Declan Ball

ex-CHRO (20 countries) at FINCA Impact Finance

Speaker

Declan trained as a lawyer. After studying Arabic in Syria and Egypt, he transitioned to HR in 1988, and built a career in the Middle East financial services sector. He led most HR functions, was CHRO and an ExCom of several banks and Middle HR Director of two “Big 4” professional services firms. He also has significant experience with family businesses, asset management and private equity. Declan was based in Washington DC for two years as GCHRO of a global network of 20 fully regulated microfinance institutions and three shared service centres. He fulfilled his mandate to coach a successor.

Declan now specialises in transformation (e.g., restructuring, regional expansion, new operating models, IPOs, M&As etc), organisation design and succession planning. He combines best practice HR skills with parallel expertise in operational risk, corporate governance and corporate performance management.

He speaks the language of the Boardroom. As an ExCom member and consultant, Declan has in-depth experience presenting to and securing Human Capital-related decisions from Boards of Directors and from three Board committees (RemCom / NCHR, Governance & Risk) by combining his strong commercial and strategic capabilities with an ability to analyse Human Capital using operational risk and financial metrics. This provides Board members with unbiased data to enable them to make informed, objective and monetised decisions.

Declan has worked internationally (MENA, Latin America, USA, Africa and Asia), has a global mindset and is not ethnocentric. He adapts quickly to different national corporate cultures to implement sustainable solutions based on a sympathetic understanding of local conditions.