Understanding Challenges and Delivering Results

Thibaut Mills MBA

Director - Europe

Thibaut has been a member of the senior management team with Oxford HR since 2013. He brings 20 years’ experience of working in both the private and international non-governmental sector. He has worked in a wide range of organisations ranging from dot.com start-ups to FTSE100 companies and multinationals.

Thibaut worked for several years with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Myanmar and Haiti, where he had overarching HR responsibility for over 1500 staff during the post-earthquake response of 2010.

A native French speaker with professional experience in a variety of roles including Search & Selection, International HR, Operations and management in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India, he has led on over 30 Board, Executive and Director level appointments in over 20 countries.

Holder of an MBA with focus on International HR Management and Innovation. He is passionate about the INGO sector and a member of the Board of Directors for Refugee Resource.

Yolanda Weldring

Associate Director - Europe

Yolanda is based in the Netherlands and has over 30 years of experience in Human Resources Management, 18 years of which in International Development. She was International Director with Oxfam Novib and Regional Director East and Southern Africa with Save the Children UK, as well as member of senior groups of Oxfam International and Save the Children International. In the years before joining Oxford HR, Yolanda has done interim-director and management roles in Africa and Asia and in all those jobs she was responsible for recruitment of senior roles. Yolanda has also experience at Trustee-level and as Advisor to Boards. Yolanda’s professional training as Clinical Psychologist supports her judgement on personal qualifications of candidates. Yolanda has work experience in the Netherlands, UK, East Africa, Southern Africa and South and Southeast Asia. 

Yolanda is committed to finding capable and high-performing candidates for jobs in organisations and networks in international development, as this contributes to the strong delivery of programs and quality policy development by the organisations, which helps to reduce disparity in the world. Yolanda is able to bring her own and Oxford HR’s wide networks to you as a client.

Zoe Greenwood

Principal Consultant - UK and Europe

Before joining Oxford HR as a Consultant in 2018, Zoe spent 15 years working in the charity/NGO sector with a focus on Learning and Development, HR and Leadership for Sustainability. Working predominantly for Earthwatch, the international environmental NGO, Zoe has worked in UK, India, China, Latin America and South East Asia where she has collaborated with local organisations, community groups, global NGOs and multinational companies to deliver first-class learning programmes and conservation projects. 

Zoe is passionate about discovering and developing leaders who are dedicated to creating a sustainable, equitable and poverty-free world. She recently completed a postgraduate degree with the Institute for Leadership and Sustainability at the University of Cumbria, she is a trained coach and facilitator and has significant experience of bringing groups together in nature to consider the skills and competencies needed to tackle climate change and address the Sustainable Development Goals.

Martine Billanou

Associate Executive Research Consultant - Europe

Martine has over 30 years of experience in International development.   Before joining Oxford HR, she was the senior advisor to Alliance2015, a partnership of seven European NGOs. 

Previously, Martine has worked with SNV and Save the Children UK as country director in Cameroon and DRC, Tanzania, Bangladesh and Eritrea. She developed strategies and structures that supported innovative and successful development and humanitarian response programs. This involved the set-up, selection and development of successful teams and included addressing key issues of ethics, accountability and safeguarding.   

Martine’s expertise in the set-up and support of Consortia or other forms of inter-agency cooperation is supported by her strong understanding of organizational cultures and dynamics.  She worked with a wide range of INGOs in Alliance2015, in various Commonwealth inter-agency initiatives both in Cameroon and in Tanzania or, earlier in her career, as general secretary of the Eritrea Inter-Agency Consortium.   

An economist, graduated from Grenoble University, Martine started to work on performance analysis in the private sector. 

Corina Straatsma

Associate Executive Search Consultant - Europe and Americas

Corina has over 30 years of experience in International Development, 22 years of which as Regional Director of Hivos in Central and South America and Southern Africa. Human Resource Management and recruitment of senior positions such as program managers and country representatives has been an essential part of her work.

She has a vast knowledge of development issues such as human rights, sexual and reproductive rights, media and press freedom, women’s rights and gender and sustainable land use and renewable energy. She has work experience in She has work experience in the Netherlands, Southern Africa (Zimbabwe, South Africa, Namibia, Mozambique, Zambia, Malawi and Botswana), India, Central America (Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Belize) and South America (Bolivia, Chile, Peru, Brazil, Ecuador and Colombia).

Corina has participated actively in European networks, over the past 20 years with the Alliance and previously with Women in Development Europe (WIDE) and Eurostep.

Finding the right people for key jobs is crucial for the effectiveness of development work and the credibility of the sector. Better results will lead to positive changes in people’s lives. Besides having the desired capacities and capabilities, Corina considers it important that candidates are creative, open minded and able to think out of the box. The circumstances for development work are usually difficult to predict, then you need people who can act and adjust fast.

In order to find the ideal candidate, it is crucial to know the client’s mission and achievements, it’s specific wishes and organizational culture. She is highly committed to find the best candidate for your job.

Lenze Pekelsma

Executive Assistant to Associate Director - Europe

Lenze is based in the Netherlands and studied Organisation and Labour Psychology. He has a background in Human Resources Management and Career Development having worked with refugees in the Netherlands and with disadvantaged youth in Africa. He supports the Oxford HR office in Amsterdam with Business Development Management and various tasks.

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.

Emer Byrne

Researcher - Europe

Emer joined Oxford HR in 2018, having completed an MA in European Interdisciplinary Studies at the College of Europe in Warsaw. She has a BA in French from the University of Southampton and is now based in Amsterdam.

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.

Lisanne Schut

Researcher

Prior to joining Oxford HR, Lisanne worked within the Security Sector in Stockholm, as Team Leader in a monitoring Centre. She has an MSc in Disaster Management and Sustainable Development. Lisanne’s main areas of interest are: Migration, post-war reconstruction and civil society building. Furthermore, she is fluent in four languages and is looking to learn at least two more.

Lisanne’s main areas of interest are: Migration, post-war reconstruction and civil society building. Furthermore, she is fluent in four languages and is looking to learn at least two more.

Helena Newton

Project Administrator

Helena joined Oxford HR recently. 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.

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.

Claudia Cordova

Project Administrator

Claudia joined Oxford HR in 2018. She holds a BA in Philosophy and completed a thesis in Critical Theory focused on the characteristics of the advanced industrial societies and its main consequences for human development. She worked for more than five years at her university in Peru in different positions and has experience as a teacher in multiple philosophy subjects.

Claudia has volunteered with the Peruvian Ombudsman in the anti-corruption office. Her main areas of interest are Politics in Latin America, Education and Human development. She hopes to complete a master’s degree in the future.