Macmillan Davies Webinar Series

Macmillan Davies takes great pleasure in inviting you to our next webinar: Can We Scale Without Breaking?

Date: Thursday 9th July 2026

Time: 13:00 - 14:00 (BST)

Location: Online

Most scale-ups don't break because of bad strategy. They break because the people function couldn't keep up.

We're hosting a webinar for HR, People & Culture, and TA leaders who are done with vague frameworks and want a real conversation about what it actually takes to scale an organisation without everything falling apart.

We'll be covering:

• Why the middle manager layer is where strategy goes to die, and how to fix it

• How to connect your people work to the numbers that matter at board level

• The new operating model putting data and intelligence at the centre of everything

Joining us on the panel:

Justine Whitaker

Chief People Officer and Organisational Psychologist

Justine Whitaker is a Chief People Officer and Organisational Psychologist with over 27 years of experience working at the intersection of people strategy, organisational psychology, and enterprise value creation.

She has held multiple inaugural CPO roles across PE-backed, listed, and founder-led organisations, most recently at Lawfront and Arcadis Gen, and now runs xOrdinary, a boutique advisory practice working with CEOs, boards, and investors on operating model transformation, culture integration, and people risk.

Her academic grounding spans an MA in Organisational Psychology, executive education at Wharton, LSE, and MIT Sloan, and she recently completed Wharton's Leading in an AI-Powered Future programme.

She is best known for being brought in at inflection points, when leadership complexity, people risk, or acquisition-led growth demand something more than conventional HR.

Anja Stapelfeld

International People Leader

Anja Stapelfeld is an international People Leader with 20+ years of experience partnering with CEOs, executive teams, boards and remuneration committees to scale growth, strengthen leadership and drive organisational performance across both B2B and B2C environments.

She is particularly experienced in supporting companies at the stage where growth, organisational complexity and leadership effectiveness need to evolve simultaneously.

Her approach combines commercial judgement, operational clarity and a data-led people strategy at the intersection of business strategy, organisational design and scalable execution.

Across Europe and the US, Anja has worked in founder-led, private equity-backed, matrix and high-growth environments, including multiple unicorn and IPO-readiness journeys, helping organisations build the leadership capability, talent density, governance maturity and organisational resilience required to sustain enterprise scale.

Her expertise spans leadership effectiveness, workforce planning, organisational health, operating model design, performance cultures, transformation, succession depth, M&A integration and scalable people infrastructure.

She is recognised for translating complex business challenges into practical organisational solutions that increase clarity, accountability, collaboration and execution quality.

Anja brings a calm, hands-on and commercially anchored leadership style, building trust quickly across leadership teams and helping organisations scale in a way that strengthens both performance and culture.

Her work focuses on enabling companies to mature operationally while preserving the entrepreneurial energy and agility that drive growth.

Who should attend:

• CHROs

• People directors

• Senior HR leaders

• Talent acquisition professionals

If you lead people in a start-up or scale-up, this one's for you.

How to join us: Click here to register

Can’t make it? Please feel free to share this event with a member of your HR or senior leadership team who may be interested in attending.

By registering for this event, you are agreeing for your details to be shared with both Macmillan Davies and our event speakers.