Charmaine De Souza (Past staff)

Biography

Charmaine grew up in Hounslow in west London and has studied and worked in London for all of her career (bar a year teaching English as a foreign language in a remote town on the Greek/Turkish border!).

She began her career as control room operator in a busy MPS police station joining the BBC where her first position was in BBC News Subtitling unit which provided services to the deaf and hard of hearing community. She specialised in HR work at the BBC and took her CIPD qualifications while heading up a unit that offered the first learning programmes for staff who were interested in using the Internet for investigative journalism and for creating interactive content that was available via the Red button.

After leading pan-BBC change programmes, Charmaine joined the Home Office to lead a national police HR programme to reform the way that new police recruits were trained and tested which is still running today (IPLDP). She worked across a number of high profile projects in central government including the Respect Task Force which tackled anti-social behaviour.

Charmaine returned to the HR profession at the Department of Education and worked on key projects under the Coalition government – setting up of new Executive Agencies; introducing project based working and restructuring of policy teams. 

Charmaine was promoted to the Senior Civil Service (SCS) in 2014 when she took up the post of HR Director for Enforcement and Compliance and went on to work at the Cabinet Office on executive talent management and succession planning across the whole of the Civil Service.

Charmaine holds a MSc in Organizational Behaviour from Birkbeck College and is a member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD).

At the GLA Charmaine is responsible for leading the HR and OD function, leading on cross GLA Group talent programmes such as Our Time and supporting the Corporate Management Team.

Responsibilities

Responsible for leading a high quality, effective and responsive human resources and organisational development function, taking overall leadership on all HR and organisational development issues and oversight of leading key projects and people related activity across the GLA group.

Accountable for organisational development (including leadership, management development and staff engagement) in the GLA to ensure the GLA has the workforce capabilities and agility to satisfy its short, medium and long term objectives.