Emma Leonis-Hughes, Head of Market Engagement
Emma is an experienced global HR transformation director and a member of the Executive team at LACE Partners. She’s accountable for strategic client account delivery, senior client networks and events and leads LACE’s research into the future of HR.
Emma has been named in HR magazine’s HR Most Influential list in 2026, recognised in the top 30 most influential HR Practitioners.
She is passionate about HR and challenging, inspiring and motivating HR leaders to achieve more. She works with Chief People Officers and their leadership teams to develop and implement people strategies that drive business value – be that designing the HR operating model around the employee experience, optimising HR service delivery through improved use of digital tools or through building HR’s capability.
Skills
- HR operating model assessment and design
- HR operating model implementation
- HR transformation
- Business case development
- Shared services
- Solution design
- Employee experience
- Organisation design
- Change management
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Delivering the HR productivity powerhouse
Delivering the HR productivity powerhouse Turning HR’s agentic conversation into action, with LACE Partners, Eightfold AI and Mitie Agentic AI can give you a layer of digital workers alongside your people. But the organisations that capture the value are the ones with...
What is a CPO? With Andy Doyle
What is a CPO in the age of AI? Andy Doyle on becoming Kantar's chief people and agent officer Andy Doyle has one of the more unusual job titles in HR right now: chief people and agent officer. In this episode of What is a CPO, our mini-series from The People Agenda...
HR Analytics Summit 2026: 3 learnings for people analytics teams
Earlier this month the HR Analytics Summit brought together people analytics leaders in London. Much of the discussion explored how AI might help people analytics teams make changes they have been working towards for years, and what that could mean for their shape and...
