Will Pomroy (Chair of the Judging Panel)

Director, Impact Engagement and Sustainability

Will joined Federated Hermes in 2015 and, in addition to overseeing and leading the engagement programme for the firms SDG Engagement Equity strategy, oversees ESG integration and engagement across the firm’s small- and mid-cap and sustainable equity strategies. Will has fifteen years of experience in the responsible investment space having, among his previous roles, led the stewardship and corporate governance activity of the UK’s National Association of Pension Funds (now known as the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association). Prior to entering the world of responsible investment, Will worked as a senior parliamentary researcher in the UK Parliament. He chaired the Corporate Governance Expert Group of the Quoted Companies Alliance until 2025, authoring the Association’s most recent Corporate Governance Code, is a member of PRI SDG Advisory Committee and the Sustainability Working Group of the UK Endorsement Board. Will holds an MSc in Public Policy and Management from Birkbeck College at the University of London. He also holds the Investment Management Certificate and the Certificates in ESG Investing Climate and Investing (CCI), all from the CFA UK.

Mark Aleksanyan

Professor of Accounting and Finance, Adam Smith Business School, the University of Glasgow

Mark Aleksanyan is a Professor of Accounting and Finance in the Adam Smith Business School at the University of Glasgow. Mark’s current research projects investigate the practices of, and interdependencies between, key actors in the market for corporate information and investment advice, including investor relations professionals, sell-side analysts, corporate brokers, and investors, with a particular focus on the impact of regulation and AI. Mark’s long-term research interests also include corporate reporting and disclosures, equity valuation, and investment analysis. His research has been published in internationally esteemed journals such as Contemporary Accounting Research, Journal of Corporate Finance, European Accounting Review, Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Journal of Empirical Finance, and Accounting & Business Research. He has also co-authored a book on equity valuation and reports commissioned by professional accounting bodies and standard setters. Mark is an Associate Editor of the Qualitative Research in Financial Markets journal.
At the university, Mark teaches highly popular courses on financial analysis and valuation.
Prior to his academic career, from 1996 to 1999, Mark worked as a financial analyst at a brokerage firm, senior economist at the Ministry of Finance and Economy of Armenia, and economic assistant to the Prime Minister of Armenia.

Yasmine Chahed

Bio coming soon.

Hilary Eastman

CEO & Founder, Confluence Advisory

Hilary is CEO & Founder of Confluence Advisory, a boutique consultancy specialising in strategic corporate reporting and communications. She is an expert in financial and sustainability reporting regulations. She is a member of the UK Sustainability Disclosure Technical Advisory Committee (TAC), advising the UK government on endorsing the International Sustainability Standards Board’s (ISSB) standards. Before establishing Confluence Advisory, Hilary was a partner at KPMG UK, where she led the firm’s ESG reporting practice, advising multinational companies on sustainability reporting. She previously ran PwC’s global investor engagement programme and developed and implemented PwC UK’s first stakeholder engagement strategy. At the International Accounting Standards Board, she led the project to develop IFRS 13 Fair Value Measurement and developed and led the investor liaison programme. She started her career in business valuation at PwC. Hilary is former chair of the board of CFA Society of the UK, is a CFA Charterholder and is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (ICAS) research panel.

Anna Hartropp

Director, Anna Hartropp Ltd

Anna runs a specialist investor relations search firm.

She previously held roles within IR at small, mid and large cap companies and worked as an IR consultant. Anna has also worked as an Advisor at Liberum Capital, working with listed companies, as well as helping to bring private companies to the market.

She has been an active member of the Investor Relations Society, sitting on the Membership and Conference Committees, and regularly participates with events run by the Society.

Abigail Herron

Executive Director, FAIRR

During her 19 years in responsible investment she has covered the A to Z of ESG topics - from aviation emissions to zero hour contracts.

After 13 years at Aviva Investors, Abigail has recently joined FAIRR as Executive Director.

The FAIRR Initiative is a global investor network harnessing the power of capital markets to transform global protein production away from an over-reliance on intensive animal agriculture. FAIRR works with over 400 investors, representing over US$95 trillion in combined assets under management, to use their power and influence to help global livestock, fish and dairy companies build a more sustainable food system.

On maternity leave, she completed a Masters focusing on antibiotic resistance at the University of Cambridge which won the Forum pour l´Investissement Responsable (French Social Investment Forum) and Principles of Responsible Investment (UNPRI) award for best Master’s thesis, 2020. She works with the Investor Action on AMR project to address the market failure of AMR.

Tom Hinton

Global Head of Private Company Access, Citi

Bio coming soon.

Elly Irving

Director of Stewardship, Fidelity International

Elly Irving is Director of Stewardship at Fidelity International. She works with the global head of stewardship to further strengthen Fidelity’s stewardship and investment-focused ESG integration, with a focus on EMEA and the Americas.

Prior to joining Fidelity International in 2026, Elly was director of stewardship for Lazard Asset Management. She helped build the firm’s stewardship strategy covering both engagement and proxy voting spanning over 6,000 listed equities. Elly chaired the firm’s Global Stewardship Committee to further evolve investor-led company engagement and further align their fundamental research with their proxy voting. Before joining Lazard, Elly was Head of Engagement at Schroders where she developed the engagement framework and infrastructure for equity and credit investment teams globally and supporting ESG integration. Prior to Schroders, Elly held ESG roles at Newton, where she focused on proxy voting and company level ESG analysis and started her career at F&C (now BMO Asset Management) where she focused on screening for ethical funds.

Elly holds a BA (Hons) in Business Studies with Accounting & Finance from Nottingham Trent University.

Professor Ken Lee

Accounting & Finance Group, Loughborough Business School

Professor Lee is a member of the accounting and finance group at Loughborough Business School. Prior to that he was an Associate Professorial Lecturer at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He lectures on financial analysis and equity valuation and his research focuses on key actors in capital markets including their use of AI. He is also a member of the Capital Markets Advisory Committee (CMAC), a body supported by the IFRS Foundation.  Before academia Ken was  Head of European Equity Research at Barclays. He has published in a number of leading academic journals including Contemporary Accounting Research, British Accounting Review and European Management Review. In addition to holding a doctorate from Aston University, Professor Lee is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland and a CFA Charter holder and a member of the Institute of Taxation. He has authored a number of books, most recently, The Valuation Book (Harriman House, 2024). 

Martin Li

Shareholder Relations, ICG Enterprise Trust

Martin works in Shareholder Relations at ICG, with responsibilities focused on the day-to-day investor relations activities of ICG Enterprise Trust, a £900m market capitalisation FTSE 250 listed private equity investment company, including communications with shareholders and sell-side analysts.

He previously was in a similar role at HarbourVest Global Private Equity, another FTSE 250 listed private equity investment company. Prior to that, Martin spent nearly five years with Goldman Sachs, most recently in the Equities Management & Strategy group of the Global Markets Division.

Martin is a Chartered Financial Analyst® (CFA) Charterholder as of 2023, and graduated with a First Class degree in BSc (Hons) Economics from the University of Warwick in 2017.

Sallie Pilot

Senior Advisor, The Investor Forum

Sallie is Managing Director of the Investor & Issuer Forum (I&IF), an independent, practitioner-led initiative working to strengthen alignment, transparency and long-term value creation across the UK equity investment chain. She has over 25 years’ experience advising boards, investors and regulators on corporate governance, corporate reporting, stewardship and stakeholder engagement. Prior to joining the I&IF, Sallie was an Executive Director at Black Sun, where she helped build one of the UK’s leading corporate reporting and advisory firms. She also serves on the FRC’s Stakeholder Insight Group, the ICAEW Corporate Governance Committee and is a fellow of the Investor Relations Society.

Caroline Stockmann

Independent

Bio coming soon.

Peter Swabey

Policy & Research Director at The Chartered Governance Institute

Bio coming soon.

Charles Tilley

Bio coming soon.

Jimmy Tillotson

Partner, Redwheel

Jimmy is a Partner at Redwheel and portfolio manager of the Redwheel European Focus Fund. Jimmy has over 20 years of investing experience, having previously been a Director at Hermes working on both the UK and European Focus Funds, before joining Redwheel in 2012. He also served as a director on the Board of portfolio company Opus Group AB from 2018 to 2020. Jimmy holds an MA in Economics from the University of Edinburgh and is a CFA Charterholder.

Steven Young

Professor Of Accounting, Lancaster University Management School

Steven Young has been professor of accounting at Lancaster University Management School since 2008, having previously been a senior lecturer at the business school. He teaches on courses in financial reporting and research methods.