United Kingdom, January 2026 — Vanessa Di Cuffa has taken on a new leadership role as Chief People Officer at Compass Community, where she will lead the organisation’s people strategy, safeguarding capability, culture transformation and workforce development agenda across Compass Fostering, Compass Children’s Homes and Compass Schools, underpinned by therapeutic services.
In her current appointment at Compass Community, Vanessa brings more than two decades of senior people leadership, transformation and employment law expertise across large-scale private and public sector organisations.
Immediately prior to this role, Vanessa served as Chief People Officer at NEC Group, where she was an Executive Team member leading a full-scale organisational transformation. Her people-led initiatives delivered major cultural renewal, large-scale restructuring, workforce modernisation and values-based leadership programmes, contributing to strong commercial performance across the organisation.
Alongside her executive leadership, Vanessa has served as a Non-Executive Director at Impactt, providing board-level oversight in ethical trade, human rights, governance, risk and talent development across international operations.
Earlier, Vanessa founded Cultureology Limited, a boutique people change consultancy, partnering with high-growth and established organisations including McDonald’s, Macphie and Uberall to design people strategies, rebuild organisational cultures and create leadership and succession frameworks.
Her prior leadership experience also includes UK People Change Director at Anglo Beef Processors UK, where she built the organisation’s first central People function, launched graduate and leadership academies and established award-winning ethical leadership frameworks, and UK HR Director at 2 Sisters Food Group, leading national-scale workforce transformation, union relations and M&A integration.
Vanessa began her career in senior employment law leadership roles with leading UK law firms, building deep foundations in governance, organisational change and workforce transformation.
About Compass Community
Compass Community comprises Compass Fostering, Compass Children’s Homes and Compass Schools, underpinned by therapeutic services. The organisation is committed to providing safe, caring and enriching environments for children and young people, with a vision to be the preferred children’s service provider through an optimistic and pragmatic approach where positive change is always believed possible.
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