Experienced international HR professional with extensive line management/business and supervisory board experience
Gary was born in London, England but has been based for much of his life in The Netherlands (he has both British & Dutch nationality), although he has also lived and worked in Russia and Kazakhstan for more than 10 years. He has a technical background having a BSc in Chemistry and a PhD in Physics.
Gary worked for Royal Dutch Shell for over 30 years, joining at the Research Centre in Amsterdam and after a first couple of years in a technical role, managed different research & development groups.
Although the majority of his career from then onwards has been in international and global HR, he has also done a number of line management, business and strategy roles, moving back and forward between HR and business. He has also led a number of large organisational change projects.
His international HR roles at Shell include Global HR VP in Shell Chemicals for 6 years whilst Chemicals was divesting and reorganising globally.
His business/line roles include: Technology Manager (100 people) and Head/General Director of three Shell Technology Centres simultaneously – Amsterdam (1200 people) where he began his career, Louvain-la-Neuve Belgium (200 people) and Singapore (20 people)
In his last role at Shell as VP Strategy & VP HR for the Shell shared service network, Gary combined both HR and business, growing the number of jobs from 1500 to 9000 and leading 100 HR staff in 10 countries.
Since creating Valshebnik Consulting 15 years ago, Gary has consulted, alone or with colleagues, for many large, often technical, companies, in addition to some internal roles.
Gary worked as HR Director for Fonterra, New Zealand’s biggest company, a dairy farmer’s co-operative (closing the European HQ in Hamburg and re-opening with almost all new staff in Amsterdam).
For two years Gary lived in Moscow, working for one of Russia’s largest oil & gas companies TNK-BP, as Deputy VP HR & OD.
Thereafter he moved to Kazakhstan where for almost three years he was General Director of the Sovereign Wealth Fund’s Corporate University, whose clients included all of the major national companies (including the national oil & gas company, the railways, telecoms and post, the power grid & generation, engineering, mining, chemicals, airlines, finance) concentrating on talent development & change management. In this role Gary was also the legal employer of a staff outsourcing organisation of over 1000 people.
Inbetween and after these jobs Gary consulted for TNT Post (advising unions/staff council on management’s reorganisation plans), Allianz Global Investors (talent management), Eataly, the Italian restaurant chain (HR audit) and carried out a manpower planning and organisational design for a large petrochemical company in the Middle East.
Gary carried out ten consulting projects for the European Space Agency over a four-year period, introducing many aspects of talent management and assessing the agency’s approach to project management.
Gary supported Sibur, Russia’s largest and most successful chemicals company in a number of projects also over a four year period. In addition to consulting with their Corporate University on a range of talent development, organisational design and change management projects he advised on: the conception and design of a new, international-level, technical training centre in Tobolsk, Siberia; led the refreshment of the Young Specialist programme, held a review of the Sibur R&D organisational design and processes to stimulate innovation and advised on Crisis Management. He also coached over forty Sibur senior executives and directors.
Other major projects since include: consulting for ERG, Kazakhstan on their future Corporate University; consulting for Fedrigoni, Italy on a new global talent management system; consulting for Kubota Europe on matrix management; leading the refresh of 23 competence frameworks for a Nigerian oil company; advising a West African oil company on opening activities in another country; and advising on strategy refresh for family-owned oil & gas company with new external investors.
At the beginning of 2024 Gary joined Pecten BV, a global independent consultancy, as CEO four months after its start. He set up and streamlined their processes (including client & consultant contracts, insurance, back office processes, business plan) and developed the storyline for the identity of the consultancy, managing communications and a total website redesign, whilst forming Practices within the consultancy and creating client directors). Financially he drove business development (and cut proposed spending) to pay off debts and loans and make a small profit of €75k on revenue of €800k in first full year and sold almost the same total revenue in first six months of 2025, leaving Pecten in a healthy and strong state, to continue with his own consultancy projects.
In addition to consultancy, Gary also uses his extensive network to support other individuals and companies in their business development and conducts worldwide searches for experts to be interviewed on their specialist knowledge for client companies.
Since March 2025 Gary has been an independent director on the Board of Uzbekgeofizika, and Uzbek national company in oil and gas exploration. He has also been an active member of a number of Supervisory Boards for Foundations and is currently Vice Chair of the Netherlands-Kazakh Business Association.
Gary speaks English and Dutch fluently and intermediate Russian
He is the author of the book ‘People Matters, People Matter: Personal experience, observations & tools for the Management of Talent and Change’ (2020) based on his HR blogs LINK and published to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of Valshebnik Consulting.
Specialities: talent management; executive coaching/mentoring; organisational design; change processes; leadership; business & people strategies; ESG (environment, social & governance); corporate universities; building organisations; global & virtual, matrix & remote organisations; culture; engagement; international workforces; technological organisations; shared service centres
Snapshot: Has worked in fairly independent areas in Shell (and since), allowing independence of action & minimal institutional support; frequently demonstrated that can move between strategic, tactical and hands-on with ease.
