Curious in Conversation - People & Culture

In today’s fast-moving business landscape, building and maintaining a strong company culture is more important than ever—especially for small business owners balancing growth, talent retention, and evolving employee expectations.

People and Culture brings together three expert panellists with backgrounds in people development, value-led culture, and workplace challenges. Together, they will explore what works (and what doesn’t) when building teams in a hybrid world, how to create a culture that supports your business vision, and how to navigate shifting expectations of what a job should offer.

This discussion is designed for small business owners looking to attract, engage, and retain great talent while fostering a culture that drives long-term success. Expect practical insights, real-world experiences, and strategies you can apply to your business right away.

The Panelists

Di Gates

Fifteen years ago, Di sold her half of a bustling city-centre creative agency. A few weeks later, she founded Stick Theory as a virtual collaboration agency. This was a unique model back then - no staff, fully remote freelance teams, and a focus on co-creation with clients. Di designed a way of working that combined Agile project management, human-centred design, radical transparency and smart use of digital tools.

She’s refined this approach over the years and it has directly informed her new venture: Connection Heroes, a powerful learning community that helps organisations unlock the power of human connection and drive remote collaboration. Connection Heroes combines Di’s collaborative practice with insights from the neuroscience of human connection and applies these to the challenges of today’s distributed workplace. The result is leaders and managers who are Connection Heroes - fully empowered to build and retain happy, healthy, high-performing teams.

Laura Weaving

Laura Weaving is a leading expert in behavioural strategy and workplace dynamics, with over 15 years of experience transforming how businesses harness human behaviour to drive performance. As the CEO of Perform, Laura has developed innovative frameworks to help leaders and managers decode workplace behaviours, enabling them to build high-performing teams and foster cultures of trust, collaboration, and accountability.
Passionate about making behavioural insights accessible, Laura has trained thousands of leaders worldwide, offering practical tools to elevate leadership impact and her expertise continues to redefine leadership excellence in today's fast-paced business landscape.

Louise Kennedy

Louise Kennedy FCIPD is the owner and director of leading North East HR Consultancy Oculus HR.

The Sunderland-based organisation provides tailored HR solutions for many of the region’s most reputable brands, across all sizes and sectors, giving enterprises the confidence to manage their people. Established in 2013, Oculus HR offers companies a range of services including outsourced HR support and training.

Louise’s track record is second to none. Throughout the past 20 years Louise has led HR teams across all sectors including the automotive and manufacturing industries

You can hear Louise’s thoughts on topical issues and how they may impact on an organisation’s HR service though her blog and podcasts on https://oculus-hr.co.uk/

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Land Digital, Mackie’s Corner, Sunderland, United Kingdom