Helen Handfield Jones

Recognized as a leading expert in talent management, Helen Handfield-Jones creates a compelling case for change. Her penetrating insights and actionoriented style have helped many organizations fundamentally re-think their talent strategies, and improve their business performance as a result.

Helen works with senior executive teams to help them improve the way they assess, develop, and plan succession for their top 30-150 leaders. With boards, she works on CEO succession planning, CEO evaluation, and board effectiveness.

Helen teaches directors about effective strategies for CEO evaluation and succession at the Directors Education Program, a joint venture between the Institute of Corporate Directors and the Rotman School of Management. She teaches this

program in Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver.

Helen has advised more than seventy clients around the world including most recently Aon, Alcan, CPR, and Coventree Capital on succession planning and leadership development at the management level, and Hydrogenics, Shaw Communications, Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, and Freeplay Energy on CEO succession planning or board effectiveness at the board level.

Helen co-wrote the book The War for Talent which was published in 2001 by Harvard Business School Press, and co-led McKinsey & Companys groundbreaking research on this topic in 1997. Articles on her research and thinking have been published in the Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, Leader to Leader, The McKinsey Quarterly, and The Ivey Journal. She regularly speaks to a variety of forums on talent management including the Conference Board and the Human Capital Institute.

Prior to starting her own company, Helen spent twelve years as a consultant with McKinsey & Company. During the first four years she served clients on general strategy and organization issues, and during the last eight years she focused

exclusively on talent and performance management. Helen graduated as the gold medallist from the MBA program at the Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario in 1990.