The Baroness Manningham-Buller headed Britain’s Security Service (MI5) from 2002 to 2007, before serving as Chair of the Wellcome Trust, one of the world’s largest charitable funders of medical research and other activity to improve human health. From counter terrorism to pandemics, she has led organisations through remarkable and pressurised times.

Lola started her career as a Tax Advisor, spending 5 years within is Deloitte’s Reward practice where she qualified as a Chartered Certified Accountant (ACCA) and Chartered Tax Advisor (CTA) in 2015 and 2016, respectively. Having discovered a passion for people management and has since pivoted into HR, holding a number of senior HR appointments, before founding Alchemy HR, a boutique HR Consultancy specialising in building high performing people teams. Clients of Alchemy HR include, Morrinson Wealth Management, Copper, Europe’s fastest growing FinTech business and other businesses in financial and professional services space.

Rebecca is an ICAEW Chartered Accountant. She is a lecturer, writer and consultant on a variety of taxes, lecturing extensively throughout the UK, to accountants, business people and also to HMRC and the Treasury. Rebecca has her own accountancy practice based in Gloucestershire, with a variety of small business and personal tax clients. During the last two years this has become a 100% digital practice. She is actively involved in providing help and support to HMRC in understanding the challenges that Making Tax Digital presents to small businesses and their advisers.

• @rbeccabeneworth

Javid joined the Education Team earlier this year. Before that he spent the last 5 years working in Xero’s Customer Experience Team as an accounting specialist. Javid was responsible for the onboarding and training of our Customer Experience Team and is now looking forward to bringing that experience to educate accountants, bookkeepers and small businesses to win with Xero.

Tony currently heads up Tax Strategy at Koinly and is the PR and brand ambassador in addition to other things. A qualified accountant and tax professional with over 20 years of experience across the industry within FTSE100 companies and public practice - he is a recognised crypto tax expert and a thought leader. A fellow of the association of certified chartered accountants, Tony is a regular contributor to crypto and accounting media, including CoinTelegraph (and is an Innovation Circle member) and AccountingWeb. When he’s not creating new content on the latest crypto and tax updates or speaking at major crypto events, Tony is an avid soccer fan and closely follows the fortunes of Tottenham Hotspur F.C. in England. He is also a dedicated husband and father to 2 children.

• @TheCryptoTax

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.

Armed with a background in Computer Science, Andrew began his career in the world of corporate audit and qualified as a Chartered Accountant (ACA) in Deloitte in 2014. After experiencing processes that were manual in services and challenges that clients were facing, he joined the Analytics and Modelling team to develop analytics and specialises in automated solutions to conquer these problems.

Stephen Heathcote (FCA) joined PrimeGlobal in 2019 as its Chief Executive Officer. His extensive background in the accounting profession includes undertaking the COO role at the UK Financial Reporting Council, a senior management position at KPMG, leading the development of international risk based auditing standards and over ten years in the senior management of a global membership association. PrimeGlobal is the 3rd largest association of independent accounting firms in the world, with over 300 successful public accounting firms in over 100 countries. PrimeGlobal has won a number of international awards for its leadership position on promoting sustainability and diversity & inclusion.

Scott Johnson formed Kung Fu Accounting in 2016 as the first ICAEW Chartered and BCorp certified accounting company in the world. KFA has minimised its environmental impact and maximised its human and societal impacts, winning Xero's first ever Community Impact award in 2021. He's a chartered accountant, a Kung Fu teacher, and above all, a human being.

Kirsty has delivered Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) courses within various organisations including corporate sector clients and public health bodies. For the last 15 years, Kirsty has also worked as a consultant and trainer within many large organisations. Kirsty has been responsible for developing and rolling out programmes relating to mental health and wellbeing and has worked with human resources departments to develop and deliver in house, bespoke training. Kirsty has a strong professional background in occupational health, training, coaching, psychotherapy and mindfulness approaches. She is committed to reducing stigma and discrimination within workplaces relating to mental health difficulties and has presented at board level and group executive committees. Kirsty is also committed to helping organisations develop a positive approach to enabling employees to improve their mental wellbeing and health.

Fozia brings almost 30 years of practice experience to the conference having joined 6 partner family firm, Reddy Siddiqui back in 1993. Qualifying as a Chartered Certified Accountant in 2003 and as a Chartered Accountant in 2008, Fozia specialises in PAYE and personal tax planning for resident and non-resident individuals. As well as being responsible for digital transformation within the practice, she is also the Money Laundering Reporting Officer, Practice Assurance Partner and also the lead on staff recruitment and training.

Jo trained as an auditor in practice in the North West and in 2016 decided to take a break from auditing premier league football clubs to move into industry 8,000 miles away to the Falkland Islands. Here, she was the Financial Controller for the National Development Agency and Tourist Board, supporting the country in growing its local economy. Living in such a remote environment provided her with a deep-rooted realisation of the impact we are having on the environment and on her return to the U.K. in the South West she took up the opportunity to work at City Science, a company building software and data analysis tools to support decarbonisation decision-making.

In her role as Climate Change Executive, Sarah develops thought leadership and know-how content for ICAEW members, helping to showcase how accountants can be difference makers in society. She also holds an MSc in Sustainable Development from Queen’s University Belfast.

Chris is responsible for leading the statutory or otherwise mandated operational functions of the UK Financial Intelligence Unit (UKFIU). Chris has a background in senior intelligence, policy and operational roles across the NCA, Home Office and Ministry of Defence, concerning national security and economic crime threats.

Andrea started her career as an accountant with KPMG before joining their Management Consultancy division in London, directing projects for a number of organisations such as GE Capital Aviation, Ryanair, Lloyds Bank and the FCA. Andrea left KPMG to start her own corporate finance consultancy, where for over 10 years she raised funding for businesses across loans, investment and grants. It is this experience that led to the launch of swoopfunding.com. Andrea is also a non-executive director Berkshire Hathaway European Insurance.

Sam has 5 years accounting experience from his time in industry. In that time, he consulted and helped facilitate companies moving between accounting softwares. In 2018 he joined Xero in the Accounting Customer Support Team and has recently moved across to Education. Now, as one of our Education Specialists you will see Sam doing his best to help our users make the most out of Xero and Xero Tax.

Dion has extensive experience in cryptoassets formerly being the crypto policy lead at HMRC since 2017 where he was led on all things crypto. To date Dion has 18 years’ experience working in taxation with HMRC across a number of units means he also brings UK and cross-border experience on both direct and indirect taxes.

With over 20 years’ experience as a practising accountant and Chartered Tax Adviser, Dean is responsible for customer education and engagement at TaxCalc and our resident expert on Making Tax Digital. In 2005, he founded a niche accounting practice servicing the needs of media, technology and design businesses which he sold prior to making a move into tax technology. Dean is regularly invited to talk about the issues facing accountants today at industry events such as Accountex, The Digital Accountancy Show and ICAEW Live. His articles have been published in Accountancy Today, AccountingWEB and AAT Comment.

Caroline is the Chair of ICAEW Practice Committee which represents ICAEW members in Practice. She sits on the ICAEW Board as the voice of Belonging and Supporting. She is involved in her local community with the District Society as Diversity Champion and is the ICAEW Council Member for the South West. Caroline trained with Bishop Fleming, a top 30 firm and has a background in audit and accounts for owner managed business. She is now the Practice Assurance Partner for the firm. She understands the challenges of ensuring staff get to grips with an ever-changing landscape of regulation and quality demands, whilst encouraging business and practices to evolve to serve the next generation.

Specialising in professional ethics and anti money laundering with a broad technical accounting background, David is an adviser for the ICAEW technical enquiries service, producing technical content (from published articles to formal guidance) for members, as well as advising on a wide variety of technical, ethical and financial crime matters.