Harold Hillman, Managing Director of Sigmoid, migrated to New Zealand in 2003 to join Fonterra, New Zealand’s largest company, and help lay the foundation for the dairy co-operative to realise its vision to be the global leader in dairy.

Before leaving to start Sigmoid in 2007, Harold served in two roles with Fonterra, initially as Interim Group HR Director on the Fonterra Leadership Team and then in the role for which he was recruited, Director of Talent & Organisational Development. Harold’s contributions established Fonterra as a benchmark in people engagement strategies, evidenced by strong performance on key engagement factors during the company’s transition years.
With Sigmoid, Harold continues to work with Fonterra on leadership and coaching programs, and is actively engaged with a number of other prominent organisations, in New Zealand and globally, focused on building strategies and programs to enhance leadership capability.

Specialises in effective speaking and presentation technique. He is a professional actor, director and educator with fourteen years experience teaching acting and presentation skills to students throughout the US and NZ.

In 1998 Russell won the Bob Hope Scholarship to study for his MFA in Acting at Meadows School of the Arts in the US. As an actor he has appeared in commercial television, feature film, and on regional theatre stages throughout the US and NZ. Aside from SpeakEasy he teaches acting, solo-performance and story-telling in the University of Auckland’s community education department.

Russell also worked for two years as an assistant at Henderson/Hogan agency in New York representing film, television and theatre actors, and in 2006 he won the CRM Awards ‘Outbound Salesperson of the Year’ while working for Foster’s NZ.

Through his company SpeakEasy (www.speakeasy.co.nz), Russell works with some of New Zealand’s most visible and distinguished brands on business presentation skills and successfully influencing outcome in front of an audience.

His most recent clients include: Fonterra, Auckland Council, Barnes Catmur & Friends, Affinity ID, Coca-Cola Amatil NZ Ltd, Heinz Watties, Farmers, Microsoft, Mighty River Power and Office Max.