UK Regional Advisory Panel

Atanas is a South African with a Bulgarian heritage and a Greek name living in London and working out of Oslo. He currently works in a Fin-Tech start-up as a Management Consultant delivering on a global IFRS 15 project. He is interested in seeing as much of the world and its people as possible whilst forming strong relationships with friends and colleagues alike. People that know Atanas would describe him as always staying positive, energetic and driven but he prefers to think of himself as humble and kind natured. Atanas is passionate about people development and loves to see the best of people’s abilities shine through during work and play. Atanas has been close to CIMA South Africa and UK since 2008 and has been part of the Global Markets committee since 2015.

Christian is a highly experienced commercial, digital finance leader with 25 years of experience across a range of consumer sectors, both retail and B2B. He has worked at some of the UK’s most successful internet businesses and leading household brands. In June 2018 he was appointed as CFO for Virgin Experience Days, the UK’s leading experiences business, following its buyout by Inflexion. Prior to that he was Group Finance Director at FTSE 250 business ZPG Plc following five years as Finance Director at Moonpig.com where he oversaw rapid growth and change before playing a leading role in its sale to private equity as part of wider PhotoBox Group 

Christian sits on the Board of trustees for The Mix, the UK’s leading support service for young people. and is an advisor to Silverfit.

Christian is a Fellow of The Chartered Institute of Management Accountants®

Details to follow

Janet’s current role as a Member in Practice allows her to provide support to small businesses using the experience she has gained throughout her career. She uses her skill set to work with organisations to facilitate growth and profitability.

Janet’s, experience spans 30 years working across many business sectors specialising in change management, and systems implementation. My experience spans both Public and Private sectors.

Janet worked as a Senior Management Accountant in the NHS for five years, in Rotherham and Sheffield Primary Care Trusts. Working with Clinical Management Teams, and preparing business cases with clinical Consultants, for submission to District Health. Other areas included bids for funding in Child Health and leading software implementation for the Primary Care Trust, which was going through significant change.

Janet worked for seven years in manufacturing as Chief Accountant and Company Secretary for Labinal Ltd (previously the Snecma Group now Safran) a manufacturer of wiring for aerospace for Rolls Royce and Airbus, and overhead wiring for Virgin trains (West Coast Mainline). My remit was to oversee Finance HR Facilities and IT, including the setting up of systems for the second factory for Virgin Trains.

More recently her work was in Further education in both Senior Management roles and teaching Accountancy, promoting CIMA and Management Accounting at every opportunity. Janet has worked with young people undertaking teaching students undertaking accountancy apprenticeships.

 Janet is passionate about CIMA, CGMA and AICPA as an organisation and profession, in confidence that the strategy we have is the way forward for our future generation.

Janet is a CIMA Fellow and a member of Council. She is also a member of the Membership Committee of CIMA and the Doncaster/Sheffield Committee.

In Janet’s spare time she is a Governor of a local Academy and during the last year has been a Mentor for the ‘Diana Award’ at two local schools, to work with and inspire local children to reach their potential which has been extremely rewarding. Janet likes the theatre and reading, and she also has a special interest in autism.

Jamie is a highly experienced finance professional who has worked across a range of industries over the last 20 years including financial services, car manufacturing, travel and transport. Jamie currently works for Transport for Greater Manchester and sits on the Cycling Commissioner’s Delivery Board, which is responsible for delivering £160 million of cycling and walking infrastructure improvements across Greater Manchester.

Jamie has a great deal of experience across the whole life cycle of projects and programmes (infrastructure and product development) including financial business case development; securing finance for the project; setting up the financial governance, controls and reporting structures for projects; and then being part of team that oversees the implementation of the projects.

Part of his experience has been gained through involvement in the development and launch of the Bentely Continental GT; implementing electric vehicle charging infrastructure across Greater Manchester; rolling out broadband infrastructure to the hardest to reach areas in Greater Manchester; and building transport infrastructure.

Paul Hooper-Keeley FCMA CGMA MBA C.Dir FIoD FInstLM CMgr FCMI MIIM FMAAT was Chairman of CIMA West Midlands from January 2015 to December 2018 and is currently the Managing Director of Intervallum Limited (Interim Finance Director Services). In addition, he is the 25th person globally to achieve Chartered Director status with the Institute of Directors and is now their West Midlands Ambassador for this qualification.

With over 35 years of experience in industry, and a Board level Finance Director since 1996, Paul has operated in numerous industry sectors including construction, engineering, manufacturing, facilities management, contract cleaning, telecoms, chemicals, printing, sports & leisurewear, training & education.

Paul has been involved in numerous company transactions, trade sales, M&A work, turnaround situations and re-financings both as an Interim and Equity Finance Director. During this time, he has imparted his significant experience of working capital management, assisting companies with strong periods of growth, improving performance by implementing flash reporting/KPIs/graphical dashboards etc. along with strong corporate governance.

Erica is a Chartered Management Accountant and Chartered Global Management Accountant as well as a Fellow of the Institute of Directors. She holds a wealth of experience within the Accountancy Profession with over 15 years of board level experience in Finance. She specialises in Media and Technology companies and has worked for BBC Radio, MTV Europe, Liberty Media & 20^th Century Fox. Erica spent a large part of her career abroad working on the first VoD service in Europe and later ran her own business providing fundraising, acquisition, and exit advice to Media and Tech companies.

As CFO at MediaCom North Group, Erica focuses on business growth, commercial insight, acquisition and compliance for five group businesses across the North and The Midlands. Erica is also an appointed co-opted member of the Audit Committee for the University of Manchester.

Erica has won several awards for her leadership and her advocacy of Inclusion and Diversity Programs for business (including Finance Leader of the Year and NW Director of the Year). She is passionate about ensuring the workplace is a diverse and friendly environment where everyone can be themselves and do their very best work.

Lesley began her career working as a Financial Controller in the nonprofit sector. Since then she has worked across both sectors in primarily I.T. and finance based roles. During this time, Lesley has discovered a talent for business process re-engineering, leading to a change in marketing strategy for one organisation, a 63% increase in fee collection for another and a logistics process overhaul for a third. She enjoys problem solving and has been described as someone who 'runs towards problems'. in her free time Lesley enjoys using her skills to help others, and is a Non Executive Director of a local Academy Trust. 

Details to follow

Born in Germany to British and German parents, Alexandra moved to the UK to study English Literature at Cardiff in 2009. She completed her MA in 2013, following which she worked for Waterloo Tea Ltd, an independent tea shop and wholesaler, first in general administration and later in bookkeeping. Alexandra moved to Cambridgeshire in 2015 to work for an independent children's home. She also mentored some of the teenage residents who were interested in accounting. Since 2017 she has been working at Nuffield Health in Cambridge as the Deputy Finance Manager. 

Outside work Alexandra still enjoys reading, is a member of the German society of the Institute of Linguists, and plays korfball in the South East Regional League. Since 2018 she has been refereeing in the England Korfball Premier League, and will be moving up to international competitions in the near future.

Alexandra is nearly exam complete, with only the Strategic Case Study remaining, and has been the Communications Secretary for the East Midlands East Anglia CIMA forum since 2016.

Paul Turner is the Regional Vice President, UK & Ireland for CIMA. Prior to joining us in the UK in July 2015 Paul was the Head of Australasia for CIMA and was fundamental in raising the profile of the Institute and Management Accounting in Australia and New Zealand. He and his team took the market to our third largest for members globally.

Paul has developed Media and University partnerships designed to further the principles of Management Accounting in our markets and has built strong employer relationships that ensured the employability of our membership base and raised the profile of Management Accounting as a profession. Working in the UK Paul has focussed on integrating operational activity for efficiencies and delivering an outstanding value proposition to our members and students - as well as our employer and tuition provider partners. He is driven and follows a philosophy of empowering and supporting his teams to achieve high level results and partnering with our members to benefit the Institute. Prior to joining CIMA Paul worked as a tax specialist for the Australian Taxation Office. and managed the maintenance function for the Australian National Rail Maintenance department. Paul is a motivational and inspiring leader and excels at implementing positive long-term culture change and process improvement. Paul is a graduate of the University of Western Sydney with a Master’s degree in Business and Commerce.