We are delighted to welcome Helen Hyde to our own Employee Ownership Trust, which she joined in April 2024 as our second Independent Trustee Director.

Helen spent most of her career working for John Lewis and Waitrose (the largest employee-owned company in the UK), with her last roles being the People Director for Waitrose and a main board member, the Partners’ Counsellor, which acted as a critical friend to the Chairman and Executive Board. Helen led the teams that supported democracy throughout the business and so has a real depth of experience in ensuring that employee ownership structures and cultures thrive.

Helen left John Lewis in January 2020 and did a masters in Executive Coaching.  Since then, she has become a leadership coach, a non-executive director for a housing association, and an independent trustee director for several employee-owned businesses.  She enjoys working with businesses to support founders, leaders, and employee owners who are transitioning into employee ownership and thereafter helps those businesses leverage the opportunities that employee ownership provides.

Some of the businesses Helen supports as an independent trustee director include a timber business, an engineering company, a provider of NVQ training, and Riverford, the organic food box farming business.

In her spare time Helen loves travelling, volunteers in her village community shop and enjoys textile crafts, cooking and is an enthusiastic but very amateur gardener.

Simon Everingham and Cristín Craig, the current two employee trustee directors on our Trust, said “We are excited to have Helen on board, we think she will be a great asset for our Trust. She brings a great depth and breadth of experience in employee ownership and employee owned culture and we think she will be an excellent guardian of our own employee owned culture going forward.”