Sustainability Working Group

Seema Jamil-O'Neill is the Technical Director of the UK Endorsement Board (UKEB). Seema also represents the UKEB on the Government’s Policy Implementation Committee (PIC), which advises on the UK endorsement of ISSB Standards.

From 2017 until 2020, Seema worked as the Head of Accounting and Reporting Policy at the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. In that role, she represented the UK at the European Commission’s Accounting Regulatory Committee, European Council working groups, the UN’s Accounting Expert Group and at numerous UN conferences.

Seema’s previous experience includes working as an accounting standard setter at the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), and at KPMG as an auditor of listed and investment banking clients.

Seema is a fellow of the Institute for Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.

Sabrina Curry has worked for United Utilities for more than 10 years, with five years’ experience in narrative reporting preparing the Group’s strategic report. Through this time they have driven continual improvements in their reporting, being early adopters with enhanced disclosures in several areas and moving to a broader multi-stakeholder view of value creation with a strong focus on integrated reporting. Prior to her current role, she worked in the Treasury function involved in financial risk management, and before joining United Utilities she started her career on the graduate programme at PwC where she worked in forensic services primarily focused on investigations.

Joshua Davies is a confident and ambitious sustainability professional with ten years’ experience in the industry, currently working as a Sustainability and Responsible Banking Senior Manager for Santander UK, with an integrated Masters in Environmental Sciences and Practitioner membership to the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment (IEMA). Joshua aspires to make a lasting positive impact on the planet and to become a leader within the profession. In 2019 he was a Finalist at edie’s Sustainability Leaders Awards 2019 Rising Sustainability Star Category and subsequent member of edie's 30 Under 30 Next Generation Sustainability Leaders 2019 cohort.

Kylee Dickie is National Grid’s Group Head of External Reporting, leading the financial and non-financial reporting processes for the Group and all Group-level technical accounting and policy. Kylee has been in her current role for three years and over that time has led the complex accounting and reporting for the various M&A transactions involved in the Groups strategic pivot towards electricity in the UK.  Kylee has also set up National Grid’s ESG reporting Centre of Excellence and led the development of National Grid’s leading ESG disclosures under TCFD, GRI and SASB. Prior to her current role, Kylee did a variety of leadership roles at National Grid, across Finance and Group Treasury in both the UK and US, leading on various transformation initiatives. She is also a Trustee of the National Grid Electricity Group of the Electricity Supply Pension scheme and, before joining National Grid, Kylee held roles at Shell and EY where she qualified as a Chartered Accountant.

Anna Korneeva is a Fellow Member of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants with over 12 years of experience in external audit, accounting advisory and capital markets transactions assurance. In her role as a Director in the Technical Standards Group at BDO LLP, she leads the Climate risk & Sustainability technical team, focusing on the impacts of climate change and evolving sustainability regulations on audit and assurance methodology and financial reporting. She is a member of the Global ESG Assurance working group, and an Observer on the BDO Global Sustainability Reporting Policy Committee.

Peter Leadbetter is the Head of Accounting for Network Rail and leads the team that delivers all of the statutory reporting for Network Rail and technical accounting guidance within Network Rail. Network Rail’s results and accounts are reported on the London Stock Exchange and are presented to Parliament. Previously, Peter trained in audit and then spent 6 years in Grant Thornton’s technical team. His last 2 years in the team saw him specialising on the then emerging area of IFRS 9 and financial instruments more generally. He also spent 2 years leading the group finance team of Connells Estate agent who are owned by Skipton Building Society.

Anna Malcolm is a Technical Director in EY’s Financial Reporting Group where she has worked for 7 years, preceded by a number of other technical accounting roles. She has a focus on sustainability reporting as well as business combinations and is a member of the EY Global subject matters groups for those subjects.

Will Pomroy joined Federated Hermes in 2015 and, in addition to overseeing and leading the engagement programme for the firm’s SDG Engagement Equity strategy, provides ESG analysis for, and engagement with, stocks in the firm’s small- and mid-cap strategies. He also promotes and supports the planning, execution and reporting of engagement and impact for the firm’s Sustainable and Impact equity strategies. Will has over a decade of experience in the responsible investment space having, among his previous roles, led the stewardship and corporate governance activity of the UK’s National Association of Pension Funds (now known as the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association). Prior to entering the world of responsible investment, Will worked as a senior parliamentary researcher in the UK Parliament. He chairs the Corporate Governance Expert Group of the Quoted Companies Alliance and is a member of PRI SDG Advisory Committee. Will holds an MSc in Public Policy and Management from Birkbeck College at the University of London and a BSc (Hons) in Forensic Science from the University of West of England. He also holds the Investment Management Certificate and the Certificates in ESG Investing Climate and Investing (CCI), all from the CFA UK.

Dr Ronita Ram is an Associate Professor in Accounting at Henley Business School and currently serves as Director of the Henley Centre for Accounting, Regulation & Practice. Her research focuses on International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), accounting for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), sustainability reporting, and climate-related disclosure issues.

Dr Ram holds a PhD in Accounting from the University of Sydney. She is also a member of Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand and previously worked as an auditor at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Fiji. She has published her research in several international journals such as Abacus and Business Strategy and the Environment. Dr Ram also currently serves as an Associate Editor for Accounting in Europe, Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal and as a Screening Editor for Journal of International Accounting, Auditing and Taxation

Mark Randall is a UK Chartered accountant with over 25 years’ experience in banking. He works in PwC’s Corporate Reporting Services group based in London, specialising in financial instruments. He chairs one of PwC’s global Sustainability Reporting Working Groups and is a member of PwC's IFRS ESG working group. He has led the development of IFRS guidance on ESG-related impacts, including the potential effects of climate change on expected credit losses (ECL) and the classification of loan assets with ESG-linked interest features.

Deepa Raval is the Global IFRS Sustainability Reporting Technical Director in the Global IFRS Leadership Team at Deloitte and chair of Deloitte’s North South Europe Sustainability Subject Matter Experts group. Deepa has extensive expertise of international, European and UK reporting frameworks. As part of her role, she leads on projects linked to recent developments in IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive/European Sustainability Reporting Standards. Deepa has a background in regulation, standard setting and policy development. Prior to joining Deloitte she was the Director of Narrative Reporting at the Financial Reporting Council in the UK. Deepa is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.

Dave Rice is a Director in the Department of Professional Practice at KPMG and vice-chair of KPMG’s Europe, Middle East and Africa ESG & Assurance Topic Team. Dave has a background in corporate reporting, with extensive IFRS, UK GAAP, Company Law and sustainability reporting expertise, and is a member of the ICAEW Corporate Reporting Editorial Board.

James Sawyer is the Head of Financial Reporting, Systems and Controls at Thames Water where he is responsible for the Record to Report process, external financial reporting, and the associated control environment. He has over 15 years’ experience

in accounting and finance, having started his career in audit with EY before progressing through senior finance roles in the software and utilities sectors. His expertise spans technical accounting, financial controllership, performance management, and finance transformation. He has also collaborated extensively with sustainability teams on green bond frameworks, natural capital assessments, ESG disclosures, and TCFD reporting.

Ioannis Tsalavoutas is a professor of accounting and the leading founder of the Adam Smith Observatory of Corporate Reporting Practices at the University of Glasgow. His main area of expertise is financial accounting and reporting: in particular, investigating companies’ reporting practices under IFRS across different jurisdictions, along with any economic consequences that may arise from divergence in practice. Ioannis' work experience includes positions as an junior accountant (in Greece) and as a financial accounting and reporting analyst at Company Reporting Ltd in Edinburgh. Before joining the University of Glasgow in January 2015, Ioannis was a lecturer in accounting at the University of Stirling.

Sarah Wilkin is the Director of Sustainability at ICAS (the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland). Sarah is a qualified Chartered Accountant (CA) and member of ICAS with 17 years of professional experience, including over a decade working for EY in the UK, Middle East and the United States of America, primarily in the assurance service line. Sarah has an unwavering and demonstrable passion for sustainable development, evidenced through working with impact investors, volunteer agencies and on research projects around the world, including in Tanzania, Benin, Mali, India and Bangladesh. In addition to her CA qualification, Sarah holds a BA (Hons) in International Management from Newcastle University, a BScM (Hons) in Science of Management from Montpellier Business School and a MPA in Development Practice from Columbia University.