Cicilia Wan

I left private practice as an employment lawyer in 2002 and have spent the following twenty plus years mainly working in Human Resources for several major banks in London, New York and Hong Kong.

My first experience of HR was at Goldman Sachs, where I was an Employee Relations advisor, first in London, then in Hong Kong. This experience taught me how to apply the advisory skills I had developed as a lawyer, to the issues that managers and their teams faced every day in the workplace. Really listening, trying to understand different perspectives, and standing firm on ‘doing the right thing’ is something that has stayed with me the whole of my career.

While in Hong Kong, I moved to JP Morgan in 2008 where I was responsible for putting together and managing an ER function covering the bank’s businesses across the Asia Pacific region. I was then promoted to become Global Head of ER in JP Morgan’s headquarters in New York in 2011, where I ran a department handling the most serious ER issues for its 250,000+ employees. I have also had experience as an HR Business Partner, where I was exposed to the joys and challenges of managing employees throughout their lifecycle, covering recruiting, talent development, performance management, diversity and inclusion, and organisational restructuring topics for a major division.

In 2014, I relocated back to London and shortly after, I moved into a newly created role heading up HR Regulatory Affairs for the EMEA region at JP Morgan. This was an interesting pivot for me as I got exposure to working with regulators and handling compliance matters, which meant I had to come up to speed quickly on some very technical topics. My proudest achievement during in this period was my leadership of a significant project to implement the UK Senior Manager and Certification Regime at the bank, which completed in March 2016, when the new PRA and FCA regulations came into effect. This expanded my knowledge of the expectations of standards of conduct for those working in a highly regulated environment, and I developed a strong understanding of controls and the governance and oversight obligations of executives related to conduct and culture. Following from this success, I joined the bank’s Compliance department and headed up their EMEA Employee Compliance, Policies and Education function, responsible for ensuring employees understood and complied with rules relating to matters such as personal account dealing, licensing and registration, anti-bribery and corruption.

My most recent corporate experience was with UBS, where I was both Global Head of Employee Relations and Global Head of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I). Here, the elements of what constitutes good culture came together, and I was able to influence and shape strategy to develop and maintain a working environment that was professional and respectful, but where differences are valued and voices are heard, allowing employees to develop to their full potential.

With my breadth of knowledge across several people related disciplines, I am equally at home conducting investigations into individual workplace behaviour matters, as leading strategic projects on DE&I or organisational culture and conduct. I am so proud to be working with byrne·dean in support of their values of making workplaces kinder and fairer for everyone.