Penny de Valk: Chief Executive for the Institute of Leadership and Management
Penny de Valk became the new Chief Executive for the Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM) on 29th October 2007. For the last three years she has been Strategy Director at Ceridian UK, a US$1.5bn HR services organisation. Prior to that she ran several of Ceridian’s HR businesses across Europe and was recently ranked 40th in HR Magazines’s most influential. Born in New Zealand, de Valk moved to the UK ten years ago just prior to which she was Chief Executive of New Zealand’s Institute of Management in Auckland for four years, where she oversaw rapid growth and market impact.
‘The biggest challenge for managers and leaders is to master the broad range of skills required in the modern workplace as well as maintain the personal and professional resilience to thrive in this new environment. We need to do this if we are going to bring out the best in ourselves, our people and our organisations. Even more we need to be able to do this over many years, as retirement ages are pushed out and we have to manage our careers no longer as a sprint but a marathon’ says De Valk.
Having worked for 20 years helping organisations make the most of their people, De Valk remains convinced that the quality of management and leadership is the most powerful catalyst to driving value in any organisation