APA Conference & Awards 2023

With over a decade of experience within Accounts Payable, working for some leading companies within the UK, her passion to drive and motivate the industry led to Kat becoming the Head of Education at the Accounts Payable Association. 

She has significant experience in staff development, leadership, and coaching and is determined to eliminate harmful practices, standardising and simplifying processes. 

As part of the Accounts Payable Association, she aims to deliver the highest quality education to drive the Accounts Pable industry forward.

Karen is a Director and recruiting expert for the Accountancy & Finance recruitment division at Hays UK&I. She provides strategic leadership to a team of over 300 accountancy and finance recruitment professionals across over 90 offices. With 27 years of finance recruitment experience, Karen has a track record of recruiting top finance talent for businesses across a range of industry sectors and is a trusted industry voice on recruitment, career planning and market insights.

Karen also leads the development and delivery of social and environmental purposes at Hays UK&I. This focuses on how the business supports local communities with a particular focus on improving skills and employability, as well as steps to safeguard the natural environment. Karen leads a Hays UK Charity partnership with the charity EveryYouth, focusing on strategic input to the employability element of the Independent Futures programme, that supports young people into work and independent living.

John is a leading expert in improvement programmes helping inspire people to be the best they can be.

John’s particular expertise is Resilience, assisting people build stress resilience and confidence. Using the latest developments in neuroscience he’s established a simple range of well-being tools. He has helped numerous individuals and teams to embed these techniques into their working lives to help improve energy and health resulting in positive improvements in performance.

John has delivered coaching and training sessions for 25 years helping thousands of individuals and groups within businesses and a number of elite sports performers.

Lubnah’s passion is to drive change through people, process and systems whilst challenging the status quo and her drive to see things through to completion has made her a force to be reckoned with in the industry.

From working in multiple sectors, she has gained the experience and skills to become an accomplished leader in the Shared Services space.

Being a Qualified accountant (FCCA) and an ambitious people leader, with experience of setting up and enabling Finance Shared Services, coupled with ERP implementations, her passion for business transformation and enabling a growth mindset within teams shines through, injecting some fun along the way too!

Nicola has worked in Accounts Payable and Credit Control for more years than not, gaining hands on experience in a variety of roles. After a brief spell in a process improvement role, she moved back to Accounts Payable management, as she enjoys the transactional environment and working with a team to deliver to KPI's.

Rebecca Howard is Head of Supplier Relationship Management at Coventry Building Society. Rebecca's team looks after supplier performance management and sustainable procurement. Rebecca is a strong advocate for inclusive leadership and speaks at many internal and external events about the importance of leading with courage and compassion. Rebecca supports her colleagues with building their personal brand and identifying their personal strengths. Rebecca is a Member of the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply and a Practitioner Member of the Institute for Environmental Management and Assessment and promotes ethical sourcing practices in the Finance profession.

Dynamic, driven and accomplished business and finance professional with significant experience of delivering high quality finance, business and customer services objectives/solutions in the private and public sectors. Significant experience of staff development, leadership, coaching and leading multi-disciplined teams. Significant experience of leading and delivering business operations, leading change and transformation projects whilst driving a customer centric proposal and offer.

Mark has 40+ years of experience in Credit Management (O2C, I2C, C2C). Starting right at the bottom but with great support and dedication, Mark's career path has taken him into a wide range of industry verticals and where he's been part of technology innovations and implementations. Mark strongly believes that if you invest and immerse yourself into O2C/ Credit Management you will be rewarded with an exciting career embracing Talent Development, Digital Transformation, Thought Leadership, and an immediate impact on business strategy and profitability. At Callisto Grand we believe that Credit is profession and NOT a process.

Dan is the Founder and CEO of Consider Solutions, serving global brands including Aston Martin, BT, Bombardier, Sony Music, Starbucks and UNICEF.

With a focus on finance & accounting, procurement and shared global business services, Dan advises on governance and optimization of global end-to-end business processes, data driven decision making, operating models, business partnering, organization and roles, performance management, technology, managing risk and simplifying compliance.

The “Pareto Principle” is a key to success in all of these initiatives, the 80/20 rule by which 80% or more of desired outcomes can be delivered with 20% or less of the cost, effort and cycle time,Dan has a background of 25 years in strategy, operations, general management, consulting, performance improvement, risk management & compliance, process change and technology in global businesses.

Though based in London, in the “Before Times” Dan travelled around the world for work. For recreation, he enjoys skiing, playing blues guitar and red wine though, for safety reasons, not all at the same time.

Sarah Turner is a highly experienced professional across P2P processes, Change Management and Leadership.

Sarah is the Group Accounts Payable Manager at SSE Plc. She is accountable for the processing and payment of all invoices for SSE Group as well as facilitating non-supplier payments for the Group.

Sarah is a highly motivated leader with a positive outlook, she supports her team and colleagues through people development and customer engagement.

Sarah is passionate about eliminating bad practice, standardising, and simplifying processes and implementing automation.

Mandy Wilson is an accredited Accounts Payable Manager with the APA with over 20 years' experience in Finance, specializing in Accounts Payable. 

Mandy is currently the Global Director of Accounts Payable with Interdigital, Inc. She has spent the last 4+ years leading her domestic and international teams through multiple process improvement initiatives and a system implementation automating the Accounts Payable function.  

Mandy is a highly motivated leader who loves troubleshooting problems and looking for areas of improvement. 

Gareth Jones has a Business and Finance BA Degree and is a highly motivated, results-driven P2P SME professional with over 20 year’s experience in Purchasing, AP and Cash Management /Treasury for blue chip companies.

He has held various roles in both domestic and international, public and private market sectors, including Banking, Support Services, Telecoms, NHS, Councils, Construction, Charity, Travel and Leisure, with up to £62 billion annual turnovers.

Gareth is currently working for Xylem as I2P SME manager for Europe and the emerging markets.

Martin is working within the Superdry Finance team for over 4 years, having spent 2 years as Credit Controller, and then transitioned to their Accounts Payable Manager. Martin has been a key resource for Superdry as part of the digital transformation journey and continues to drive the AP Dept forward aligned with the organisation’s digital strategy.

Since leaving school I became a qualified accountant through Apprentice schemes, I now have 18 years of experience in Accounting and Finance; making the move from external audit to transactional operations in early 2020.

Now I am part of a journey leading accounts payable teams who focus on ledger/query management and supplier master data; this transformative journey will change all current ways of working, from how we liaise with our stakeholders to simply how we run reports and best use data available. With a passion for process improvement, team progression and automation I am excited to be part of this journey within Liberty Shared Services to provide the best service possible to our customers.

Paul is the CEO and Co-founder of Xelix. Alongside Phil Watts, Paul started Xelix in 2016 with the vision to use the latest technology to rethink core Accounts Payable processes. Paul previously co-founded Dingo (a face value ticket exchange), Invoicely (a dynamic discounting platform) and AbraTax (a digital VAT filing app). He started his career working in Sales for Mars Inc and in Finance for several VC houses and completed an MBA at the University of Oxford in 2014.

With experience working for vendors, banks, payment schemes, infrastructure providers, and as a specialist consultant, Richard has gained extensive experience in the solutions to solve the issues surrounding business payments. His specialities include domestic ACH, cross-border, real-time payments, SWIFT, and emerging business payment methods and innovations in the payments and cash management world.

Over the course of the last 2 decades, Matt Hammond has held senior management positions at leading e-invoicing companies, developing extensive expertise and best practices in Accounts Payable.

He has been on the front line of over 200 successful AP implementations, collaborating with clients ranging from major international corporations to smaller public sector organisations.

Matt is excited to share his insights to support your digital journey.

Having worked in Accounts Payable for 9 years across the corporate wear and construction industries, I have a wealth of knowledge and experience in Team Management and Leadership. 

After joining Breedon Group PLC back in November 2019 as a Senior Accounts Payable Assistant, I was quickly promoted to Team Leader and now hold the ropes as Accounts Payable Assistant Manager.

I am a seasoned Senior Payment Operations Manager with more than 15 years of experience in Accounts Payable, Leadership, and Transformation. My enthusiasm lies in harnessing my expertise and knowledge to enhance and optimise Accounts Payable processes, leveraging cutting-edge technologies and robotic automation.

Currently, I lead three Accounts Payable teams at Liberty Shared Services, overseeing functions such as invoice processing, payments, and travel and expenses for eight OpCos, each operating on various ERP systems. My passion for working in Accounts Payable stems from the ever-changing nature of the field, presenting daily challenges that are equally rewarding to solve.