The judging panel for the Corporate Engagement Awards is made up of leading industry experts who are based in in-house across sponsorship, partnerships, CSR and sustainability roles. We will also be inviting the winner of the last year's Grand prix to judge the awards. Discover the 2023 judging panel below. If you are interested in judging the 2023 awards, please send in a short bio for consideration, to finley.chesson@communicatemagazine.co.uk
Head of corporate partnerships
Richard leads the corporate team at Samaritans who have some major partnerships with, Three, Phoenix Group and Cala Homes to name a few. Previously at Mind, Richard established the first new partnerships team who secured partnerships with brands such as, Co-op Group, Dunelm, English Football League, Allianz and McVitie’s. Before this, he led the development of new strategic partnerships for Diabetes UK with pharmaceuticals such as Janssen-Cilag (J&J) and led several successful corporate bids at Alzheimer's Society. Before joining the Third Sector, Richard had a career in promotional marketing and rights licensing.
Head of CSR
Kathryn is the Head of Corporate Social Responsibility for Cisco UK & Ireland, leading and enabling innovative CSR initiatives across the organisation, many of which are focussed on digital skills and work to support disadvantaged groups into the digital industry. She also co-leads Cisco’s Inclusion & Collaboration Board supporting inclusive communities across the business.
Kathryn is vice-Chair of the board of trustees of Berkshire Women’s Aid where she seeks to use her professional experience to support victims of domestic abuse.
Senior corporate partnerships manager
David leads the corporate team at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity who have corporate partners with Livingbridge, CNA Hardy and Tokio Marine Kiln. Prior to this role he has worked for a number of domestic and international charities including Unicef UK, Alzheimer’s Society and Breakthrough Brest Cancer focusing on development of new strategic partnerships. He was also a member of the CIOF’s Corporate Fundraising Special Interest Group (SIG).
Senior corporate partnerships manager
As Senior corporate partnerships manager at Movember, Rachael is responsible for the acquisition, account management and development of Movember’s commercial partners across Europe. Movember’s partnerships work to deliver activations which meet both parties’ objectives; showcase the partners’ ambitions to have a true purpose; have a positive impact on men’s health; and raise funds. Having worked in the third sector since 2011, she has recently joined the Charity Chat podcast as a Trustee and Producer, focusing on finding and interviewing thought leaders in the sector to bring interesting insights to the podcast listeners.
Director, corporate sustainability
Lucy Dormandy is director of corporate sustainability at asset management firm, Wellington Management, where she is implementing and leading the company’s internal, global corporate sustainability efforts. She has 15 years’ experience working in corporate sustainability across the public and private sector, including for organisations including Aviva, Hilton and Philips. During her time at Aviva, her work included leading their award-winning ESG reporting approach and their £12m global five year partnership with the Red Cross, which reached over 6.6 million people with skills and support to build their own, and their communities’, resilience.
Head of corporate partnerships
Adam is Head of Corporate Partnerships at Maggie’s – a charity providing free cancer support and information in centres across the UK and online. Adam has been at Maggie’s since 2018, building and managing partnerships with companies such as Barclays, GSK and Sir Robert McAlpine. Adam has worked in Corporate Partnerships for over 10 years, at Age UK, Breast Cancer Care and vInspired, securing partnerships with companies such as Credit Suisse, nPower and First Utility.
Senior corporate partnerships manager
Jeremy is the Senior corporate partnerships manager at the Stroke Association, focusing on creating new strategic partnerships to add shared value and rebuild lives after stroke. Prior to this role he has also led the corporate account management and individual major donor teams at the charity. He has worked in other high value fundraising roles at a range of domestic and international charities including Carers UK, World Child Cancer and HelpAge International. Jeremy began his career in finance working for Bloomberg in London & Switzerland. He was also previously the Chair of the CIOF’s Corporate Fundraising Special Interest Group (SIG).
Global corporate responsibility project manager
Mirième is a corporate responsibility, stakeholder engagement and communications specialist with more than 15 years’ experience in private sector, not for profit and FTSE100 in the UK and overseas. Prior to joining the Corporate Responsibility team at RELX - a global information, data analytics and events company in 2016, Mirième held roles in communications, stakeholder engagement and responsible business at ITV and Virgin Holidays and previously participated as a guest judge at the Observer Ethical Awards and the World Responsible Tourism Awards.
Head of strategy and communications for social purpose
Sarah is the Head of strategy and communications for social purpose at ITV. Her 20+ year career in marketing has seen her work in advertising on household name brands; run behaviour change campaigns for the Department for Education; find the brand purpose for a number of tech start-ups including Gousto; work on digital product positioning for the BBC; and drive the brand and marketing for local and international charities, from Chickenshed to Save the Children. Her passion is finding the purpose that brands can play in people’s lives and how best to communicate that to change attitudes and behaviour.
Communications and marketing director
As Corporate Affairs Director for Mars Wrigley UK, Naomi is responsible for all internal communications, government relations, corporate reputation, brand PR and consumer care for Mars’ UK confectionary business. From starting her career in agency life working in public affairs, she became a specialist in sustainability communications, crisis management and corporate communications, with experience spanning industries from retail to banking. In her career, Naomi has been instrumental increasing media share of voice in the waste management sector from fifth, to first position. In 2015, she project managed the SUEZ group’s rebranding and repositioning in both the UK and Scandinavia, and has overseen the employee engagement programme resulting in the company being awarded the Sunday Times Best Companies’ ‘Best 25 Big Companies to Work For’ accolade in 2018 and again in 2020, for a predominantly operational and dispersed workforce.
Department of Health and Social Care
Deputy head of commercial partnerships
Department of Health and Social Care
Deputy head of commercial partnerships
Stephen is the Deputy head of commercial partnerships at the Department of Health and Social Care. Here he works with a range of large companies/brands to support the Government’s health promotion campaigns. Prior to this, he worked at the NSPCC as head of strategic projects and communications (partnerships). Here he led a team dealing with non-fundraising aspects of partnership work, including marketing and comms, pro-bono and corporate volunteering. Stephen specialised in developing and implementing joint marketing and comms campaigns with the NSPCC’s corporate partners. In previous roles at the NSPCC, he has developed and managed policy-influencing and behaviour change campaigns, including the NSPCC’s Talk PANTS campaign.
Head of charity and corporate communications
Laura Roberts is Head of Charity and Corporate Communications at IGD.
IGD is an organisation of two interconnected communities – Commercial Insight and Social Impact – working together to make a tangible difference to society, business and the individual.
Laura oversees all marketing and communications activity for Social Impact from IGD, which unites and inspires the food and consumer goods industry to drive positive change across the economic, social and environmental issues that affect us all. She also manages the organisation’s internal and corporate communications strategies.
Following a five-year stint as a B2B journalist, Laura moved into the world of PR and corporate communications more than 10 years ago. She has since held a variety of agency and in-house roles, with clients ranging from sustainability start-ups to multinational food and consumer goods companies.
Charity foundation manager
Lucy Ruff is Charity foundation manager at Poundland and oversees all of Poundland’s charitable activity. Lucy has always been passionate about all things charity, and began fundraising for charities close to her heart from an early age. After a couple of years working in IT recruitment she turned her hobby into her day job. Over the last 14 years, Lucy has held a variety of roles across individual giving, events and corporate fundraising. She’s worked for a number of national and local charities, including The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity, The Eve Appeal and Severn Hospice. In 2018 she made the move to the corporate side, setting up a corporate foundation for an insurance company before moving to Poundland in December 2020 to oversee all things charity, and set up and launch the Poundland Foundation.
Emily leads the Partnership Management Team at Macmillan and is proud to have helped build many of Macmillan’s most strategic, successful and award-winning corporate partnerships, including Boots, Santander, CBRE and Virgin Money. She is passionate about how charities and businesses can work together to bring about positive change for society. She has spent nearly two decades in corporate partnerships, which has brought a wealth of experience from shaping commercial and service led strategies to leading the team to deliver on colleague engagement programmes.
Global head of sustainability
Matt leads Linklaters work on responsible business globally, ensuring that our own ESG performance reflects the expectations of those around us and of the advice we provide to clients on many related themes. Matt plays an active role active in a range of sustainability networks including as co-chair of the Legal Sustainability Alliance, as chair of Business for Societal Impact, as an advisory member for both the UNGC-UK Network and the Living Wage Foundation and, in his spare time, he's proud to act as chair of an east London employability charity and am also a local school governor.
Corporate partnerships officer
Tanushree has been working in the charity sector for over a decade and during this time she has worked across various income streams with leading charities like Macmillan Cancer Support and The Prince’s Trust. Tanushree found her passion in corporate fundraising after joining the partnerships team at The Trust and has since worked on some outstanding strategic partnerships. In her current role as Corporate partnerships officer at The Royal British Legion, she is delivering impact for funders and the charity through collaborative partnerships with particular focus on employee engagement initiatives. She is a committed fundraiser, and her work philosophy is ‘If you don’t ask, you don’t get’.
London & Partners
Corporate engagement manager
London & Partners
Corporate engagement manager
Naeman is the Partner Engagement Manager at London & Partners, and has over 8 years’ experience of winning corporate partnerships and managing strategic accounts at causes such as London Youth, Prostate Cancer UK and Sense. In these roles he has delivered a variety of shared value partnerships from nationwide charity of the year partnerships to cause related marketing programmes with household brands, even breaking a Guinness World Record. He loves how corporate partnerships can benefit the whole organisation and how working collectively can help solve problems.
Ghalib has 16 years of business development experience having previously worked for some of the biggest advertising and marketing communication agencies in the UK.
Ghalib joined the Third Sector in 2012. He has been responsible for securing some of the biggest partnerships for Parkinson's UK in his early years and now leads a team to deliver the commercial partnerships strategy. Ghalib is also responsible for exploring commercial opportunities within the charity with the aim to develop sustainable services to meet the needs of the growing number of people affected by Parkinson's.
The Watches of Switzerland Group
Group head of sustainability and environment social governance
The Watches of Switzerland Group
Group head of sustainability and environment social governance
Kesah Trowell is Group head of sustainability and environment social governance (ESG) for The Watches of Switzerland Group and has 30 years of experience within public and private sector organisations across public relations, colleague engagement, corporate social responsibility and ESG.
Passionate about empowering people with purpose, Kesah has spent her career initiating innovative ways to positively influence behaviours and is proud to have picked up 19 prestigious awards and accolades along the way – including three Corporate Engagement Awards!
Kesah is always on the look-out for new and exciting ways to engage stakeholders, with the aim of helping to secure a more sustainable future and has collaborated with some of the world’s biggest tech companies, top fitness coaches and even elite military soldiers to achieve this - with remarkable results.
Head of corporate partnerships
Preeya is Head of Corporate Partnerships at Women for Women International and has been part of the organisation since 2017. Before that, Preeya worked in fashion and beauty PR, culminating in her position as Head of Global PR and Events at Charlotte Tilbury, where launching a charity partnership led to her transition to working for women survivors of war. Now, Preeya leads a portfolio of Corporate Partners including Charlotte Tilbury and Jimmy Choo amongst many others. She is passionate about helping companies make the most of their social purpose and raising funds and awareness for women living in the world’s most dangerous places.
Head of educational marketing
Richard is a qualified teacher with more than a decade of classroom and school leadership experience in mainstream education. Since leaving the classroom he has been working on the Recruiting Partnership Project for Capita, with specific responsibility for the British Army’s school engagement strategy. A primary focus of this has been the use of strategic partnerships to raise awareness of the Army careers offer to educational stakeholders.