Our People
Kevin Roberts
- CEO Worldwide, Saatchi & Saatchi
- Chairman, USA Rugby
- CEO in Residence, Judge Business School at Cambridge University, UK
- Trustee-Turn Your Life Around Trust, Auckland
Kevin Roberts is the New York-based CEO Worldwide of Ideas Company Saatchi & Saatchi, one of the world’s leading creative organizations and part of the Publicis Groupe, the world’s fourth largest advertising holding company. Saatchi & Saatchi employs over 7000 people in 138 offices across 82 countries, and has annual billings of over US$7 billion. The company is a global marketing and ideas partner to some of the world’s leading companies, including the Procter & Gamble Company and Toyota Motor Corporation.
Born in Lancaster in the north of England, Roberts began his career at iconic London fashion house Mary Quant. He was later a senior marketing executive at Gillette, then Procter & Gamble in Europe and the Middle East. At 32, he became CEO of Pepsi-Cola Middle East, and was later Pepsi’s CEO in Canada. In New Zealand from 1989 until joining Saatchi & Saatchi in 1997, Roberts was Chief Operating Officer at Australasian brewer Lion Nathan.
Under Roberts’ leadership, Saatchi & Saatchi has grown revenue year by year and achieved record financial performance and creative awards. He has an international reputation for an uncompromisingly positive, inspirational management style, and an extraordinary ability to generate ideas that accelerate value.
In addition to co-authoring Peak Performance – Business Lessons From The World’s Top Sports Organizations, Roberts is author of three Saatchi & Saatchi books: Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Brands; The Lovemarks Effect: winning in the consumer revolution; and Sisomo: The Future On Screen.
Kevin, who is married to Rowena, has two daughters and two sons. A New Zealand citizen, he has offices and homes in New Zealand and New York, and homes in St Tropez and Grasmere.
Mike Pratt
- Director, Inspiros Worldwide Ltd
- Managing Director, Sustainable Enterprise Ltd
- Professor of Sustainability and Leadership, The University of Waikato, New Zealand
- Director, Peak Performance Worldwide, Saatchi & Saatchi
Dr Mike Pratt is a business academic and advisor specializing in performance development, leadership and sustainability. He is Professor of Sustainability and Leadership at the Waikato Management School, University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand. He joined the university as its Dean in 1990 and served in that role until 2008. During his tenure as dean Waikato Management School became one of Australasia’s leading business schools and one of 30 in the world accredited by all three global business school accreditation agencies – AACSB, EQUIS and AMBA. In 2004 and again in 2007 Waikato Management School was ranked by the New Zealand Government’s Tertiary Education Commission as New Zealand’s leading research business school. The school’s dream is to inspire the world through fresh understandings of sustainable success. Its spirit is ‘Ko te tangata’ – for the people in Maori. The school strives to be recognized as one of the world’s leading schools committed to sustainable business.
Mike’s scholarly interests embrace accountability, organization theory, inspirational leadership, performance and sustainability. He has supervised thirteen doctoral students to graduation and has numerous publications with a wide range of co-authors including eight books and more than 150 journal articles and papers. His educational philosophy emphasizes a commitment to high levels of participant interaction, including practical applications of the theories learned within actual organizations. Mike is co-author of the best selling book Peak Performance: business lessons from the world’s best sports organizations, Harper Collins, London 2000.
Mike has provided advice and training to a range of global organizations for the last fifteen years in peak performance, organization development, leadership, and sustainability. He is a sought after speaker on these topics. He is a founding director of Inspiros Worldwide Ltd. Inspiros provides peak performance development services to the chief executives and top management teams of leading global corporations. The company’s services include purpose co-creation, performance development and leaderships workshops, web-based tools and metrics, coaching and strategic advice.
Mike is also director and co-founder with his wife Helga of Sustainable Enterprise Ltd., a company dedicated to assisting organizations to embrace sustainability in their purpose, business models, practices and leadership. Mike and Helga have recently completed research in ten iconic global enterprises, founded on sustainability principles. This research is being written up as a book. From the research a theory and practice of sustainable enterprise has been developed that enables organizations to enhance their economic performance and do well for society and the environment.
Mike was born in Cambridge, England and obtained a BA Economics (Honours) from Sheffield University, a masters degree from the University of Witwatersrand and a doctorate from The University of South Africa. He qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 1972 in London. After working in the motor industry for several years, he lectured in accounting at East London University. He was Associate Professor of accounting at the University of Witwatersrand and Professor and Chairperson of Accounting at Massey University before joining the University of Waikato.
Mike and Helga are keen blue water sailors and have sailed most of the world’s oceans. Their daughter Susie holds a masters in Fine Arts is a new media artist and designer working with Sustainable Enterprise Ltd and a Research Fellow at the University of Glamorgan, and their son Martin is a Computer Graphic designer working with Saatchi & Saatchi in Wellington.. When not pursuing their shared academic and business interests they enjoy proximity to nature on their waterfront, bush-clad retreat in New Zealand’s magical Bay of Islands.
Clive Gilson
- Director of Inspiros Worldwide Ltd
- Director of Peak Performance Worldwide, Saatchi & Saatchi
- Managing Director of Gilson Consulting Ltd
- Professor of Human Resource Management, The University of Waikato, New Zealand
Dr. Clive Gilson is Professor of Human Resource Management at the Waikato Management School, University of Waikato, New Zealand. His undergraduate degree is from Middlesex University, London, and his Masters and Doctoral degrees were received from the University of Warwick in the U.K. He has been a Visiting Professor at Washington University, St. Louis and the Melbourne Business School, University of Melbourne and is a Research Fellow of the National Institute of Labour Studies at Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia.
His research interests are comparative industrial relations systems, HRM practices in deregulated labor markets, rhetorical theory and the practices that enable organizations to sustain peak performance. In 1995 he was the founding and continuing Editor of the Electronic Journal of Radical Organization Theory, the first ever online management journal of its kind. Professor Gilson has also been the recipient of several internationally recognized outstanding teaching awards.
He has a prolific publication record, having authored several books and numerous articles in North American, European and Australasian journals. Clive is co-author of the international best-seller, Peak Performance and consults with a range of global organizations in peak performance, organization change and development, HR and Strategy and Leadership. As a founder Director of Inspiros Worldwide Ltd, Clive is much sought after for his expertise in the sports world where he continues to work with peak bodies in the world of football, clubs from the English Premiership, Serie A in Italy and franchises in the U.S. Major League Soccer, the NBA, NHL and the Rugby Union Super 14s.
An avid sports fan, Professor Gilson was also a minor counties cricket player in the Westmorland League as well as a tenpin bowling Instructor. His is a passionate art collector with special interests in the modernist and art deco period.
Joe McCollum
- Director Inspiros Worldwide
- Group HR Director, Daily Mail Group Trust
Joe McCollum is the UK based Group HR Director for Daily Mail and General Trust plc (DMGT), one of the world’s leading newspaper and media companies employing 17,000 people globally. It is the market leader in a number of it’s chosen markets.
McCollum, who was born in Birmingham in the heart of England, completed his high-school education in St Thomas Aquinas in Birmingham. He commenced employment in the mid-70s with the National Health Service, prior to leaving the UK in 1979 to work for Whittaker (a US Hospital company) in Saudi Arabia for 5 years, before joining Kevin Roberts at Pepsi-Cola initially in Cyprus and then at Pepsi’s New York headquarters. He obtained his MSc in Business Studies from Columbia University and then moved to New Zealand in 1989 as HR Director for Lion Nathan. At the end of 1997 he returned to the UK to take up the role of worldwide HR Director for ICI, a global chemical company with 65,000 employees. He joined Misys in 1999, a 7,000 employee global software company specializing in the Banking and Healthcare sectors and in 2005 he joined EMI, one of the world’s leading music companies, as the Group HR Director until the business was sold to a Private Equity fund in the summer of 2007. He joined DMGT in March 2008..
McCollum has over 30 years experience in HR - the past 15 years as an integral part of the main Operating Board of a public Company. He has established on 3 separate occasions a world-class HR function – not only recruiting a strong team of people around him, but also hardwiring the Company’s approach to people into the operating fabric of the business. He has implemented a number of performance improvement programs over the years and has championed significant change initiatives. He was identified as one of the leading HR Directors in the “Dream Board” article in the Management Today journal in 2002.
McCollum, who is married to Kate, has two daughters and one son. Of dual British and New Zealand nationality, he lives in Stratford upon Avon.