Advancing Diversity in Leadership

Toby Weaver

Director - Africa

Toby joined Oxford HR in 2014 having spent 20 years working in international development with DFID providing top level HR and management support to programme delivery, including: recruitment; OD and remuneration. He established and led operations in DFID’s offices in Addis Ababa, the Central Africa office in Harare, UK’s Field office in Lesotho and the South Africa regional office in Pretoria.

With DFID he cooperated closely The World Bank, FCO, MoD, Irish Aid, USAID, UNDP and UNICEF. He has worked extensively with IFAD, IWMI/CGIAR Group, CARE USA and BRAC managing successful executive search campaigns. He has in-country experience in Bangladesh, India, Thailand, and South Korea.  He worked on major assignments in his career with Oxford HR and DFID in Sri Lanka, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana,  Zambia  and Afghanistan. Toby has an honours degree in law and is MCIPD accredited.

Karen Twining

Associate Director – Africa

Karen is an Africa-specialist with over 30 years’ experience in International Development. She has worked with Oxford HR since 2008 and has particular expertise in private sector/economic development, agriculture/agribusiness, conflict/peace-building and senior leadership positions. She has supported the Gatsby Foundation to fill over 50 posts.

Born in the Sudan, Karen has lived and worked in Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Burundi, DRC, and Sudan. Her previous roles include 10 years with Oxfam GB, including starting the first Oxfam office in Darfur; Head of the Rwanda Secretariat at International Alert after the Genocide; Africa Regional Coordinator at ActionAid, covering 18 countries; and the first CEO of IDE UK, working with market development programmes in Africa and Asia. An Oxford graduate, Karen is Vice-Chair of SOS Sahel International UK, and is committed to increasing diversity in leadership in Africa.

Suzie Li

Associate Executive Search Consultant - Africa

Suzie joined Oxford HR in 2018. She has over 20 years Human Resources Management experience working experience in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Tunisia, working for FMCG, Banking, International Financial Organisations and most recently the African Development Bank.

Suzie brings expertise in Talent Acquisition, HR transformation and corporate delivery of HR projects. Suzie holds a Master’s in Human Resources Management and is currently pursuing an Integrative Counselling degree. Passionate about the economic and developmental growth of Africa, she is committed to sourcing and grooming high performing talented African nationals on the continent and diaspora. 

Maria Laguna

Operations Director

Maria J Laguna has been living in the UK for the last 25 years and working for Oxford HR for nearly 10. A Law graduate from Spain she has worked in the international not for profit sector, for Oxfam GB and the World Fair Trade Organisation, mainly in the area of Fair Trade and working closing with producers from around the world before moving into the private sector.

Maria brings a wealth of experience to the company and having held a few positions within Oxford HR is now the Director of Operations covering primarily HR and Finance as well as the smooth running of our main office in Oxford.

Maria enjoys travelling, reading and art, as well as spending time with her family and friends.

Carolien van Bremen

Associate Consultant

Carolien brings 20+ years of management experience in HR and is especially skillful in change management, growth and downsizing scenarios, culture programmes, HRD and talent management, performance management and organisational development. Individual paths such as coaching and potential- and talent definition and management complete her broad profile.

She has worked in Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Balkans and lived in Europe, (The Netherlands and United Kingdom), Africa (Kenya and South Sudan) and Latin America (Ecuador). For SNV, she was the Regional HR Manager for East and Southern Africa for 450 fte in ten countries, then joined SNV Latin America to support SNV’s then new business model and finally became Chief HR Officer for SNV worldwide. She has worked for Save the Children International as their HR Director in South Sudan and most recently was Adam Smith Internationals’ HR Director. As a consultant she has fulfilled assignments with KIT, KNCV, Mama Cash, CTA, SCI, and various profit companies.

Working together with Oxford HR she can use her HR knowledge in profit and not for profit sector for Oxford HR’s clients. She runs her own company and works on HR consultancies and combines this with her mediation and executive coach practice.

Maria Grigore

Head of Research

Maria joined us in 2015 after volunteering with Amnesty International Spain. She holds an LLM in International Law, Globalisation and Development. Her master thesis focused on Cities as personalities of international law instead of states, and the duties they would carry.

This was followed by an assignment with UNDP IICPSD in Istanbul, where she worked on gender mainstreaming in skills development with case studies from India and Turkey. Maria has extensive experience in delivering search assignments with multilateral and global international globalisations such as IFAD, GCF, ActionAid, MSF, The Syria Campaign, CARE, BRAC, Action Contre La Faim, Doctors of the World, IWMI/CGIAR and ILEP. She speaks English, Spanish, Catalan and Romanian, and has lived in Mexico, Turkey, Spain, the UK and Romania.

Jamie Philips

Senior Research Associate - Africa

Jamie joined Oxford HR in 2015, and has experience recruiting experts in International Development for private sector development, finance, environment and climate change, agriculture and agribusiness, food security, health, and economic development.

She has worked on successful executive search assignments with IFAD, IWMI/CGIAR, The Green Climate Fund, The Gatsby Charitable Foundation and Practical Action, and based in Asia, East and West Africa and Latin America. She has a bachelor’s degree in psychology and over 10 years’ experience in education and the private sector. 

Helena Newton

Project Administrator

Helena joined Oxford HR in 2018. She holds an MA in International Development and has undertaken research in Nepal and a research placement in Sierra Leone, where she collaborated with the University of Makeni (UNIMAK). She has also volunteered both in the UK for non-profit organisations such as Oxfam and in Uganda for East African Playgrounds. Her main areas of interest include: availability and accessibility of health facilities alongside health promotion and disaster and emergency management.

Razane Cherk

Associate Researcher - Europe and MENA

Razane joined Oxford HR in 2018 after completing an assignment with UNDP Istanbul International Centre for Private Sector in Development in Istanbul, Turkey. She holds a bachelor’s degree in foreign service from Georgetown University’s campus in Doha, Qatar.

She has lived in four different countries, three of which are in the MENA region (Morocco, Turkey and Qatar), and has travelled extensively. She is also a native English and Arabic speaker. During her time studying in Qatar, most of her research focused on Middle Eastern political affairs, culminating in her thesis on the Western Sahara Conflict upon graduation.

Ruth Davis

Project Administrator

Ruth joined Oxford HR in 2018 after completing a BA in international history at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She completed multiple economic development courses, in addition to her dissertation which she wrote on the Anglo-American response to the AIDS epidemic, looking at international relations through a human rights lens.

Ruth has volunteered with Oxfam, Widening Participation and Crisis, and hopes to complete a masters degree in the future. Her main areas of interest are the justice system in the United States and economic inequality.