Sara Thompson

Group HR Director

Experience:

Sara’s career has been spent entirely in HR, starting as a graduate and working for various large multinationals as well as running her own consultancy. Her early career was in IT and telecoms companies but since then she has gained considerable Financial Services experience including roles in Royal Sun Alliance, Barclays and more recently, Aviva, the UK’s largest insurer. Between 2005 and 2009 Sara lived and worked in South Africa where she led the people aspects of the integration of Absa Bank in to Barclays. Although the UK is now her base Sara has worked in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, Latin America and the US.

Sara is a working mum with a daughter and son in their early twenties.

Role and responsibilities:

leads the implementation of the Group’s people strategy in order to recruit, retain, motivate and develop high-quality colleagues;
provides guidance and support on all HR matters to the Group Chief Executive Officer, the Executive Committee, the Board and Remuneration Committee; and
delivers HR services to the Group.