ICAEW Midlands: Women in Finance insight group | 2025

Chair | Melanie Coeshott ACA | Blue Diamond Coach

Melanie supports accountants and finance professionals to feel energised, empowered & focused, so they can confidently succeed in their career, gaining the results they merit.

After a successful 22-year career in accounting and finance positions, Melanie now enables others to reach their true potential. Her specialisms include working with clients to build their confidence and quieten imposter syndrome to enable them achieve results they’re truly capable of. Stakeholder influence and impact are also common themes.

Melanie is an FCA, an ICAEW member and an ICF PCC accredited coach.

To compliment 1:1 coaching, she runs workshops on Essential Skills including Overwhelm, Imposter Syndrome, Confidence, Assertiveness, Resilience, Personal Brand, Influencing and Work Life Balance, for open courses and organisations.

Vice Chair | Steph Merrill

Steph Merrill is a fellow of the ICAEW having begun her career just over 25 years ago. She has undertaken various roles in practice across the Midlands before moving into industry to become a financial controller. After 6 years in that role, in 2019 she took the leap to set up her own business and now proudly supports small businesses with a range of services focussing on advisory and finance function support as this is key to any business looking to grow.

She believes that being able to provide business owners with real time information to help them make quick decisions and pivot if something isn’t working, as well as helping them to manage cashflow, is really rewarding.

She is also an ambassador for the 6 Figure Bookkeeper community and enjoys supporting others who are starting out on their journey of wanting to work with their clients more closely.

Steph is Vice Chair of the Women in Finance insight group and enjoys supporting the women within this community.