The Rt. Hon Justine Greening

Justine was Member of Parliament for Putney from 2005 to 2019. Between 2011 and 2018, Justine served as a UK Cabinet Minister, including as Education Secretary from 2016-18, putting social mobility at the heart of the Department for Education’s strategy. She left Cabinet to focus on her Social Mobility Pledge campaign with employers and universities. She now leads the Equality of Opportunity Coalition, a group of leaders across the private and public sectors all trailblazing on measuring socio-economic background and diversity and helping to develop levelling up strategies with them that can deliver change on the ground for communities. 

Jayne Owen, President, CIPFA

Jayne is Finance and Resources Director of North Wales Housing Association, a successful social enterprise providing homes and delivering services across North Wales. She is a qualified accountant (CIPFA) with 30 years public sector experience, including five years as Treasurer/Director of Finance. Prior to taking up this role, Jayne undertook the role of Director of Finance (Police and Crime) for the Greater Manchester Combined Authority. This and previous roles involved significant complexity, with accountability for multi-million pound budgets and advising on the deployment of these resources.

Her areas of expertise include treasury management, financial planning, audit, procurement, commissioning, value for money, organisational transformation and effective governance. Dating back 17 years, Jayne has been a long serving volunteer and advocate for CIPFA with student, regional and national roles. Her career has been rooted in the public sector, caring deeply for the role of the public, voluntary, social enterprise sectors in society.

Julia Penny, President, ICAEW

Julia qualified as an ICAEW Chartered Accountant in 1989 having first completed an honours degree in Accountancy and Finance at Brighton Polytechnic. Soon after qualifying she moved into a training role, initially teaching students and later moving into CPD training and technical roles. She specialises in audit, financial reporting and anti-money laundering and has worked for diverse organisations including Wolters Kluwer, Wilmington plc, Chantrey Vellacott and Baker Tilly (now RSM). She is currently self-employed.

Julia has been a volunteer for ICAEW for many years and is passionate about ensuring access to roles and committees to a diverse range of candidates.

Vincent Egunlae, Strategic Leadership Team, Assistant Manager, Grant Thornton

Vincent qualified as an accountant in 2021 and is currently working as an Assistant Manager in Grant Thornton UK LLP’s Corporate Finance Team. Vincent is also the co-founder and Chair of his firm’s Ethnicity Network, aiming to increase representation at the top level and reduce his firm’s ethnicity pay gap.

Vincent co-founded The Open Private School, a charity which seeks to provide state school educated students with the opportunity to learn from the best talent in their chosen career path and be upskilled in the areas that matter. To date, 60 students have been taken through the programme. Vincent is also a NED at Capital City College Group, London’s largest further education college group, providing exceptional education and training to over 28,000 students and is a school governor at Crowlands Primary School.

Since 2019, Vincent has been a One Young World Ambassador, recognised as one of the world’s pre-eminent young leaders working to drive forward the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

Vincent is passionate about diversity, inclusion and resilience and has often spoke publicly on these topics, winning multiple awards for his work. He also loves the Vampire Diaries.

Ria Nash, Rise Project Lead, ICAEW

Ria is a Senior Diversity and Inclusion Executive at ICAEW. Her work supports the strategic theme of strengthening the profession by attracting talent and building diversity. As part of her role, Ria is the project lead on the social mobility initiative ‘Rise’ - a UK wide initiative aimed at offering students, aged between 14 and 16 from low socio-economic backgrounds, an opportunity to understand and gain skills needed in the workplace.

Marcia is a Communities Manager at ICAEW, looking after Diversity and Inclusion, Women in Finance, Young Members, Career Breakers, and was instrumental in the setup of the most recent Black members Community. She organises frequent networking events, webinars and workshops for the Communities, and also facilitates on panel discussions with numerous topics across the business.

In her spare time she is a singer in her own right and part of a contemporary choir. Marcia takes pleasure in Calligraphy writing and loves travelling. She is a mother of one son and has two grandchildren who she enjoys spending quality time with.