How leadership affects you and your human capital

As Partner and Chief Operating Officer, and with over 20 years in the legal sector, Alicia Alinia serves on the firm’s Global Board to provide leadership and implement the firm’s strategic vision. She is responsible for driving results, facilitating growth, and increasing overall efficiency across multiple jurisdictions with an uncompromising commitment to improving client experience.

Alicia started her career as a litigator and has been involved in many high-profile cases representing institutional and individual clients. She moved into executive leadership with a specific specialism in transformation and change, culture change, performance improvement, restructuring and turnaround. Alicia is an experienced public speaker and media commentator across TV, including local and international news.

Tariq is a businessman and philanthropist. CEO of Vigo Group, a family of real estate businesses focused on regenerative development and long term investment. He is a seasoned business, third sector and public leader.

He balances commercial expertise with a social benefit focused approach to each sector. He gives his time and knowledge to support a number of charities, which have included the Prince’s Trust, the Sleep Charity, and was a founding Board Member of HM The King’s Mosaic and AHS Foundation.

With a keen sense of place, Tariq is dedicated to improving the areas in which the business operates, this includes chairing the City Board in his hometown of Doncaster and co-chairing the Mayor of South Yorkshire’s Business Advisory Board.

In 2021, he completed an Executive MBA at the University of Cambridge and in 2022 he was honoured in the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee birthday honours for his continued work and dedication to charity.

Daniela Florea (MPhil Management, 1994) is a trailblasing entrepreneur and the Founder and CEO of Image Ability Ltd. Previously, she founded and built what was the largest geo-information company in Central & Eastern Europe; based on her digital data and science background, she also chaired the EC Strategic Policy Forum on digital entrepreneurship, was a country lead for the EU’s Digital Cities programme and co-chaired the UK’s Department of Education advisory group on digital education. Together, these highlight her capacity-building expertise and leadership roles.

Her integrative leadership and dedication to growth tailored to diverse cultural contexts has shaped her multifaceted career.

She specialises in strategic image management, leadership development, and executive coaching building on her transferrable skills and experience.  She helps others to adeptly navigate various leadership styles and cultural landscapes.

Lee Cortez is the Head of Global Benefits, People Team at Block (formerly Square). With a background in social work, human capital consulting and HR roles at Google and Okta, he integrates human-centred principles emphasising fairness, inclusion, and equity into HR programmes and policies. In parallel, he is a non-tech founder crafting solutions to scale and democratise EDI learning.

Lee is also an Executive MBA candidate at the Cambridge Judge Business School, where he is the inaugural recipient of the Dean’s Diversity Scholarship and the elected EDI Class Representative. He holds a BA (Social Welfare & Public Policy) from Berkeley and MSW from Columbia University, as well as certifications as a SHRM-SCP and Certified Diversity Executive.