People & Culture looks after everyone in your business.
leadHR looks after People & Culture.
A specialist People & Culture practice, founded and led by Jo Skipper.
It’s the only work I do.
Every organisation has a function whose job is to look after its people. Very few have anyone whose job is to look after that function. That's my work.
I find People & Culture professionals. I build capability in talent acquisition teams. And I coach the people who carry everyone else. Whether you need to secure talent or to grow it, the partner is the same.
Three ways to work with me
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People & Culture Recruitment / Search
I've placed hundreds of People & Culture executives. I've had more than 30,000 career conversations with the people who make P&C work. When a P&C appointment matters, that is the depth you want behind it.
I know who the strong P&C professionals are, how they're regarded by the people they've worked with, and who is ready to move before they've told anyone. I don't read resumes — I read HR functions.
How I search
I start with your business, not the role description: what your P&C function is carrying, where the organisation is heading, and what this appointment has to change. Then I take you to P&C professionals you won't reach through an ad or a database — people who take my call because they trust me with their careers. Every candidate is matched on what they want as well as what you need.
If you work in P&C
Senior P&C professionals call me before they go to market. If you're thinking about what's next — even quietly — let's have that conversation. It stays between us.
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Talent Acquisition Team Capability
From process to partner.
Talent Acquisition sits inside People & Culture. It carries the hiring targets and the roles that never stop coming — and it's often to one side of the function, rarely in the room when its direction is set.
Many TA teams are capable people stuck in process mode: moving requisitions, chasing hiring managers, reporting time-to-fill.
The business needs them to consult — to challenge a brief, read the market, and be trusted in the hiring decision.
Building that capability is one of the clearest ways to uplift your business performance.
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Coaching
Lead On Your Terms.
12 weeks of 1:1 coaching for Women in People & Culture at an emerging-leader or senior level.
Capable, respected, relied on by everyone. And quietly wondering when someone will work out they're not as sure as they look.
That's imposter syndrome, and P&C gives it plenty to feed on. The expectations don't let up. You're the steady one in the restructure, the calm voice in the difficult exit, the person who handles the complaint no one else will touch. In Talent Acquisition, it's the hiring targets and the roles that never stop coming. There's always another challenge, and the bar only moves one way.
So you second-guess decisions you're well qualified to make. You minimise your success. You feel you'd have to prove yourself all over again. You hold everyone else's hardest conversations, and have nowhere to take your own.
Lead On Your Terms is where you take them.
Let me introduce myself
Every organisation has a function whose job is to look after its people. Very few have anyone whose job is to look after that function.
That is the work I do.
I have spent thirty years working in People & Culture — as a recruiter, a leader of leaders, and an IECL Level 2 accredited executive coach. That single-mindedness is the point. I am not a generalist consultant who takes HR briefs. I know what a P&C team looks like when it's carrying too much, where the good people are, and what a capable P&C professional needs in order to keep going.
My background
I led two national businesses The Next Step and Sharp & Carter HR and held management roles at MDH London and Robert Walters. My biggest achievement, stepping into to stabilise a business after four senior executives left. I reset and grew that business by focusing on uplifting consultant capability and increasing customer satisfaction; over four years the NPS lifted to +89.
In February 2025 I founded leadHR.
The practice runs on four commitments: authenticity, trust, respect and fairness. Day to day, that means candour before comfort, confidences kept, people assessed on capability and judgement rather than surface signals — and reasoning always shown.