Sustainability Working Group (SWG)
SWG Chair
Seema Jamil-O'Neill is the Technical Director of the UK Endorsement Board. The UKEB is responsible for influencing the development of IFRS accounting standards and their adoption for use by UK listed companies. Between January 2017 to April 2020, Seema worked at the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy as the Head of Accounting and Reporting Policy. Seema led the team responsible for maintaining the integrity of UK’s Accounting and Reporting Framework as the UK exited the EU. In that role, Seema also 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. Prior to that, Seema worked as an accounting standard setter at the FRC, specialising in the development of financial instrument and insurance standards. Seema started her career as an auditor of listed and investment banking clients. Seema is a fellow of the Institute for Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.
SWG Members
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.
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.
Chris Smith is a Chartered Accountant and Audit Partner at Grant Thornton UK LLP. He leads the technical team for the audit practice and is a member of the global Grant Thornton International IFRS steering committee.
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.
George Richards is a partner at KPMG and leads on ESG Reporting and Assurance. His background is in financial statement audit and non-financial information assurance. He provides ISAE 3000 assurance opinions over a range of different ESG metrics and advises companies on preparing for and complying with existing and incoming ESG reporting requirements.
Henry Biddle is Portfolio Manager at Federated Hermes where he manages both US and Sustainable Equity Portfolios. Prior to this, Henry worked on the sell side at Peel Hunt, where he covered financials and at Deloitte, where he worked in Audit and Corporate Finance. Henry is a CFA and FCA and holds an MA from Trinity College, Oxford.
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 accounting assistant (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.
James Sawyer is the Head of Financial Reporting, Systems and Controls at Thames Water which is the UK’s largest water and wastewater provider. Here he is responsible for all financial reporting in line with IFRS. James has over 15 years’ experience in technical accounting, originally training in audit at EY before moving into software and utilities sectors. James has worked closely with the sustainability team to deliver green bond frameworks, natural capital assessments, ESG disclosures and TCFD reporting.
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.
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. Mark is also a member of the UKEB's Financial Instruments Working Group (FIWG).
Nicole Carter is the Deputy Head of ESG Strategy and an Executive Director at AQR Capital Management. She has been a member of AQR’s ESG Working Group since 2016 and chairs the ESG Reporting and Communication committee. Nicole is active in the sustainability investment community; she has served on ESG working groups of the Managed Funds Association and CFA UK. In addition to her ESG role, Nicole is AQR’s Head of Benelux, responsible for relationships with clients and prospects in the region. Prior to AQR, Nicole worked in telecommunications and for a retail-focused technology start-up. Nicole received her B.A. in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from the University of Oxford, where she was the president of Oxford Women in Politics and is a CAIA charterholder. She is pursuing a Master of Liberal Arts in Extension Studies: Sustainability at Harvard University.
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.
Dr Ronita Ram is an Associate Professor of Accounting at Henley Business School, University of Reading UK since 2015. She is also the Director of Postgraduate Research in Accounting at Henley Business School. Dr Ram has a PhD in accounting from University of Sydney, Australia. Dr Ram’s research interest focuses on development of IFRS, use of IFRS and sustainability reporting. She has published in international journals as well as being a reviewer for accounting journals. Dr Ram has over 15 years of teaching and research experience at the tertiary level, and she specializes in teaching IFRS at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. She has previously also taught as a lecturer at University of Sydney in Australia and at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji. Dr Ram is a qualified accountant and member of the Chartered Accountants Australia & New Zealand. She is also a member of the UK Endorsement Board (UKEB) Academic Advisory Group.
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.
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.