Emma Sawula
Associate Consultant
e.sawula@reading.ac.uk
Emma brings expertise in all aspects of organisational development, including target operating model design, culture change, ways of working, board and senior leadership development and strategic workforce planning. She has held a wide variety of leadership roles in HE, consultancy and private sector organisations.
Emma’s most recent role was as Deputy Director of HR at Nottingham Trent University (NTU), where she was a trusted advisor to the University executive team, leading on HR strategy, organisational design and development, leadership and talent. Through the pandemic, Emma was the institutional lead on the evolution of ways of working, overseeing the programme incorporating innovative approaches with space, technology and leadership practices. In her time at NTU, Emma also led the development of a set of values and behaviours to support the strategy, an EDI initiative to form the executive team shadow board and the introduction of a Learning Experience Platform to transform the development experience for colleagues.
Emma took a non-traditional route into HR, via Operations Management, finally arriving in HR after working alongside Deloitte on the merger of Thomson and Reuters in 2008. Before NTU, Emma spent five years as an OD consultant on assignments across HE, public and private sectors. She studied Organisational Development at Roffey Park Institute and Leadership at the University of Michigan’s Ross Business School.
Emma is a fellow of RSA and a Trustee of Ignite! Futures – a charity for young people to nurture creativity-producing programmes which disrupt traditional education, including the Nottingham Festival of Science and Curiosity. She is a reluctant runner and can be found most Saturday mornings at Parkrun, either volunteering or shuffling around Sherwood Forest.