Coats, the world’s leading industrial thread manufacturer and a major player in the Americas textile crafts market, has appointed Monica McKee as Chief HR Officer.  Monica will start on Tuesday 20 March 2018 and report to Rajiv Sharma, Group Chief Executive.  She will also become a member of the Group Executive Team.

Monica will be responsible for delivering the global HR strategy to support Coats’ journey from the Industrial age to the Digital age.  This covers performance management, progression planning, reward and talent acquisition.  It includes putting programmes in place that help to retain and develop talent and deploy it more strategically, as well as developing and enhancing leadership capabilities.  Monica will be integral to Coats’ Diversity and Inclusion initiative as well as being responsible for identifying and implementing the most effective digital solutions and tools to support the HR function at Coats in the future.

Rajiv Sharma, Group Chief Executive, Coats, said: ‘Monica is an experienced HR professional with an excellent reputation for coaching and developing others.  She has diverse industry expertise with a proven track record in delivering both operating excellence and business transformation at global companies so is well equipped to take the lead on the next phase of our people strategy.  She will also bring valuable additional insight to our Group Executive Team.’

Monica joins from Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS), a global biopharmaceutical company, where she was Head of Human Resources, Corporate Functions, based in New Jersey, US.  She was accountable for driving business performance through selective, strategic and focused execution of the People Strategy.  She has been with BMS for twelve years and held a series of senior executive roles in organisation design, change management and business partnership.  Prior to joining BMS, Monica held key global and regional roles of increasing responsibility based in the UK across different sectors with Acordis and Novaceta, formerly part of AkzoNobel, and Courtaulds plc.

Monica has a Bachelor of Science in Economics from University of York and a Postgraduate Diploma in Management Studies from Sheffield Business School.  She is a member of the Society for Human Resource, People & Strategy (HRPS).

Monica succeeds Andy Speak who left in August 2017 to take up the role of Group Human Resources Director at DS Smith, a FTSE 100 packaging company.

ENDS