Ivan Yakunin

Head of People and Culture Operations Philip Morris International

Currently, I lead the People & Culture Operations department at Philip Morris International for its global functions, such as Consumer, Product, Life Sciences, New Ventures, Operations, Finance, and others. Having been with Philip Morris for 15 years, I spent my early career in several roles related to Change Management, Communications, Knowledge Management and HR technology, and worked in Ukraine, Switzerland and Poland.

I have been privileged to lead and learn from so many people in large multinational and diverse teams with a complex workforce mix, e.g. 220 employees spread across 25 countries and coming from 4 different generations. I am passionate about employee experience, helping people in times of change, workplace learning, coaching and organizational development, and have also accomplished a variety of global-scale HR projects focused on service delivery transformation, implementation and adoption of new systems, or design of new services.

I hold a degree in Human Resources and Training from the University of Leicester (UK), and lead the course “Organization Design and Contemporary Business Models” for Executive MBA students at Krakow University of Economics. Prior to corporate career I obtained a degree in Education and was a teacher of English at a high school and a university in Kharkiv, Ukraine.