We’re delighted to announce the appointment of two new independent Growth Specialists to our panel of expert advisors. Gillian Fox joins as Growth Specialist – People & Culture, and Dr. Orlando Machado as Growth Specialist – Data & AI.
Gillian Fox is an experienced Chief People Officer, with over 25 years’ experience in global roles. She has held Chief People Officer and senior HR leadership positions at organisations including Euromoney, Reckitt Benckiser, Hovis, RBS, Aviva, and Allen & Overy, and is the founder of people performance advisory business, Optimal People. As Growth Specialist – People & Culture, Gillian joins ECI to support our portfolio companies on culture, leadership, people strategy, executive development and team effectiveness, helping management teams to build compelling employee propositions that drive value.
Gillian succeeds Lesley Davies, who will be retiring from the role. Lesley has worked on People & Culture since 2018 and is a founder member of ECI’s Growth Specialist Panel. As well as supporting ECI develop its People & Culture toolkit, Lesley has worked closely with the leaders of many portfolio companies as they have scaled, helping them to develop senior talent, focus on retention and high employee engagement and build sustainable in-house strategic HR capability.
Orlando Machado joins ECI as Growth Specialist – Data & AI, bringing deep experience in data science, analytics and artificial intelligence. Over a career spanning more than three decades, Orlando has held senior leadership roles across industry and academia, including serving as Chief Data Officer at the LEGO Group and in senior data and technology roles at WPP, dunnhumby and Aviva. In his role at ECI, Orlando will support management teams in using data and AI to drive better decision-making, unlock growth opportunities and build scalable, future-ready platforms.
ECI’s Growth Specialists are a panel of independent experts, available as needed to support management teams on projects that drive value across ECI’s key focus areas, being people & culture, technology & data, sales & marketing, M&A and international growth.
