As a public corporation it manages close to £32 billion of assets on behalf of its 249,000 members. Katherine Easter is the chief people officer and a member of the executive committee. She leads the HR, organisational development and communications directorate and has overall responsibility for the people and communications strategy.
Easter has played an instrumental role in shaping the PPF into the organisation it is today. Under her leadership the PPF has developed a sector-leading culture of diversity and inclusion to enable organisational high performance and the professional and personal development of each individual.
A key focus has been the development of leadership programmes. There is a strong commitment to embedding the structures and tools that facilitate the continued participation and engagement of women – and men – alongside their family commitments. This has established a culture of work/life balance, support for part-time work, provision of comprehensive return-to-work programmes and company-wide adoption of flexible and remote working.
Easter has also led the implementation of strategic culture change projects, which have introduced new approaches to improving employee and line manager engagement and ownership, and has seen the PPF’s HR culture evolve into one of partnership and constructive challenge.
Alongside her work at the PPF Easter holds a non-executive role at Isle Utilities, a technology and innovation consultancy specialising in cleantech with offices in the UK, Europe, US, Australia, Philippines, New Zealand and Singapore.
Before joining the PPF Easter was head of HR, regulated industries at the engineering consultancy Kier, previously Mouchel. In this role she led a talent management process to support the business strategy, which received industry recognition and delivered a two-year people strategy that increased the organisation from 800 to 2,500 people through organic growth and acquisition. She also implemented an employee engagement strategy aimed at significantly reducing turnover, which resulted in Mouchel securing a top 20 place in The Sunday Times' Best Companies to Work For.
Easter has an MSc in social and applied psychology and lives in London.
