Helen Cooke, CEO and Founder of MyPlus, is recognised as a leading expert in disability employment with a particular expertise in student recruitment. Helen works with organisations to provide them with the expertise to be disability confident in their strategy, their processes and their engagement, and realise the possibilities of hiring and retaining more people with a disability. Clients include: BP, EY, Enterprise Holdings, J.P.Morgan, Linklaters, and the BBC.
Helen is also behind MyPlus Students’ Club an innovative website which provides students with disabilities or long-term health conditions the advice, support and confidence to find opportunities, approach relevant organisations and go on to realise new possibilities with progressive employers.
The uniqueness of Helen’s approach comes from her expertise in HR and graduate recruitment combined with her first-hand experience of disability; Helen is a wheelchair user as a result of a childhood spinal injury. She started her career on the Marks & Spencer graduate management programme before moving to Mars where she spent 10 years, mostly in HR and Resourcing, before setting up MyPlus in 2005.
Helen is listed in the 2018, 2020, 2021 and 2022 SHAW TRUST Disability Power 100 List of ‘Most influential disabled people in the UK’; and is listed on Cranfield University’s School of Management Women to Watch for 2021.