halo. 

Samantha Cornelius is an employment lawyer qualified in England & Wales and Hong Kong SAR currently working for Linklaters out of their Hamburg office in Germany. In her present role, Samantha advises the Linklaters senior leadership team on strategies and initiatives for talent retention, supports the delivery of various talent programmes, and develops policies and benefits designed to support employees at every age and life stage. 

Economist, sociologist, anthropologist. Between 2001 and 2011 he was a researcher at the Center for Policy Studies at Central European University conducting research on equal opportunity policies. Between 2015 and 2017 he was a lecturer at the Faculty of Social Sciences at Eötvös Lóránd University, between 2018 and 2020 researcher at the Faculty of Law of the same university. Between 2017 and 2021 he was a training expert at the Faculty of Law Enforcement at National University of Public Service. He has been working for Háttér Society since 2007, first as a volunteer then as a paid staff member and between 2014 and 2022 as executive board member. He coordinates the advocacy and research activities of the organization and supports the work of the Legal Aid Service. Between 2012 and 2021 he also served on the board of the Hungarian LGBT Alliance, the national umbrella organization.  

Bethan Price is a Legal Director at PepsiCo, providing general commercial legal and strategic advice to PepsiCo’s multi-billion pound UK & Ireland businesses, including brands such as Walkers, Doritos, Pepsi MAX, 7up, and Quaker Oats. She advises the business across all commercial legal areas, with a particular focus on employment, marketing and commercial contracts. 

Bethan is also actively involved in PepsiCo’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives. PepsiCo is committed to creating a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace where everyone, regardless of their background, has a voice that is heard and valued. The company has robust processes for managing pay equity, promoting equal opportunities, and fostering an inclusive environment. 

Bethan trained at Freshfields and was an associate in the People & Reward team for five years before joining PepsiCo. 

FBA, FLSW, FRSA is Professor of EU law and Employment Law and senior tutor and fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. She is the author of EU Employment Law (Oxford, OUP, 2012, 5th ed.), The Substantive Law of the EU: The Four Freedoms, (Oxford, OUP, 2022, 7th ed), and (with Peers ed), European Union Law (Oxford, OUP, 2023, 4th ed). She is a member of the European Commission funded European Labour Law Network (ELLN). She is also a Senior Fellow of the UK in a Changing Europe (http://ukandeu.ac.uk/) project (UKCE). This is an authoritative, non-partisan think-tank which does research and provides information about all aspects of Brexit. Part of its remit is to make that information accessible to the general public. She has appeared on the main media channels – BBC, ITV and Sky – as well as some of the more specialist programmes such as Law in Action, Woman’s Hour, Question Time, Any Questions and the Briefing Room. She has also written for the Guardian and the Telegraph. She has given evidence to numerous select committees on the legal issues connected with Brexit. She has her own podcast, 2903cb, and she blogs on Brexit, mainly for the http://ukandeu.ac.uk/. 

One of Scotland’s leading employment law practitioners, with over 25 years’ experience, Neil heads up Shepherd and Wedderburn’s employment and immigration team. Neil’s expertise includes managing complex business transfers and restructuring programmes, involving TUPE and redundancy, collective consultation, union and industrial relations issues. Neil also advises on sensitive HR issues and is able to guide clients to achieve a sensible business solution by navigating a practical way through problems. Neil is an experienced and accomplished tribunal advocate and an experienced speaker on the Employment Law circuit. He is accredited by the Law Society of Scotland as a Specialist in Employment law and is recognised by Chambers as a “Leader in his Field 

Christopher McCrudden is an honorary professor of human rights and equality law at the School of Law, Queen’s University Belfast, L. Bates Lea Global Law Professor at the University of Michigan Law School, and a Fellow of the QUB Mitchell Institute. He holds an LLB from QUB, an LLM from Yale Law School, and a DPhil and DCL from Oxford University. He is called to the Bars of England and Wales, Northern Ireland, and Ireland, and is a member of Blackstone Chambers in London. QUB awarded him an honorary LLD in 2006. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2008, a Member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2018, and an Honorary Bencher of the Bar of Northern Ireland in 2022. He is the academic member of the Judicial Studies Board for Northern Ireland. He is also a member of the Board of the Irish Centre for European Law, and chair of its Northern Ireland Committee. His most recent publication is an edited collection, The Law and Practice of the Ireland-Northern Ireland Protocol, published by Cambridge University Press in 2022. He was awarded a CBE in the 2019 New Year’s Honours List.