Nick is a partner at Slaughter and May with a broad corporate and commercial practice covering a range of matters for financial institutions and other listed and unlisted clients. His experience includes advising on M&A transactions, joint ventures private acquisitions and disposals, equity capital markets and asset management transactions, insurance matters and corporate governance.

Audit Partner and Chief Operating Officer of the Assurance Business in the UK — 15 years with EY.

Christabel has been with EY for over 15 years, before that she worked for PwC. She has extensive experience in the areas of auditing multinational listed groups under IFRS and of reporting accountant work for corporate transactions. Prior to her current role, Christabel worked in Leeds, Birmingham and London and was seconded to Washington DC in 2008.

Christabel has strong technical experience including IFRS, US GAAP, US SOX, corporate governance and advising on financial reporting issues. She also had lots of experience of reporting to boards and audit committees. One of her main strengths is her ability to build relationships with her clients and effectively manage service delivery. Christabel has worked across many different sectors but has spent much of her career working in the Utilities, Retail and Manufacturing sectors.  

Murray launched Cranfield School of Management’s Non-Executive Director Seminar in 1997 and has also delivered NED development programmes for the UK Venture Capital [since 2002] and Eastern European Investment Banking industries [since 2001]. In total over 5000 current and aspiring NED’s have attended his programmes both in the UK and internationally.

Murray likes to practise what he preaches and during his career has held over 25 NED and chairman positions in virtually every type of organisation. He is currently Chairman of LINX - the London Internet Exchange; Octopus Apollo plc – one of the largest listed VCT’s in the UK and Surface Generation – a fast growing high tech advanced manufacturing company and a NED of James Walker Group – an international engineering group.

Murray is the Course Director for the FT Non-Executive Director Diploma, the FT’s flagship NED Development Programme and the FT’s two day Effective NED programme.

Nora is a Senior Manager in EY’s People Advisory Services focussing on executive compensation and reward advisory. Nora has provided advice to the Management and Remuneration Committees of UK listed companies across a variety of industries including Technology, Telecommunications, Natural Resources and FMCG. She has advised clients on a wide range of executive pay matters, including Main Board and senior executive pay benchmarking, remuneration strategy, incentive design, corporate governance and remuneration disclosure.

Patrick Dunne has extensive experience of working with boards in Europe, Asia and North America. He is currently Chairman of board consultancy Boardelta, the charities the EY Foundation and ESSA- Education Sub Saharan Africa and also of the Chartered Management Institute’s Board of Companions. Patrick is also member of the advisory boards of Bridges Social Entrepreneurs Fund and the FT NED club and a former chairman of smart materials business D3O.  His executive experience includes 26 years in a variety of investment and management roles with 3i Group plc where, until 2012, he was Communications Director, a member of its Operating committee and Chairman of its Operational Risk forum. From 1990 to 1997 he built a resource of over 600 experienced directors who were appointed to over 2,000 boards for 3i in 14 countries across Europe, Asia and North America. The programme he established became widely recognised as a model of adding value and a leader in best practice. As a member of the Higgs review in 2003 Patrick has also played a role in shaping governance policy for UK listed companies.The author of three successful books on the subject, Patrick has helped to establish many successful courses on board skills over the last twenty years including for the BVCA, EVCA, FT and ICAEW and helped Chairman across a wide range of sectors to transform the effectiveness of their boards. These have included start-ups; buy out businesses, long established family companies as well as major public organisations. Today he provides this service through Boardelta. Patrick has a passion for education and was a member of the General Council of the University of Warwick from 2006 to 2015. He is a Visiting Professor at Cranfield School of Management, an Associate Fellow at Warwick Business School and former member of Business in the Community’s education leadership group. He also has extensive experience of developing social enterprises using venture philanthropy techniques, most notably with Leap where he was Chairman, from 2006 to 2015, and with Warwick in Africa which he founded in 2006. Warwick in Africa has now benefited over 280,000 young Africans with transformed Maths and English teaching. 

Peter Reichwald – Director, Board Practice and Founder of Engage, Executive Search Harvey Nash plc. Peter has 17 years’ experience in Board level recruitment. He joined Harvey Nash seven years ago as a consultant in both our Board, and Government and Public Sector Practices.

Peter has extensive experience of appointing Chairmen and Non-Executive Directors across the private and public sectors.  Peter leads the Not-for-Profit practice recruiting Chairs, Trustees, CEOs and members of senior management teams. Peter is recognised as a trusted advisor to clients and candidates alike. In addition he has a specialism in managing volume recruitment and in working with professional regulatory bodies.

Peter is particularly respected for bringing diversity forward and founded Harvey Nash’s Engage network connecting business leaders from all cultural backgrounds which, together with the Inspire network and its reach to senior women, enables Peter to increasingly bring diversity of thought to his and colleagues’ candidate lists.

Before entering the recruitment sector Peter had experience of both the private and not-for-profit sectors. Apart from being a Trustee of World Jewish Relief,  he chairs the Residents’ Association for a 63 flat block in central London and is a regular speaker at the Financial Times Non-Executive Director Club seminars. Peter is also an accredited Workplace and Employment Mediator.

Lesley Stephenson is the Publisher of the Financial Times Non-Executive Directors' Club and also of the Financial Times Non-Executive Director Diploma.

Lesley has worked in legal and regulatory publishing since 1984, working for most of the leading Publishers including Butterworths (now Lexis Nexis) and Professional Publishing (now Thomson Reuters).

She has specialised in corporate governance since publishing the Cadbury Report on behalf of the London Stock Exchange in 1992. Lesley has written for the International Corporate Governance Network (ICGN), the European Corporate Governance Institute and the ICAEW NED Special Interest Group.

She has been the Publisher of the Club since 2003, she was the driving force behind the development of the FT NED Diploma and continues to oversee it.

She also publishes the leading monthly newsletter on corporate governance, Governance, which has been around for over 20 years covering governance developments and best practice world-wide.

Steve has 24 years experience in the commercial departments of global news content providers, firstly with The Telegraph Media Group where he ran various vertical sector print and digital publications and latterly with The Financial Times, where he is currently the Global Director of Financial Times Career Management (FTCM). His remit includes the running of exec-appointments.com, the FT Non-Executive Directors' Club and the FT Non-Executive Director Diploma and the Business Education franchise. He has been involved with the FT NED Diploma from conception through to it's current state of being the most recognised, robust and credible formal qualification for independent directors in the world.