Author: Paul Ashcroft

Chief Learning Officer at Novartis. Simon leads learning at Novartis, a focused medicines company, and one of the leading companies in the world. He is a commercially-minded learning leader with experience across a range of the world”s top organisations. In 2000, Simon co-founded Brightwave, one of the UK”s leading eLearning companies, which was eventually acquired by Capita Plc. Simon spent seven years working for Accenture, advising companies including BT, BP, Microsoft, Canon, Barclays and HSBC. In 2010, Simon moved to Lloyds Banking Group where he led the award-winning bank-wide learning transformation. In 2013 Simon moved to Novartis global HQ in Switzerland, where he led various global learning teams. These including being responsible for enhancing effectiveness of learning for the global pharma salesforce, creating the cross-divisional Global Development University, running the Novartis-wide Learning Centre of Expertise and Corporate Universities, and also defining the strategy for how Novartis would develop digital capability across the company. After leading the development of a new, award-winning learning strategy, he became Novartis”s first-ever Chief Learning Officer in February 2019. Since then Novartis has gained several global awards for learning including the award for Learning Strategy Innovation. Simon shares his experiences, speaking at conferences around the world and with an active digital presence on the Linkedin platform. Simon lives in Switzerland with his wife Rachel, son Oliver, daughter Lucinda, their cat Paddy and a coop of chickens. He can be found most weekends struggling up a Swiss mountain road on his bike.