Over the past few months, we have significantly expanded the Cadence Partners team; we are delighted to introduce you to Lan Lay (Senior Consultant), Yvonne Okyere-Whalley (Consultant), Maja Kosmowska (Researcher) and Bijal Daialal (Researcher).
These appointments mark a further investment in our project delivery support, research and programme management capabilities. The expansion of our team also means we can further support existing clients, reach out to make strategic partnerships, and dedicate more time to developing our services and consultancy offering to increase our client offering.
We are absolutely thrilled to welcome the new members of our team, all of whom truly understand the importance of justice, equity, diversity and inclusion, and genuinely want to make a difference to the face of leadership.
Lan Lay (Lead Consultant)
Lan brings over a decade of experience overseeing the delivery of large-scale, complex, multi-stakeholder programmes targeting improvements to public service delivery.
For the last 7 years, she has worked exclusively on behalf of multilateral development banks, where she has undertaken large and complex programme management, systems and performance improvement, stakeholder management and extensive research assignments covering a range of sectors, including social protection, trade facilitation, and revenue reform.
Earlier on in her career, Lan served as a United Nations Volunteer with the United Nations Development Programme in Turkmenistan, her international work and wanderlust has led her to travel to over forty countries and she has lived in China, Italy, France, Austria, and Turkmenistan.
Lan previously worked as a Programme Manager for Cadence Partners, and she is now very excited to return to us, bringing her masses of experience in international projects to help support our clients reach their social justice and equity objectives. Her passion and experience lays with impact measurement, and she will be working to support the delivery of our JEDI Consultancy projects in the UK.
Yvonne Okyere-Whalley (Consultant)
Yvonne leads search assignments for senior leadership and non-executive roles within health and social care sector, the third sector and private sector. She prides herself in delivering a positive candidate experience by employing high service levels, and a personal touch to building long lasting relationship with her clients and candidates. Before joining Cadence Partners, she worked for a number of UK and international search firms, where she has led search mandates for clients in the health sector, fintech, financial services, manufacturing and third sector clients.
Prior to her work in recruitment, Yvonne spent over a decade working as a corporate and commercial solicitor, having trained in both Ghana and the UK, assisting various international clients on their contracts, commercial agreements, data protection, property transactions and company registrations.
She is also a Trustee of York Mind, the national charity championing mental ill-health in the UK, and manages two of her own charities, the Forgotten Foundation, based in Ghana, and Dringhouses Community Foodbank, in the UK. She is also an award-winning actress in Ghana, and has featured in various roles and commercials, both in Ghana and the UK, and took part in Miss Ghana 2004, where she won Miss Congeniality, a testament to her supportive and kind personality.
When Yvonne is not working, she enjoys spending quality time with her daughter and the rest of her extended family and friends. She loves cooking, fine dining and learning about different wines of the world.
Maja Kosmowska (Researcher)
Maja recently graduated from the University of Nottingham with an LLB Law degree and is currently putting her skillset to use conducting assignment research, candidate sourcing and outreach, and supporting on other research projects and assessment.
Having always taken a keen interest in politics and social justice, most recently in the form of human rights law during her degree, Maja believes strongly in Cadence Partners’ commitment to paving the way for a more equitable society and tries to embed these values in her personal life through volunteering and activism.
In her down time, she is partial to jumping into a new book before having finished the previous, debating with her book club, hanging out with family and friends, and taking care of her many plants (when she occasionally remembers to water them).
Bijal Daialal (Researcher)
Bijal recently graduated from the University of Cambridge with a degree in History. She had a particular interest in the histories of European Empires, Decolonisation, Gender, and the Indian sub-continent, which have informed and nuanced her understanding of the power dynamics at play in the world today. She is drawing on her knowledge and research skills to help source candidates and feels particularly passionate about the firm’s EDI values.
When she is not trying to catch up on her ever-growing reading list, she enjoys hitting the gym, experimenting in the kitchen, and sipping a girly cocktail with her friends. She is currently trying to nurture her inner-most desire to be a painter.
