Speaker's profile

Ruchika Pal

Group Chief Talent Officer

Golden Agri Resources

Ruchika Pal is a globally experienced HR and rewards leader with over 20 years of expertise in remuneration, talent strategy, and organisational design, gained across Asia, Europe, and the United States. She has operated at the intersection of consulting and corporate leadership, advising and leading complex, multi-billion-dollar organisations on aligning pay, performance, and people strategy with long term business value.

She spent over a decade with Mercer Consulting, where she advised boards and senior leadership teams on executive and broad-based compensation, global rewards frameworks, job evaluation, performance management, succession planning, and organisation effectiveness. During this period, she led consulting teams and delivered large scale HR and rewards solutions for diverse global clients, developing a strong grasp of governance, risk, and market linked remuneration practices.

Ruchika later moved into a senior corporate leadership role and joined Apollo Tyres as Group Head HR, partnering closely with the executive leadership team to deliver global people and rewards priorities for a complex, multinational manufacturing organisation. She held enterprise accountability for global rewards, talent management, performance management, learning and development, mobility, HR policy formulation, and HR technology implementation.

In this role, she oversaw the design and governance of global compensation and performance frameworks, ensuring alignment with business strategy and leadership capability. She led large scale operating model and HR transformation initiatives across 26 countries, impacting more than 10,000 employees, advising senior leaders on organisation design, succession planning, leadership effectiveness, and pay for performance outcomes.

Currently, Ruchika is working as the Group Chief Talent Officer with Golden Agri Resources, where she is managing enterprise-wide transformation by aligning talent, rewards, performance, and culture with strategic business outcomes for the global agribusiness and the group.

A recognised thought leader, Ruchika is featured among Southeast Asia’s most influential HR leaders in 2024 and 2026, and is a regular contributor to leading publications, with more than 15 articles on rewards, talent, and the future of work.