Speakers

Marie Donaldson has been interested in business for over 20 years and is passionate about the positive impact small businesses can make with the right foundations in place. She trained as an accountant and is the Founder & Director of an accountancy company called Fresh Clarity which she built from nothing 6 years ago. By making the most of technology and sticking to her values she has built a business that serves her. With Marie's down to earth, open and honest approach you'll leave the session feeling ready to move your new business forward.

Alex is an experienced partner growth specialist, working in PayPal's dedicated partnership team.

He has enjoyed working with QuickBooks for several years, and is passionate about the difference that PayPal can make to the people that work in and run businesses.

Alex Davis has been with Intuit for over 5 years, helping accounting partners find new ways to automate their processes, grow their firms and create high impact customers experiences.

Michelle is a Certified International Health Coach, an Integrative Nutrition Health Coach and Mental Health First Aider. She works with individuals and companies to help them understand their health and happiness goals (e.g. healthy diet, weight loss, reducing stress, increasing exercise, and exciting careers), and then support them as they put in place the habits to achieve and sustain them through 1-2-1 health coaching sessions, group meet-ups, presentations, workshops and company health & well-being programs.

Baroness Brady of Knightsbridge CBE is one of the most influential, high profile and respected female business leaders in the UK who turned around the fortunes of Birmingham City FC and West Ham United FC. In recognition of her passion and support of entrepreneurs she was awarded a CBE and elevated to the House of Lords in 2014. She is a leading voice, contributor and commentator on business affairs and news programmes and an aide to Lord Sugar on BBC’s The Apprentice. In January 2020 she also launched the Karren Brady MBA with Arden University.

Clive Webb is the Head of Business Management in ACCA’s Professional Insights team. Clive leads research projects that cover the agenda of the CFO from technology and reporting through to skills and careers. Prior to joining ACCA Clive had an extensive career at KPMG in various roles including financial statement audit, IT Audit and Attestation and latterly as a global Director of Learning and Development for their Advisory function.

Mark Wickersham – Chartered Accountant, public speaker and #1 best-selling author – is known as the most sought-after profit improvement expert in the accounting community.

Mark is also a widely published author on practice issues. In May 2011 his book, “Effective Pricing for Accountants”, was a number 1 Amazon bestseller.

Mark has over 100 recommendations from accountants on LinkedIn; CONNECT with him on LinkedIn to get access to free resources Mark has created for accounting professionals.

Shaun is currently the Director of Product Management for Europe at Intuit. He is in his 10th year at the company and has worked across multiple product offerings and offices including San Diego, Mountain View, São Paulo, and most recently London. Shaun is passionate and excited about how Intuit can help drive a significant improvement in the SMB survival rates around the world.

Prior to Intuit, Shaun spent 4 years at Procter & Gamble in Brand Management.

Alan is a senior product manager responsible for QuickBooks’ UK payroll products. He comes from a start-up background with a long history of developing B2B SaaS products that customers love.

Chris Evans is Vice President and Country Manager UK at Intuit QuickBooks, the UK’s leading cloud accounting software provider. QuickBooks uses digital technology to solve financial problems, giving accounting professionals and small businesses a better shot at success.

Chris has been part of Intuit for over nine years. His passion for supporting small businesses stems from first-hand experience of the challenges faced by a family business. Chris is proud to be leading Intuit’s inspiring UK team which ranked #4 in Great Places to Work 2019.

A multi-award-winning businesswoman, business mentor, awarded an MBE for her services to Business, Charity and Voluntary organisations. Sue’s purpose is to have a profound impact on the way the world conducts business. With a special interest in assisting women and other under-represented groups achieve personal and professional success. A recognised voice in promoting understanding of the importance of gender parity as a driver for organisational success. Sue is a is a regular speaker and facilitator at Women in Banking and Finance events.

J.B. Chaykowsky is Intuit’s Head of Design for Europe, leading both marketing and product design. For the past 20 years he has worked with large global brands, luxury hotels, healthcare providers, governments, professional sport teams, and local small-businesses to improve their customer experiences and build brand love. Since joining Intuit in 2015, he has been focused on delivering innovative experiences for consumers, small-businesses, and accountants.

Jacob is a Service Delivery Manager at QuickBooks working alongside our Accountant Partners to deliver on-boarding support in the critical early stage of their journey. With his in-depth product knowledge and industry best-practice, Jacob builds and executes customised project plans to ensure that our partners are maximising QuickBooks product and features to their full potential

Julia leads Strategic Partnerships for QuickBooks in UK and France. She is passionate about helping build great experiences for QuickBooks customers in partnership with companies like PayPal.

Prior to Intuit, Julia spent 5 years at Facebook where she helped shape developer platforms for products like Messenger for Business and Augmented Reality, through strategic partnerships. She founded and ran LDN_LAB from Facebook, an in-house startup accelerator focussed on startups applying deep technologies, such as AI, to create a positive social impact.

Emanur is a management accountant and technologist at Onkho. He spent 20 years leveraging his accounting and technology skills in financial services, finishing up in 2016 as a Chief Technology Officer at The London Stock Exchange Group. He's also been supporting his wife Susan as "free IT support" over that time so delivering her vision for a practice management system that retains clients was a natural next step! These days, Emanur drives the development of his own business and its strategy.

Rob Forkan and his brother created Gandys in 2012 in the aftermath of personal tragedy. They lost their parents in the 2004 Tsunami and, inspired by their upbringing as a family travelling the world and volunteering, they set up the brand which uses fashion as a force for good. Their 'Don't Just Exist' ethos is at the forefront of what they do. Proceeds from the brand have so far built children's campuses in Sri Lanka, Malawi and Nepal offering vital support to children including nutrition, medication and education.

Samantha co-founded Open Bionics; an award-winning startup developing low-cost bionic hands that look and feel good, for amputees or those born without a hand.

Samantha’s focus is to build Open Bionics’ profile, business model, network, and raise rounds. The company has won multiple awards including being named one of the top 50 robotics businesses in the world. Samantha was recently named as one of the ‘top 25 women in robotics you need to know about’ by Robohub and ‘Marie Claire's Top Women In Tech’ as well as being shortlisted for the 'Entrepreneur of the Year'.

Marcos Steverlynck co-founded Rise Art following three years at Google, where he most recently managed European partnerships for Google's Android operating system. Marcos is originally from Argentina, and leads the development of Rise Art's website, products and technology. He is passionate about making the art world more accessible and personalised through new technology.

Guillaume is focused on helping partners across Europe to grow their business. He worked within the different organization of PayPal: Product, Sales, Partnership in Europe. He is passionate about helping Small Businesses grow through the capabilities of the PayPal Commerce Platform.

Anthony Joshua came to boxing aged 18 and won the Super Heavyweight Gold at the 2012 London Olympics after only 5 years of boxing. He turned professional in 2013 and won the WBA, WBO, IBF and IBF World Heavyweight titles in just 19 fights. He was also awarded an OBE in 2018 for services to sport. In 2019, following defeat to Andy Ruiz Jr, Anthony’s first loss as a professional, he created history becoming the 2-time Heavyweight Champion of the World in the ‘Clash of the Dunes’ rematch in Saudi Arabia.

An accounting professional with over 30 years’ experience in both private practice and industry. BCAMS specialise in financial management for SMB’s, cloud accounting adoption and integration, and training.

A member of Intuit’s TWN (Trainer Writer network) who trains both the advanced & core QuickBooks certification courses.

At 22 years old and with a BSc (Hons) Cosmetic Science, Flow set up her cult beauty brand MDMflow; one of the most innovative beauty brands in the modern era. Flow is on a mission to address the lack of women in science and to promote STEM careers to schoolgirls across the UK. She was recently selected as a UN Mentor for International Day of the Girl Child, is passionate about promoting diversity in the beauty industry and increasing the numbers of women in STEM careers.

Author, Speaker, and Apple veteran, Ben is an expert on productivity, creativity, and the science behind how work gets done.

His first book, The Productivity Habits, focused on helping busy people master information overload and conflicting priorities. It made the latest behavioural science practical and accessible.

Ben’s current work is delving deeper into self-optimisation and interaction behaviours.

Award winning broadcaster, Steph McGovern has been working in financial journalism for over 15 years and was part of the BBC ‘Breakfast’ family for nearly a decade, covering business developments daily, and regularly taking to the sofa as main co-host. Steph left 'Breakfast' the end of 2019 to have a baby and launch her own show on Channel 4, ‘The Steph Show’, a live topical daily programme starting in April 2020.

Steph also presents primetime BBC One consumer shows 'Watchdog' and 'Shop Well For Less' and is a regular host of the long running comedy panel show, 'Have I Got News For You' and the 'Dragon's Den' spin off show 'Pitches to Riches'.

Eli Lassman is an experienced marketer at Google who helps small and medium-sized businesses use the internet to grow their businesses. He has worked in digital marketing for over a decade, both as a practitioner and product marketer. From his first startup experience working as a cycle courier for dotcom bubble exemplar Kozmo.com through to roles in B2B and B2C Marketing at Google, he has spent his entire career in the tech industry.

Eli is the EMEA co-lead for inclusive marketing at Google.

Eli holds a Masters and DPhil in English from the University of Oxford and a BA in English from Columbia University.

Rob Brown is founder of the BD ACADEMY, which trains accountants to be confident, effective work winners. His work winning training programs for busy accountants have helped accounting firms add £20m+ in new lifetime revenue. He is a featured TEDx speaker with over 180K views, the bestselling author of Build Your Reputation and host of the popular Accounting Influencers podcast. The show features interviews with top accounting leaders and global influencers about what makes good firms great and good accountants world class.

Karen is a qualified accountant who is also a creative. The combination of those two skills is exactly what contributed to her founding of The Profitable Firm (PF) in 2012. PF is a creative agency working exclusively and only with accountants.

After many years of serving accountants in relation to their marketing, Karen now focuses her energies on helping inspire and educate accountants on the power of content marketing.

As the sole practitioner of award-winning accountancy practice GreenStones, Simon now only works in that practice one day a week. This growing practice generates fees in excess of £1.3m and employs just 21 brilliant team members.

Simon (confirmed as dyslexic at 7 years old) also runs peer to peer groups for accountants in practice. The Accountants Mastermind inspires, challenges and supports owners of accountancy firms and their teams to be the best they want to be.

For the last 15 years Paul has drawn on his experience as an actor to enable others to focus on their behaviour and how this directly impacts performance and success at work.

His sessions are highly interactive, revelatory and challenging. Creating positive learning experiences that move the needle on the way we think, feel and do. Whatever the challenge, Paul is focused on aligning what we want with how we need to behave and communicate in order to achieve it.

Jo is the owner of Business Works UK, a value based advisory service who solve real problems and needs for their clients. Our clients want more from their Accountant than an end of year history lesson! They want to work with advisors who they trust to give them advise on their business. This is a long-term relationship strategy. Jo is also a public speaker. Presenting on a wide range of subject to both Accountants and Business Owners.

Business Works UK were the Firm of the Future in 2017

James helps accountants and bookkeepers to price consistently, sell more confidently & grow more profitably. He’s achieved this in his own firm - MAP - where alongside Founder Paul Barnes, they first developed GoProposal & implemented a sales culture to ensure they were maximising the value of their clients.
James now helps thousands of accountants & bookkeepers around the world to achieve the same through his software - GoProposal - his philosophies, strategies, videos, books & keynote talks.

Small business champion, helping people understand that business isn't difficult - in language an eight year old can understand! I do this by writing articles, being quoted by journalists, appearing on TV and radio, and writing books for my publishers. I also host a podcast where I meet some amazing guests, many of whom are household names.

Paul helps multi-partner and sole-owner accounting firms grow their fees, profits and capital value too. Improving cash flow, freeing up time and improving team productivity all then enable higher value work with clients, building confidence and certainty about the future.

Will Farnell is founder and director of Farnell Clarke. The firm was one of the first 100% cloud accounting practices globally back in 2009. The firm has grown at an average annual rate of 37% year on year. Will is regarded as one of the UK’s foremost thought leaders and speakers on accounting tech and the changing landscape and environment currently driving the accounting profession. Will is author of ‘The Digital Firm’, a blueprint for digital transformation within an accounting firm.

Alastair is founder and Chief Dreamer at Flinder. Flinder is a multiple awards winning accounting, consulting and data analytics business providing rich real-time management information for growing businesses.

As well as his work with fast-growth businesses and transforming finance functions, he writes for AccountingWeb in a monthly column, sits on the ACCA Practitioner’s Panel Network and has been shortlisted as Business Person of the Year in 2019.

A seasoned brand strategy expert and speaker working with SMEs.

After 25 years working for global brands Philippa runs her own thriving brand consultancy, Insight101, which brings expertise into smaller businesses that need the marketing know-how in a cost-effective way.

She works with businesses that want to bring MEANING to the world, believing that every client looks for a more emotional reason to by a product or service beyond price. “As human beings we look for that inspiration, that value, that defines what we choose from the endless options out there and why.”

Philippa is a regular speaker across the UK and delivers powerful but succinct sessions to business leaders.

As Director of Sales UK for Intuit QuickBooks, Nick is dedicated to helping small businesses and accounting professionals embrace digital to solve their financial problems.

Alicia is a marketing leader at Intuit and has been recently recognised as one of the top 100 most influential B2B marketing leaders in Europe. At Intuit QuickBooks, Alicia has driven double and triple digit growth for the business and is passionate about empowering women at work through coaching and mentoring. She also founded the Intuit UK Women’s Network. Prior to Intuit, Alicia worked for Safe & Western Union, two of the world’s largest FinTech brands where she led marketing globally across Europe. Alicia is passionate about driving exponential growth for businesses while ensuring people and the customer are at the centre of everything she does.

Dominic Allon is SVP and General Manager of Intuit’s QuickBooks international business, covering all markets outside the US. He is focused on helping businesses and accountants get the most out of the internet.

Dominic joined Intuit in August 2016 having spent three years as Managing Director of Google Hong Kong. Before Hong Kong, he spent seven years working for Google UK where he managed the media agency channel and also worked closely with the government and trade bodies to pioneer digital advertising self-regulation. Earlier in his career, Dominic spent seven years at The Economist in commercial roles and three years in a successful publishing start-up.

Michael McQueen is a multi-award winning speaker, trend forecaster and bestselling author of eight books.
With clients including KPMG, Pepsi and Cisco, he has helped some of the world’s most successful brands navigate disruption and maintain momentum.

Michael is a regular commentator on TV and radio and his work has featured in publications ranging from the UK Daily Mail to Medium.com and the Huffington Post. In addition, Michael is a familiar face on the international conference circuit having shared the stage with the likes of Bill Gates, Dr. John Maxwell and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.

Daniel has been a Business Development Manager with QuickBooks for over 7 years. He helps Accountants manage the digital change within the industry, whilst strengthening the benefits, challenging the way they view and apply technology, tailored to their processes and individual client’s needs. Allowing them to work closer than ever with their clients, with more time to spend advising and adding value.

Shoaib Aslam is the co-founder of We Run Your Practice, a UK-based chartered accountancy firm that assists accountants with all aspects of accounting and tax planning, growth, strategy and marketing.

Caroline is Founder and CEO of Fluidly which uses machine learning to help small businesses manage their biggest pain point - cashflow. Fluidly works thousands of connected businesses and their advisors to automatically forecast and optimise cash flow to save time, improve working capital and help them sleep better at night.

Caroline was formerly one of the Prime Minister's Business Ambassadors, representing the Professional Services sector, and serves as a non-executive director of AIM-listed Mercia Asset Management. She was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s 90th Birthday Honours List in 2016.

Ria-Jaine started her career with 8 years at Deloitte LLP before setting up her own digital accountancy practice. An award-winning accountant, recognised as one of the Top 50 Women in Accounting across the globe and described as one to watch by Accounting Web’s class of 2019, accountancy's newest stars. Passionate about helping small businesses she is a regular columnist for the UKs largest Nail magazine Scratch, whilst also speaking on topic at events hosted at the Houses Of Parliament, Natwest Head office, World Lash University, Biosculpture GB, and the UK’s largest beauty show, Olympia Beauty. She is the go to accountant for the beauty industry with her services sought after at a mental health charity auction, held by Beautiful Minds, and won by international influencer and nail artist Kirsty Meakin.

Richael has been a QuickBooks customer trainer for over three years, writing and delivering training courses for QuickBooks users. She is a Chartered Accountant and spent four years working in a specialist insolvency firm in Ireland. Richael also has written accountancy text books for BPP Learning Media.

Trent Mclaren is Australia's thought leader of the year in the Accounting Industry for 2017.

He exists to help small business owners, bookkeepers and accountants transform into new business models that have been created by the introduction of cloud technology applications.

Trent believes in creating a positive environment that stimulates and motivates people. An environment that allows people to grow, develop and most importantly enjoy their work.