Officers

Richard Bray, Chair

Richard is CTG’s Chair and a member of HMRC’s Charity Tax Forum. A chartered accountant, he joined Cancer Research UK shortly after its creation in 2002, having previously worked for KPMG for twenty years in varied audit and tax roles. He is a member of the Financial Reporting Council’s  Advisory Panel, having previously been a member of the Charities SORP Committee. Richard is CTG’s representative on the ICAEW Charities Special Interest Group.

Board members

Trudi Amy

Trudi is currently the In House Tax Accountant for MacMillan. She previously worked in practice as a tax advisor.

Barni Brand 

Barni has worked in charity compliance for 17 years, first at WWF-UK, and now at Age UK. He specialises in Gift Aid, PCI DSS compliance and Fundraising Regulator compliance. In the last two years he has qualified as an Internal Security Assessor for PCI DSS and worked closely with CTG on a range of issues including policy work with HMRC on Gift Aid.

Alex Gear

Alex began her career as an auditor in the charity sector, and worked with a variety of different charities and not-for-profit organisations, from religious orders to academies and schools. After qualifying as a Chartered Accountant, Alex worked as Director of Finance and Resources at national charities Living Streets and Locality, and during this time was also a Trustee at Borough Market. Alex currently works as Director of Finance and Operations at the Multiple Sclerosis Trust overseeing finance, governance, HR, health and safety, premises and office management.

Kirsten Ottley

Kirsten is currently the Head of Operations at Comic Relief responsible for HR, Facilities, Internal Systems, Project Management and Transformation. She is a member of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants and has worked in the charity sector for over 18 years. She has worked for several charities of varying size with local, national, and international impact, carrying out finance, governance and operational roles.

Philip Spedding

Philip is currently working at Tate as the head of Individual Giving and Collection Development. He was previously the Director of Development at The London Library and has worked in roles at, the British Library CAF and Arts & Business. He has close to 25 years of experience as a fundraiser and also has extensive experience in lecturing on the development of arts and private sector partnerships across the UK and internationally.

Monica Varriale

Monica is the Chief Finance and Strategy Officer at the Courtauld Institute, leading the organisation’s professional services. Monica is a chartered accountant and has been working in the charity sector since 2004. In her career at the Royal National Institute of the Blind she performed a variety of accounting and finance roles, starting as a management accountant and working upwards into financial leadership positions. She was also recently in a senior finance and management role at the Serpentine Galleries.

Treasurer

Lisa Burke

Lisa is ACA qualified and currently works at the in-house tax team at Oxford University Press. Lisa has also been Treasurer for the Oxford University Press Orchestra since its creation in January 2017 and has previous experience as a shop accountant for many years for one of Oxfam’s charity shops.

Advisers

Helen Donoghue, Strategic Adviser

Helen Donoghue has advised CTG since its inception.  She has represented CTG on a number of Government working groups and has also acted as European Commission specialist adviser on tax issues affecting charities.  She is Managing Director of Central Lobby Consultants Ltd, which provides the Secretariat for CTG.

Kerry Sykes, Technical Adviser

Kerry was, for 17 years, Head of Tax at Cambridge University before spending six years as a Director of Tax at KPMG. He now runs his own tax practice, based in Leicester.

David Warrellow

David is Tax Manager at the National Trust. He provides technical assistance to the CTG Board and is a member of the HMRC Charity Tax Forum.