Hi – I’m Lisa (Hooley) Edwards, one of the two Board Directors here at Shared Services Forum UK.
I’ve had a really great 25+ year career to date, with my roots in finance and manufacturing helping me to develop through roles in areas such as European finance leadership, ERP implementations, global commercial enablement and customer experience, transformational change projects, organisation innovation, and creating and improving all shapes and sizes of Shared Services and GBS sourcing models. I’ve been really lucky to always work for global companies, so I’ve travelled a lot, experienced many different cultures across the world and meet a huge number of people – all of whom have helped me to grow personally. These experiences have also helped to shape my personal values – and particularly the attributes of ‘believing in people’ remains my most important core value today, both on the work front and in my personal life too.
Where were you 10 years ago?
Ten years ago, I had recently transitioned from my role as Managing Director of TetraPak Business Services - and I was a few weeks into a new role, as Vice President of Shared Services at SPX Corporation. This week back then, in fact, I had just returned from a two week business trip to Charlotte, North Carolina, where I’d been planning strategy and vision for the set-up of the new European Global Business Services (GBS) hub that I’d been hired to create and deliver for that business – and I was building the migration growth strategy and the hiring plan… I can remember it like it was yesterday! On a personal front, my boys Jake and Cael were 3 years old and 18 month old respectively… which feels like it was an absolute lifetime ago looking at them today!
Where do you see yourselves in 10 years?
In ten years’ time, I still see myself in leadership and working together with teams - most likely continuing to focus on vision, strategy, organisation and change projects that can transform a business (and its people) from end to end. I have a real passion for helping people to develop themselves and for creating opportunities to ensure that innovative collaboration, personal growth and continuous learning are tangible priorities within businesses; and I’ve recently set up my own advisory company, Evolve Collaboration, through which I’m helping business leaders to gain true clarity and focus, so that they get the outcomes that they need from their transformation investments. I have a long held belief in the power of sharing and collaborating - so I’m very sure that Shared Services will always be somewhere in any future roles too!
What do you love about SSF UK?
SSF UK is embedded in my life – and I love everything that it stands for! I’ve been involved with SSF UK since the very beginning, so that’s nearing two decades of personal commitment to cultivating an idea that bringing real-life practitioners and professionals together to collaborate and innovate, would create really valuable opportunities to learn, improve and evolve for everyone involved - as people, as companies and ultimately as the shared services industry itself. I love love love the people engagement and collaboration perspective of what we do. I also love that there is always something new to learn from the experiences and journeys that others have been on – and as an improvement fanatic, that means I can always take something away from each of our events, even today, and put it to really good and practical use. What’s not to love!
