One of my last roles with BP was around a £45 billion project to take gas from Azerbaijan into Europe across a 3,500km pipeline - so I have been lucky enough to work on some huge projects.

I then moved into the charity sector which of course had its own challenges. I finished my role at BP on the Friday and by the Sunday I was celebrating my birthday in a new role in South Sudan as a volunteer for AfID, Accounting for International Development. I witnessed many of the challenges around international development during my time in this role, but also some of the amazing impacts of this work too. I then came back to the UK, and volunteered again, this time for CRISIS this Christmas.

Since then, I have held several senior finance roles at Christian Aid, Article 19, The Royal Foundation, and I have also consulted for some charities as well. Now, I am the Director of Corporate Services at The Royal Marsden. This is the second time I have worked with the organisation.

Over my career, I have translated my commercial skills around analysis and procedures and different contexts of management and taken that into the charity sector. Coming into charity, I had never referred to myself as an accountant as I never felt this suited my skillset. It was always about how the organisation made decisions with numbers and I think that in the vernacular of the charity sector is that it is more about Business Partnering and this has been a central tenant of what I have done so far.

The voice of the finance professional is important in both commercial and charity, and it’s about how we use that voice to achieve the goals set out by the organisation.

During your career, you have transitioned from a commercial background to working in the charity sector. Could you talk through your decision to make the switch, and how the markets differ?

I left the commercial world about five years ago and I think whenever you leave a role or a sector there is always something that is pushing you to leave and something that is pulling you to stay there. Both of those things for me comes down to challenge and growth.

A lot of people talk about ‘finding your why’. At BP, my ‘why’ was more about developing my professional skills and progressing my career. Moving into the charity sector, has been more about giving back and delivering work through a team rather than as an individual contributor. An element of that will always come through natural career progression, even if I had stayed in the commercial sector, but working in the charity sector has accelerated that.

Working across both the commercial and charity sectors has enabled me to benefit from a variety of experiences.  I have worked internationally, I have been a Chief Executive within a charity, I have been a treasurer, a Chairperson, and a consultant. This all feeds into a finance landscape in the charity sector where actually finance is just one of the many things that you will do, especially when you progress.

I am currently the Director of Corporate Services, and in my role, I manage finance, HR, data, fundraising operations and grants and IT. Although my core skillset is finance, I have a variety of other responsibilities to manage.

In my role, I need to be able to touch on a variety of topics, even if they are not in my area of expertise. This can involve shifting quickly between an HR conversation, a finance conversation and back again. This is more pronounced in the charity sector and I have to do this more than I ever did in the corporate world.

The idea of specialisms is different too. My specialism within a huge organisation was in the commercial investment decision making, to the point where I wrote investment decision making policy for the company. Now, working with charities I have to be able to explore a wider range of topics.

Over the last few years within the charity sector, we’ve seen a gradual increase in the number of Finance Business Partnering roles and a focus on financial strategy. As a result of the pandemic, finance must have an increasingly strong voice at the top table, particularly with organisations facing financial pressures. Charities need to think about the future finance professional as someone who can speak the language of the organisation, understand the business model, and translate that, with their financial expertise, into financial strategy to help them make decisions for the long-term, rather than the transactional approach that we have seen historically. The voice of the finance professional is important in both commercial and charity, and it’s about how we use that voice to achieve the goals set out by the organisation.

For a finance professional across commercial and charity, attention to detail, clear process mindset and taking responsibility and accountability – they’re good skills whatever the organisation.

You have been a mentor throughout your professional career, how has the finance industry changed since you first started out? And are these changes for the better?

I undertake formal mentoring with an organisation called Public Finance by Women, that helps to increase the representation of women at public finance bodies. So, not necessarily charity, but governmental and I can pull my core skills together here.

When it comes to mentoring, I think it is more prevalent now and people understand the value of it a bit more. Interestingly, professionals are looking more closely for what they need and want from a manager.

Particularly in organisations that don’t have a huge training budget, a manager has a responsibility to invest in their staff and if they don’t have a training budget that they can deploy, they need to think very deeply about how they make themselves available for their staff and the time that they do make available, how they use that.

In a charity setting, where budgets will be smaller than in a corporate organisation, there is even more pressure and importance on a manager to sit with more junior members of staff to talk things through and support them with their training and development. I do see that as something that is growing in importance.

What changes / improvements do you feel finance departments need to implement to drive further change and promote greater inclusivity? 

One thing that I would observe from my commercial experience, is that most people I worked with at BP for example, were men. In comparison, the Royal Marsden employs 70 to 80 members of staff and there’s about 10 per cent of men across the organisation. When I was at Christian Aid, again there were fewer men in the finance team.  I see more women in finance roles in the charity sector than I saw, through my own experience, in the commercial world. One question I don’t know the answer to is how that translates at a senior level. On a pyramid, I see a lot of women sitting in the mid to junior roles, but I am less sure at the top.

The most important thing around inclusivity is recognising that each person’s lived experience is different. So, my lived experience is very different both because of my commercial background and because I’m a man and white. I am fortunate to have not been discriminated against. The stack of cards really is in my favour and I recognise that.

That lived experience impacts both what people can offer and how they are best able to offer it. To create a culture that is inclusive, it needs to be one that both recruits, retains and trains a variety of people. There must be continued recognition that each person has a different lived experience. Equally, because of my background being privileged, I have a responsibility to support other people. That’s why mentoring and coaching is so important.

What advice would you give to individuals who are starting out in finance now?

My number one piece of advice is to say yes. When I look at my career, the thing that strikes people is the variety. That variety isn’t just financial it covers lots of other core areas too and to me that’s all based on my willingness to say yes to new opportunities.

You need to continue to build on your technical excellence, pinpoint and understand your ‘why’, regardless of the sector. Know what motivates you and act on it. These things are all very important.

Ultimately, to get your foot in the door you need to start by saying yes and getting as much exposure to different routes in and around finance as possible.