Nikki Wild
Following a successful 18-year career as an accountant and Finance Director, Nikki uses a unique blend of financial, management, coaching & NLP qualifications to take her course participants to the next level & give them the motivation to succeed.
Darren Leiser
Darren Leiser is a Freelance Lecturer and Consultant specialising in Financing, Budgeting and Management seminars, which includes Financial Reporting (under UK GAAP and IFRS), Pension Schemes. Charities, Corporate Finance, Budgeting, Auditing, Finance for Non-Finance Managers, Quantitative Methods, Corporate Governance, Costing and Effective Management Processes.
Darren holds a BSc (Hons) degree in Mathematics and a MSc in Finance. He is a Fellow of The Chartered Association of Certified Accountants (FCCA) and obtained the Auditing Practicing Certificate. He is also a member of the Pensions Research Accountants Group.
Darren has over twenty years of experience in the profession, having worked for several of the largest accountancy practices in the UK along with several smaller ones too.
As an auditor with a top five UK firm Darren was involved with auditing some of the largest pension schemes in the UK that are linked to many national and international companies.
As a Senior Technical Manager with another leading UK accountancy practice Darren was involved in teaching throughout the firm and externally, writing technical articles, creating audit manuals and systems, technical advice and trouble-shooting, audit file quality reviews and making whistle-blowing reports to financial regulators on behalf of the whole firm.
He has taught both throughout the UK and internationally presenting courses in many countries including UAE, Oman, Switzerland, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Greece, and Georgia to name a few. He has taught on the CPD circuit for the major accountancy Institutes including the ICAEW, ACCA and ICAS. He has also presented various in-house courses for organisations such the National Audit Office and European Space Agency.
Darren was a Teaching Fellow at Durham University (a World top 100 University) and lectured at the University of Hull.
Kerry Sykes
“Young, enthusiastic and dynamic” are just some of the words Kerry uses to describe himself. In reality he is a 50 something tax specialist who has devoted his life to working for and with the charity sector. His experience includes working for HMRC, a short spell of 17 years as Head of Tax at the University of Cambridge, a few years at KPMG and he is now an independent consultant at Big for Tax. In this latter role, Kerry also provides technical support to the Charity Tax Group.’
Trudi Amy
Trudi has been looking after charities and their tax for over thirty years, firstly as an adviser in top ten accountancy firms, and, more recently, working in house at a large UK charity. Trudi is also a director of the Charity Tax Group and was recently profiled in AB magazine
Steve Giles
Steve Giles is a chartered accountant with over 30 years’ experience of advising business leaders on governance, risk and compliance. Whilst at Deloitte he gained experience in audit, forensics and risk management, running sensitive and high- profile assignments in the UK, continental Europe and the United States.
After leaving Deloitte in 1997, Steve set up and ran two companies, helping executives in various business sectors to achieve success. Now an independent consultant, he works with organisations of all sizes to improve their performance and governance, including board evaluations, mentoring and development.
He is an experienced non-executive director. He was Chair of a company in the voluntary sector for nine years and is currently an independent NED of a LATCo, where he is Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee.
Steve is an international speaker on corporate governance, risk management and financial reporting. His engagements range from chairing and presenting at conferences to lecturing for bodies such as the ACCA and the London Stock Exchange. He has been a member of the tutor faculty of the Institute of Directors since 2016.
He is much in demand for running training courses and workshops because of his expertise and engaging delivery style. He runs in-house courses and seminars for a wide variety of enterprises both in the UK and internationally.
Steve holds an MA in Modern History from Christ Church, Oxford and is a Guest Lecturer at Royal Holloway University, London. He is the author of two books: “Managing Fraud Risk” and “The Business Ethics Twin-Track”, published by John Wiley & Sons in 2012 and 2015 respectively. Steve is also a regular contributor to the ACCA’s “About Business” magazine.
Gwen Ryder
Gwen has been a VAT and customs duty specialist and lecturer for her entire career. She worked in HM Customs (now HM Revenue and Customs) for 9 years before joining the VAT and Customs team at Ernst & Young for over 6 years. She subsequently became the VAT and CustomsPartner in a top 20 firm, and then formed her own consultancy practice. From 2006to 2019, much of Gwen’s time was taken up as acting head of VAT, and then head of VATcompliance in a top 10 firm of accountants. Gwen is an Associate of, and former examiner for,the Institute of Indirect Tax, and is a member of the VAT Practitioners Group.
Gwen presents a wide range of courses on most matters of VAT and customs duty as it applies in the UK and internationally.
A Freeman of the City of London, and a Liveryman of The Worshipful Company Of Tax Advisers.
Fiona Condron
Fiona is our National Head of Charities. She is an experienced auditor who spent the first 10 years of her career with Deloitte. For over 18 years she has focused exclusively on Non-Profits. As well as Médecins Sans Frontières (UK), Fiona’s audit engagements have included Alzheimer’s Society, Barnardo’s, Comic Relief, Crisis, Francis Crick Institute, Guide Dogs, Institution of Engineering and Technology, Nesta, Sue Ryder, the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Royal Society, the Royal Society of Medicine and Young Epilepsy.
This wealth of knowledge and experience enables her to provide valuable insights into the structure, governance and operations of organisations and she strives to add wider insights and share best practice with all her audited entities. Fiona has presented at internal and external technical seminars; is the lead author for the Croner-i Industry Accounting and Auditing Guide for charities; lectures at Bays Business School and produced the terms of reference for Audit Committees which is published in the annual CFG guide.
Fiona is also the Chair of Trustees for Compaid, a disability training and community transport charity in Kent.
