Second Helpings

Simon BrownChief Learning Officer at NovartisSimon leads learning at Novartis, a focused medicines company, and one of the leading companies in the world. He is a commercially-minded learning leader with experience across a range of the world's top organisations. In 2000, Simon co-founded Brightwave, one of the UK's leading eLearning companies, which was eventually acquired by Capita Plc. Simon spent seven years working for Accenture, advising companies including BT, BP, Microsoft, Canon, Barclays and HSBC. In 2010, Simon moved to Lloyds Banking Group where he led the award-winning bank-wide learning transformation.In 2013 Simon moved to Novartis global HQ in Switzerland, where he led various global learning teams. These including being responsible for enhancing effectiveness of learning for the global pharma salesforce, creating the cross-divisional Global Development University, running the Novartis-wide Learning Centre of Expertise and Corporate Universities, and also defining the strategy for how Novartis would develop digital capability across the company.After leading the development of a new, award-winning learning strategy, he became Novartis's first-ever Chief Learning Officer in February 2019. Since then Novartis has gained several global awards for learning including the award for Learning Strategy Innovation. Simon shares his experiences, speaking at conferences around the world and with an active digital presence on the Linkedin platform.Simon lives in Switzerland with his wife Rachel, son Oliver, daughter Lucinda, their cat Paddy and a coop of chickens. He can be found most weekends struggling up a Swiss mountain road on his bike.

Treat yourself to Second Helpings and more choice cuts in the style of Simon Brown's much lauded first volume of memoirs, Playing off the Roof & Other Stories.Exuberantly revisiting his early years in National Service, at Oxford and as a young barrister, Lord Brown recalls matters grave and trivial from his time at the Bar and on the Bench, along the way regaling us with tales of Paddington Bear, Nigel Lawson and Mozart at the Warsaw opera. He also has something to say about the current legal scene and considers such thorny problems as the 2019 prorogation judgment and whether trial by jury might be dispensed with in order to clear a mounting backlog of criminal cases. Drawing witty lessons from a life of trials, Lord Brown finds time to muse on when a judge might choose to change a sentence already imposed, what to say after dinner and why the game of golf is strictly for the birds!