David Watkins Email Address

Senior Vice President, Group Talent Management and Leadership Development

Welcome to Oerlikon - one of the world's leading high-tech industrial groups. We offer pioneering solutions for the production of thin-film silicon solar modules, textile production, thin-film coating, and drive precision and vacuum systems. These solutions make our customers successful.

David is a senior leader, professional coach, author, consultant and HR shaper with over 27 years business & leadership experience in blue chip organisations worldwide. He has worked in over 30 countries and with more than 6.000 leaders across different industries. Today, he leads the Global Talent, Transformation & Engagement CoE in OC Oerlikon, a significant global Player in surface & fibre technologies with more than 150 locations worldwide. Reporting to the C Level with regular exposure to the Chairman and Senior Board, he steers & strategizes the future direction of HR in both "traditional" topics such as talent acquisition, pipelining & people development, and emerging topics such as Employee Experience, Future of Work & Digitlization. He started his career in 1993 in sales, marketing and account management and in these roles spent some of his time in Dubai. Returning to Europe in 2000 he began to work within BMW out of Munich. Here he held a number of positions over 8 years, building a reputation as a customer loyalty, brand behaviour & people shaping expert in particular. He later moved to Switzerland where he headed the global Organisational & Leadership Development function for Schindler elevators. Following 8 years in Schindler, David created (and still has) his own People Consultancy, Organisation Dynamics. He joined Oerlikon full time as Global Head of Group Talent Management in 2017. He holds a Degree in Economics from the UK, an MBA from Switzerland and is a Certified Executive Coach. He is a member of the Accreditation Board of the EFMD (EQUIS & EPAS Business school accreditations) and is certified in various leadership assessment models such as MBTI, FIR0-B, Talent Q, Hay Group Leadership Styles and Organisational Climate & Human Synergistics cultural surveys.