Director Development Programme – Finance for Non-Finance Directors

Janet is a leadership, resilience and business coach. After qualifying as a Chartered Accountant with Ernst & Young she worked in senior management and finance director roles for recognised retailers such as WH Smiths and Littlewoods. She then followed her passion for developing people by becoming a leadership development trainer, currently specialising in wellbeing and resilience with a wide range of companies including BAE Systems, Pets at Home, Janssen Pharmaceutical, SME’s and Charities. She also delivers a wide range of finance programmes from introductory sessions up to Directors Development, together with individual finance business coaching.

Janet enjoys using her finance, business and personal leadership experience, combined with her coaching and training skills, to enable people and teams develop the skills, behaviours and culture they desire.

Janet works with not-for-profit organisations, currently as a Governor for the Trafford College Group, a Trustee & Treasurer for Home-Start Trafford, Salford & Wigan plus a business mentor with the Manchester Business Growth Hub.

Janet is an accredited practitioner for the Kirros RQi resilience programme plus trained in the Drake P3 behavioural profiling system. She is a member of the Association of Coaching (AOC), the Institute of Leadership & Management (ILM) and the Institute of Chartered Accountants (ICAEW).

Tara Askham is a qualified lecturer specialising in finance and a Fellow of the Association of Accounting Technicians. As a Finance Director, Tara co-founded multi-award-winning social enterprise Infused Learning and wrote the first Accountancy Access to Higher Education Diploma in the country. She designs and delivers finance courses to companies around the UK including Volkswagen. She inspects colleges’ accounting provisions on behalf of the Association of Accounting Technicians and works as a consultant subject matter expert for global accountancy awarding bodies writing and moderating exam material. She wrote the global award-winning ACCA-X finance course and is a published author for Osborne Books. Her experience has led to her role with NatWest as a Social and Community Capital credit panel member. (Part of the independent credit panel to analytically review each charitable proposal for funding). Tara is also a guest Lecturer at Nottingham Trent University.  

Christine Silvester is a qualified chartered accountant, (ICAEW) who runs her own accountancy practice in Warwickshire where she specialises in the provision of accounting and tax compliance services to a range of small businesses. She also provides tutoring, support and guidance to business owners in the understanding and requirements of finance.

After qualifying as an accountant with Coopers & Lybrand in Birmingham Christine briefly worked in financial recruitment before moving to work for BT. During 12 years at BT she worked in various senior financial management roles including Head of Business Planning and Forecasting for one of the divisions in the company which required working with operational teams across the business.

Christine has over 37 years working in Finance and has gained a wealth of experience which ranges from working with large teams and budgets in excess of £1bn to supporting start up businesses including building and running her own successful business for almost 20 years. Christine enjoys sharing these experiences through her various tutoring roles.

Stewart has a career background in corporate banking, and is a highly experienced commercial individual, who commenced a transition into the not for profit sector at the end of 2009. He now has a portfolio of Chair, Board and consultancy roles across not for profits and SMEs.

Throughout his career, Stewart has developed a proven track record in the North West corporate market. In roles covering both relationship management and business development, his key skills of brokering and relationship building ensured the management of multiple stakeholders, at all times undertaken with outstanding levels of integrity. Core to his roles at Bank of Scotland were the management of key entrepreneur relationships for the bank.

In recent years, he has rapidly developed a profile in the not for profit sector, maintaining key board roles across a range of areas, including leisure and social care

Stewart has a range of financial, operational and strategic experience in the private, public and not for profit sectors, including charities, local authorities, banking and venture capital. This has captured a range of areas, including direct roles in leisure, adult care, the arts, environment and recruitment, coupled with a wide range of sectors including manufacturing, service, retail, building products and housebuilding during his corporate banking career. Stewart is at ease in any environment, from start-up to PLC boardroom.

Andy Bate, ACA, is a chartered accountant (ICAEW) and holds a Diploma in Corporate Finance. He brings over 15 years’ experience in corporate finance and private equity, and has held more than 15 board appointments across healthcare, education technology, e-commerce and consumer goods, learning and development and content and communications.

His board roles have spanned PE-backed companies, owner-managed SMEs and early-stage ventures. Across his career, Andy has worked with in excess of 200 businesses in different capacities – as an investor, founder, non-executive director, board advisor and consultant.

Andy is a founding partner of Gunner Cooke Operating Partners, where he works with portfolio companies on governance, value creation and board effectiveness. He has also co-founded and built two businesses: a direct-to-consumer e-commerce company and, in 2019, an education software business focused on capturing and evidencing health and wellbeing outcomes in children.

His programme content is shaped by direct boardroom experience. Andy has led boards through fundraisings, served on PE-backed boards with an exit focus, guided companies through restructurings, and been involved in multiple buy-and-build strategies.