Meet the team

Kathryn brings with her extensive industry experience and a pedigree in building meaningful and sustainable relationships with senior clients, through building deep insight into their strategic requirements. She has significant experience supporting complex commercial clients operating in a competitive global talent market. In particular, she has worked with her clients to solve their challenges utilising contemporary digital talent marketing techniques, reflecting the latest development in recruitment technology, and resulting in greater diversity and return on their recruitment investment.

Kathryn joined Penna in 2020, prior to that she was Regional Vice President for AIA Worldwide, London. Since joining us at Penna, she has successfully supported the company’s drive to support UK companies and multinationals in the commercial and public enterprise sectors

Keith’s worked in the recruitment industry for over twenty years. Like most of us, recruitment wasn’t his early career ambition; he wanted to be a racing driver. Due to a tragic lack of talent, this didn’t work out. So, he joined Austin Knight as a graduate trainee and honed his resourcing skills over the next few years with Havas, Hodes and then as Board Director with Tribal. Keith then joined Penna’s recruitment business in March 2011 with a brief to re-organise the business and return it to profit. This worked out. Adecco purchased Penna in May 2016 for £105m. Unfortunately (for Keith) he wasn’t a major shareholder and he remains as Penna’s Chief Operating Officer, responsible for sales, operations and ultimately delivery on budget. He currently leads the business alongside his two more talented co-directors.

Alexis joined Penna in 2014 after spending seven years at Capita Resourcing and Reed Professional Services where she worked on large-scale resourcing strategies and digital projects for clients including the Office for National Statistics, Barclays Retail and the BBC. 

Alexis brings her D and I expertise to the operational delivery of end-to-end recruitment solutions and oversees our attraction, selection and assessment work to ensure it promotes the highest standards of diversity and inclusion. Alexis plays a client-facing role with clear responsibilities for strategy and programme development relating to diversity and inclusion in engagement, attraction and selection.  Alexis regularly advises clients such as Metropolitan Police, Homes England, St James’s Place, NetworkRail, The Bank of England and other government bodies and local authorities on their D&I strategies, learning and development, knowledge sharing, equality impact assessments and enabling inclusive recruitment.

A member of our senior leadership team, Sue has a governance role managing and inputting Penna’s overall strategy. She’s spent 25 years in recruitment in a variety of resourcing and attraction related roles from delivery and project management to strategic development and agency director. During her career Sue has gained extensive and in-depth knowledge of both the employment arena in general and the recruitment industry. She has successfully delivered resourcing projects on behalf of a diverse portfolio of clients from blue-chip commercial organisations to central government and local authorities and educational establishments including EDF, Police Scotland, Kent County Council, and the University of Cambridge.

David’s career in recruitment marketing and communications spans well over 20 years starting out in the media sales teams of The Guardian and the Evening Standard before moving agency-side, first with AIA and then joining Barkers (part of Penna since 2009) in 2000.

In addition to managing the people managing projects to produce websites, videos, largescale print, online assessment tools and more besides, David is very hands-on and a project manager in his own right. Acting as the key interface between your Client Partners and all the other delivery specialists at your disposal, David will ensure a high level of support and timely delivery on any complex projects we undertake for you.

As Strategy Director at Penna, Tristan’s role is to help organisations understand talent attraction problems and find ways to solve them. With 15 years’ experience working in employer brand marketing, he has worked companies from a wide range of sectors in the UK and globally. Starting out as a developer and with an MSc in IT, his main interest has always been the impact of technology on work and society.

Kadie has a breadth of knowledge within the world of student marketing. Having worked at Penna for over six years in a number of areas, she brings a well-rounded perspective to her role. As the advertising landscape is ever-changing, so too are the methods of student attraction and communications. Keeping pace with the latest technology advances, cultural paradigms, social platforms and targeting capabilities is challenging, and Kadie provides the vital link helping clients to make the most of technology and channels. She also works with clients to build a deep understanding of what motivates their audience, their behaviours and habits and wider market trends to determine the best way of reaching and persuading people.