Alison joined ICAEW in 2020 as the Director of the Public Sector team, supporting members in delivering public priorities and sustainable finances. ICAEW promotes effective financial management, audit, assurance, reporting, governance, and ethics in the public sector. Since September 2021, Alison also leads the Tax team, enhancing ICAEW’s reputation in tax through engagement and representation. She supports members in tax practice, ensuring high standards of competence and ethics. Alison qualified with a medium-sized firm, worked at HMRC for 25 years, and held the post of Commissioners’ Advisory Accountant.

Caroline joined ICAEW’s Tax Faculty in early 2016 as Tax Practitioner Support Manager. She previously worked at TaxAid, a charity providing free tax advice to low-income individuals, where she was Technical Director. Before that, she worked at ExxonMobil UK, advising on corporation tax and expatriate taxation, and became a Chartered Tax Adviser. Caroline started her career as a trainee Chartered Accountant in Dublin and is a member of Chartered Accountants Ireland. At ICAEW, she focuses on the tax system for practitioners and personal tax areas, with interests in digitalisation, Making Tax Digital, and HMRC online services. She represents ICAEW on HMRC’s agent engagement forums.

Rebecca is a lecturer, writer and consultant on a wide variety of taxes. She lectures extensively to accountants and business people, and also to HMRC and the Treasury. She also has an interest in all issues affecting smaller practices and has her own small accountancy practice based in Gloucestershire.

Before joining Xero, Jess spent over three years in practice as a cloud accountant where she trained small businesses on Xero and connected apps. Jess is now a Senior Education Specialist at Xero and she is dedicated and passionate to helping accountants, bookkeepers and small businesses succeed with Xero and hearing all the love shared by Xero's Partners and small business users.

Chris joined Sage having been a partner at a top 100 accountancy firm. He brings nearly 20 years of hands-on experience and strategic insight of the profession, coupled with an infectious enthusiasm in the adoption of technology and Business Intelligence to improve reporting and drive innovation in the SME sector.

Craig has enjoyed a UK Government career spanning over twenty years holding several key roles specialising in Digital and Data Transformation. Craig led the internal delivery of business change and engagement for go live of the high-profile Making Tax Digital Transformation Programme, and has held roles at HMRC as Director and SRO of Debt Management, Debt Respite, Payments and Pensions Transformation, SRO for Data Transformation, Data Remediation, and the Unique Customer Record Programme, and now programme Director of HMRC’s flagship Making Tax Digital.

Sam spends his time helping accountants and bookkeepers make the most out of using Xero. Sam worked in managed accounting and software migration for over five years before moving to Xero. Now using his experience Sam delivers compliance and tax based education to accountants and bookkeepers, ensuring they have the most up-to-date knowledge of the latest legislation and how Xero helps with compliance and practice efficiency.

Manoj is a former CTO with extensive experience in the property sector, having previously worked at a subsidiary of Informa Group (FTSE 100), an online estate agent, and a peer-to-peer asset-backed lending platform. Manoj is a landlord and has experienced first-hand the challenges of managing property finances with spreadsheets and paper notes. He created Hammock to save landlords time and money, providing cashflow monitoring, bookkeeping, tax statement and business intelligence services for the property sector.

Sam works with agents within HMRC’s Making Tax Digital programme and has a background in accounting and digital transformation. He is responsible for Cross Cutting Stakeholder Engagement, Policy and Strategy at HM Revenue & Customs. He is an ICAEW Chartered Accountant with wide experience of Making Tax Digital from its inception.