Rebecca Foden is
the Head of Executive Recruitment function and recruitment diversity lead for
Transport for London, one of the World’s leading transport companies with an
£11bn budget, a capital investment of around £2bn each year and over 27,000
employees.
Rebecca helps to deliver a forward thinking and highly inclusive talent strategy to support TfL’s purpose to keep London moving, working and growing. Rebecca implemented the executive sourcing model for TfL in 2014 which has subsequently won an industry award in recognition of being best in class for innovation as well as gender diversity delivering 51% leadership women hires in 2018 and cost avoidance of over £2m.
Rebecca has held
a dual role also acting as Head of Early Careers recruitment at TfL and
launched a diversity TA strategy to encourage greater youth mobility across
London in the most socially deprived boroughs. In 2017, Rebecca’s TA team took
home the prestigious European Diversity Award for the best social mobility
initiative at the EDA, which was seen as highly pioneering having a
transformative impact across London. She’s really proud of this achievement
demonstrating how a seed of an idea and vision can quickly flourish with a
great team and make a positive impact.
Among other
projects, Rebecca also delivers TfL’s broader talent strategy around succession
planning, talent development and was selected as the TfL functional lead for
the Mayor’s Our Time women in sponsorship project. A project that is the first
of its’ kind sponsoring women into leadership roles across London.
Previously,
Rebecca’s background spans 18 years of corporate Talent and HR experience
across a breadth of industries from banking, telecommunications and technology.
Rebecca is a regular speaker at industry events and is passionate about driving
the diversity agenda for Women, BAME and underrepresented groups including
STEM, as well as creating sustainable solutions to address future talent
challenges, recruitment transformation, EVP, digital innovation and disruption
of talent strategies to drive and accelerate talent development.
When she’s not
working, she spends all of her time with her girl/boy twins (aged 7) who are
totally cute and “mini me’s”. They are obviously her social experiment
on systemic gender stereotypes helping her see through some of the barriers
that already pre exist for employers! – maybe one day she’ll write a book about
this….
Rebecca is also a
military spouse, which is great as she is currently leading on the military
programme at TfL, allowing her to bring great insight into some of the barriers
facing ex-service leavers.