Rachel is an experienced Talent Acquisition leader with a strong background in building effective teams, developing inclusive hiring practices, and shaping people strategies that make a lasting difference.
She is currently Head of Talent Acquisition and Management at The Francis Crick Institute, where she is establishing a specialist talent function to support the Institute’s world-leading scientific community. Rachel is focused on strengthening the Crick’s employer brand and embedding equity, diversity and inclusion at the heart of its approach to attracting and developing talent.
Before joining the Crick, Rachel led Talent Acquisition at Which?, where she built and developed a high-performing team, introduced inclusive and data-informed recruitment practices, and oversaw a refresh of the organisation’s employer brand and employee value proposition. Earlier in her career at Cancer Research UK, she modernised recruitment operations, improving efficiency, governance and candidate experience, while leading the development of an award-winning graduate scheme.
Rachel is committed to building inclusive, transparent and engaging recruitment processes. She enjoys the creative and problem-solving aspects of Talent Acquisition and the opportunity it provides to connect people, purpose and organisational ambition.
What’s a recent professional achievement of yours that you are proud of?
One professional achievement I’m particularly proud of is the inclusive first hiring approach I developed and embedded at Which?. We created a recruitment model that was fair and inclusive, while also bringing managers fully on board, ensuring they understood, engaged with and supported the process. The outcome was a real shift in our EDI performance measures, we could clearly see development in the demographics of people we were hiring, demonstrating a tangible move towards a more diverse and representative workforce. It was incredibly rewarding to see that the combination of supportive processes and manager engagement actually made a measurable difference.
What is your prediction for the future of the TA industry?
I think the future of Talent Acquisition will be shaped by how well we use AI to support, not replace, the human side of recruitment. There’s been a lot of foundational work in recent years, but it feels like this is the year where we’ll start to see real investment and meaningful impact. The real value will come from using AI to handle the admin side of the role, freeing up time for teams to focus on building relationships, understanding potential and creating genuinely engaging candidate experiences. From all of the foundational work that’s been done on AI and how we will use it, I think TA leaders feel better informed on what the metrics will look like to review AI performance such as tangible reduction in time to hire/ screening / interview scheduling etc. I think that the RL100 events and discussions have really driven this forward.
What projects are you planning on working on in 2026?
Next year, I’m really looking forward to building on the foundations we’ve put in place at the Crick. We’ll be continuing to develop our employer brand, strengthening inclusive hiring, and focusing on how we showcase the people that work at the crick and showcase the incredible work happening here. I’m also keen to explore how we can use AI and technology to streamline the more administrative elements of recruitment, we will be investing in AI this year to free up the team to focus on building relationships and creating great candidate experiences.