• John Mclellan
• Ann Musser
• Alexis Walmsley
• Tony Warner

• Robin Schneider
• Rachael Ross
• Sheridan Allman
• Catherine Hamilton

Robin Schneider (Managing Director),born to a Swiss French mother and a Swiss German father and brought up in the UK, Robin had an early interest in cross-cultural issues! In 1989, Robin co-founded Schneider~Ross as a consultancy specialising in equality and diversity. With his partner Rachael Ross, he wrote the leading textbook “From Equality to Diversity: A Business Case For Equal Opportunities” which was published by Pitman Professional Publishing in 1992. Recognised as a leading authority on diversity he has worked with each of the former equality commissions in the UK and also the Independent Commission on Policing in Northern Ireland (the Patten Commission).

As a consultant, Robin works with a wide range of organisations to help them develop strategies to integrate equality and diversity into their organisational culture. Clients include AstraZeneca, Aviva, BP, BT, Cambridge University, Cranfield, DTI, Lloyds TSB, MoD, National Grid, Rexam, SOAS. He is currently leading a global roll-out of an inclusive leadership programme for Vodafone. Robin has broad international experience and has worked with clients across continental Europe, the US, South America, Africa and Asia.

Robin has been involved in all the consultancy’s research on the Equality Duties and led the team working on the research into the cost-effectiveness of the current duties. He led on developing The Equality Duties at Work Guide for the Cabinet Office and the Government Equalities Office.

In 2000, he helped BP found the Global Diversity Network which include a range of prestigious multinationals who are committed to taking a leading-edge approach to diversity globally (including Barclays, BP, BT, Pepsi Co International, Shell, Tyco, Unilever). He continues to work closely with the GDN.

In addition to being a Director of Schneider~Ross, Robin is also Chairman of The All Inclusive Dining Club – which brings together senior leaders, in a social setting, to discuss different “stands” of diversity – and what they need to do as leaders to “walk the talk”.

He is a graduate of Oxford University and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts. He regularly appears on the conference platform (in the UK and internationally) and has published many articles on diversity, inclusion and leadership. Robin has a hearing impairment.

Rachael Ross (Director & Executive Coach) is an experienced team and individual coach, working in the field for over 20 years. She is an accredited coach with the Coverdale Organisation, and an NLP practitioner – to Masters level.

She has always been interested in cultural differences, has an MA in Modern Languages from Cambridge University, and has lived and worked in Austria, France and Germany. She is married to a Swiss - Robin Schneider, and speaks french and german.

Her career started in HR in the oil industry and she then spent a number of years as a change consultant and coach with the Coverdale Organisation. In 1989, she co founded Schneider~Ross, the diversity practice, now regarded as one of the leading diversity consultancies in Europe.

She has published a leading book on diversity “From Equality to Diversity”, 1992, and articles for leading journals in the UK and in Europe.

She inspires leaders and teams to explore their own values - and their organisation’s, to build confidence in managing change and diversity, and to find ways of releasing their own - and their organisations’ creativity.

Her approach is influenced by client needs and learning styles – it has been described as “both challenging and supportive at the same time.”

She has worked with a variety of clients in the private and public sectors including most recently: the Equal Opportunities Commission, BOC, The Crown Estate, Pearson plc, Southampton University, Cambridge University, MOD, Scott Wilson, Taylor Wessing, and HM Revenue and Customs.

Recent appointments include, membership of a development group, chaired by Sir David Bell of the Pearson Group, which is working closely with Cambridge University on gender and communication.

She is a member of the European Coaching and Mentoring Council, a member of CIPD, and a member of RSA.


Other Languages: French & German

Sheridan Allman, is a Senior Associate Consultant with Schneider-Ross, who has had an extensive career in the fields of education and organisational development, working in both the public sector and the private sector. Her recent clients include the University of Southampton, the Learning Skills Council, Enterprise Rent-a-Car and MFI.

Sheridan’s previous work centred on the development of corporate strategy, particularly within her last post in a Global company based out of the United States. Her speciality is the integration of diversity and inclusion into Human Resources and Organisational Development – taking Inclusion strategies into mainstream management development. Sheridan has extensive experience both the management and the delivery of training; working with employees across all levels, including Board executives. Sheridan has developed particular expertise in 'selling’ the Business Case for diversity and inclusion to senior and middle management. She has extensive experience of managing teams and coaching and mentoring across cultures within a global framework.

Sheridan is an Associate member of the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development and has a BSc (Hons) in Geography from University College Swansea and a Postgraduate Diploma in Education from Durham University. She takes great pride in her Welsh origins.

Catherine Hamilton has spent over 20 years in the private sector and has significant experience of working as an internal consultant on identifying and implementing both learning and development and inclusion and diversity solutions to a wide range of clients.

Catherine has worked in partnership with coaching experts to deliver training programmes and partnered with live theatre forum to deliver an inclusive leadership experience. As an operational line manager Catherine is able to base her development ideas on real scenarios. She has a broad experience of developing competency frameworks for new business, and innovative learning solutions to meet personal and business needs. Catherine is passionate about developing others and providing accessible and memorable learning.

Catherine’s key areas of expertise include:

• Inclusion and Diversity
• Coaching
• Leadership Development
• Competency development

Catherine has an honours degree in Sociology, an NVQ in Learning & Development and has subsequently studied for a Coaching Diploma.

John McLellan, is an experienced consultant with expert knowledge of equality and diversity together with broader management and leadership know-how gained across the public, private and not-for-profit sectors.

In addition to assignments with Schneider-Ross, John is currently working as an equality and diversity adviser to the NHS, dealing with strategy and implementation within leading hospitals. In this capacity, he is also one of team working with the Equality and Human Rights Commission on non-statutory guidelines for the new Equality Act 2010 to be applied to the UK health and social services sectors.

John has led and been part of teams working on many E&D projects within a variety of public and private organisations, including Lloyds-TSB, Cambridge University, Oxford University, Scottish Widows, The Privy Council and the MoD. These projects have included strategy determination, change management interventions, diagnostics around inclusion and exclusion, and action planning. In all cases, John’s focus has been on making sure the client gets real value from the work and an understanding of how to take things forward that fit with the client’s overall ambitions.

Before working as a consultant, John had a successful management career in the BBC, the National Freight Consortium during privatisation, and running his own video and film production company. He has held senior management positions and been responsible for large-scale change management, team management, strategy and implementation planning.

Other Languages: French

Ann Musser grew up in a small rural community in central USA. She knew from an early age that she wanted to reach out and experience a broader world. So, she chose a large multi-national company, Royal Dutch Shell, and spent 29 years there in human resources, organization development and talent management. The combination of these experiences eventually led her to diversity and inclusion.

She became Global Head of D&I in 2004, stationed in London. She pulled heavily from her experience working with senior leaders in large-scale change efforts to mainstream D&I into the various global business streams within Shell. This included strengthening leadership accountability for D&I, as well as integrating it into the organisation’s culture and HR systems/processes. This was critical given Shell operates in over 130 countries and territories with a workforce of over 100,000 people.

During 2005-2006, she led a global study dealing with the progression and retention of women in Shell. The assessment, and recommended pathway forward, culminated in Shell being recognized as an “exemplar company” in the UK by the Women and Work Commission and the then Prime Minister Tony Blair.

After retiring from Shell, Ann established a consulting business, DiversityWorks, to assist multi-national organizations in the development and implementation of their diversity and inclusion strategies. She approaches this work from a belief that D&I is not a separate stream of activity but rather a part of the overall business strategy, talent management, and the day to day way of working together.

She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and a Masters in Industrial Relations from Purdue University. She and her husband, Bob, currently reside on the eastern shore of Maryland and enjoy travel, having visited over 35 countries worldwide.

Alexis Walmsley, As Associate Research Consultant Alexis has a range of responsibilities including being the central point for all research and diagnostic projects for Schneider~ Ross. Alexis has been part of the Schneider~Ross team for over 13 years both as an employee and as an associate.

Over the years, Alexis has led on many of the ground-breaking surveys carried out by Schneider~Ross– particularly in Higher Education (at Cranfield and the Institute of Education) and Whitehall (the largest survey conducted in the UK on sexual harassment for the Ministry of Defence). At the start of 2011 the Equality Challenge Unit published Effective Equality Surveys, a practical guide to designing and using surveys that provokes thinking around the best way to understand staff and student experiences and perceptions of equality which Alexis co-authored with Robin Schneider.

Alexis has had wide experience of the Equality Duties having been part of the research team that published Towards Racial Equality in 2003 – the review for the Commission for Racial Equality into the first year of implementation of the race equality duty. Building on this, Alexis worked on The Public Sector Equality Duties – Making an Impact and co-authored (with Robin Schneider) the research for the Government Equalities Office on the costs and effectiveness of the public duties which played an important role in shaping recent equality legislation changes. More recently she has collaborated with fellow associate consultants on undertaking equality reviews.

In addition to her work with public sector clients, she also works regularly with the private sector and the Global Diversity Network.

A Director and Trustee of the national charity Working Families, Alexis particularly enjoys writing and has contributed to IDS Diversity at Work and Positive Parenting’s specialist manual for professionals working with the parents of newly diagnosed disabled children. She also contributes to the newsletter published by Working Families as part of their 'Waving Not Drowning' initiative for working parents of children with a disability.

Tony Warner, is a highly regarded diversity trainer with experience in the public and voluntary sectors. He has delivered training extensively in the police and criminal justice sectors. Other commitments include membership of the NHS south-east London race equality network and working on 12 and 26 week long in school mentoring programmes to raise self esteem and academic performance.

For Schneider~Ross Tony has led major programmes for the Museum of London, Enterprise-Rent-A-Car and Southampton University. As part of both of these contracts he has been transferring his expertise to itnernal trainers so that they are equipped to cascade Schneider~Ross programmes further down the organisation and support line mangers in the process of change.