Digital Acceleration: Reskilling and rebuilding the workforce

Professor Vlerick Business School

Prof Dr Dirk Buyens is Professor of Human Resources and Partner of Vlerick Business School. He is also Head of the HR Centre and Director of the Open Executive Education Programmes at Vlerick Business School. He obtained his PhD in Industrial and Organisational Psychology at Ghent University and holds an MBA degree from KU Leuven.

He was a doctoral-fellow at the IR Centre of the Graduate School of Management at the University of Minnesota (USA).

Dirk's main research and teaching interest lies in Human Resources Management.

Ben Roelants (1980) has traveled around de world for Vlaanderen Vakantieland, a tv show of VRT. Today, he runs his own travel channel: Evenaar. He is a professional presenter and will lead the conversation between Dirk Buyens, Mandy Jeffery & Richard Doherty.

Vice President People at Workday

Mandy Jeffery is the Vice President of People, International & Operations at Workday, a leading provider of enterprise cloud applications for finance and human resources.

She has global responsibility for Workday's HR operations and international business partnering and employee engagement.

She has served as a strategic Human Resources practitioner for over 20 years, and has a hands-on approach supporting diverse and global teams.

Prior to joining Workday, Mandy served as the Senior Director of HR Operations at VeriFone.

While at VeriFone, she was part of a team who successfully implemented Workday across 44 countries worldwide.

Preceding VeriFone, she was an HR Consultant for Thames Water, and has also previously served as the HR Director, EMEA for Allegis Group.

Mandy has served on multiple boards across EMEA.

Mandy works with a number of voluntary organisations and is passionate about exploring new cities, trekking, and spending time with her daughter and grandson.

Richard Doherty, Senior Director, Solution Marketing at Workday

Richard Doherty is senior director solution marketing at Workday with EMEA-wide responsibilities for Workday's HCM applications.

Prior to joining Workday, Richard was part of a team that pioneered cloud based HR solutions in Europe. Joining Jobpartners as one of the first employees in 2000, Richard held a number of positions across professional services, sales and marketing, helping Jobpartners grow into one of the market leaders in Europe. In 2011 Jobpartners was acquired by Taleo, the cloud recruiting leader at the time. Richard subsequently spent time at Taleo and Oracle as HCM Strategy Director before joining Workday 5 years ago.