I am a qualified chartered management accountant with over 16 years post qualification experience, of which 13 years is within the international and UK charity sector. I have extensive experience in senior management roles and have a passion for improving financial management by training and advising people around the world. My most recent consultancy assignments include:
Policy development:
- Developing a financing strategy for STAR Ghana as it moves from being a donor funded project to becoming a newly registered independent national entity (ongoing).
- Developing regional cost recovery policies and guidelines for World Vision MEER.
- Developing grant management and cost recovery policies, guidelines and tools for Westminster Foundation for Democracy.
- Reviewing and updating the finance and operations policies and procedures for Media Legal Defence Initiative.
Capacity building and assessment:
- Delivering an annual system-wide financial data analysis and cost benchmarking project for Fairtrade International (ongoing).
- Delivering a capacity building project to strengthen the financial management practices of Robert Carr civil society Networks Fund (RCNF) grantees. The project involved reviewing and assessing grantee financial management systems, making recommendations for improvement and providing financial management training.
- Undertaking a financial management and financial governance review for eQuality Time.
Finance training:
- Co-designing and developing a financial management training course for Project Managers for EGPAF.
- Reviewing and co-writing a full cost recovery participatory training course for Humentum (previously Mango).
- Reviewing and supporting the development of an online participatory fighting fraud course for Humentum (previously Mango).
- Designing and delivering a grantee assessment training course for the Indigo Trust.
- Delivering a training programme through FHI360 in Jordan to assess and select potential Jordanian organisations to deliver financial management training to civil society organisations through a 3 year licencing programme.
In my previous role as Chief Financial Officer for the Global Canopy Foundation, I was instrumental in the organisation achieving a financial turnaround. Notably, I significantly improved cost recovery practices, embedded better control over all budgets through improved financial management policies, processes and reporting systems. I also ensured strategic and operational decisions were made using sound financial information by increasing the visibility of the organisation’s finances. My other relevant experience includes:
- As Finance Director at Mango, I was responsible for both operational and strategic financial management of the organisation.
- As Training Manager at Mango, I managed two global training programmes to deliver a high quality programme of training events for NGO staff worldwide. I have extensive experience of assessing training needs and designing training courses to meet those needs, and have trained thousands of people around the world.
- As a consultant for Restless Development, I reviewed country programme office policies and procedures and wrote a global finance manual which was implemented across all country programmes.
- As Senior Finance Manager, I then implemented those policies and procedures in Restless Development’s Tanzanian programme office.