Biography
A career built on
people and purpose
A senior HR leader with over three decades of experience shaping the people strategies of some of the world's most ambitious life sciences and professional services organisations.
Kate has built her career at the intersection of science, strategy and people — working across biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, consulting and life sciences at a senior level. She brings a rare combination of commercial acumen, deep HR expertise, and genuine human insight to every organisation she has partnered with.
Across her career, Kate has led HR through periods of rapid growth, international expansion, complex transformation, and cultural reinvention. She is known for her ability to operate at board level while staying deeply connected to the employee experience — and for the courage to tell leadership what they need to hear, not just what they want to.
Flagship Pioneering
SVP, Human Resources
As SVP of HR, Kate developed deep expertise in building HR functions from the ground up within a unique venture creation model. She honed her skills in international people strategy, designing frameworks that could flex across a diverse portfolio of early-stage and scaling companies — expanding her capabilities in cross-border employment, equity design and executive talent acquisition.
Moderna
Senior HR Leadership
Kate was at Moderna through one of the most extraordinary chapters in modern biotechnology — present for the IPO and working through 2021 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. As part of Operation Warp Speed, she navigated the unique HR challenges of an organisation scaling at unprecedented speed under global scrutiny, deepening her expertise in rapid workforce growth, crisis people management and leading HR through transformational organisational change.
Vertex Pharmaceuticals
Senior HR Leadership
At Vertex, Kate refined her expertise in total rewards architecture and performance culture design within a rigorous, science-led environment. She developed a sophisticated understanding of how HR strategy can underpin scientific ambition — building her capabilities in executive compensation, equity vehicles and the organisational design needed to sustain high-performance teams over the long term.
Sunovion Pharmaceuticals
Senior HR Leadership
Sunovion gave Kate the opportunity to develop her expertise in leading HR through complex organisational transformation and cross-functional change programmes. Working across a global CNS-focused business, she strengthened her capabilities in leadership development, succession planning and building people frameworks that could operate effectively across multiple international markets.
Monitor Deloitte
HR & People Consulting
Monitor Deloitte was formative in shaping Kate's analytical and consulting approach to HR. She developed a rigorous, evidence-based methodology for diagnosing organisational challenges — building expertise in data-driven workforce strategy, organisational design and the structured problem-solving disciplines that now sit at the core of her consulting practice.
Vital HR Consulting Ltd
Founder & Principal
The natural culmination of three decades of senior HR leadership. Kate founded Vital HR to deploy the full breadth of her experience — from IPO-stage biotechs to global pharmaceutical organisations — on a flexible, high-impact basis. Working with life sciences, health data and professional services organisations across the UK and internationally, people centred and science driven.
Kate is a CIPD Chartered Fellow and holds deep expertise in international HR architecture, executive reward, equity vehicles, EDI, and the organisational dynamics of scaling science-led businesses. She has mentored many HR leaders who have gone on to become CHROs in their own right.
CIPD Chartered Fellow
Life Sciences HR
International HR
Executive Reward
Organisational Design
EDI Strategy
Board Advisory
HR Transformation
