Experts
The Resolution Forum brings expert speakers, panelists and columnists together from across multiple industries to share their knowledge and insight with our members.
Expert Contributors

Sarah McKenzie
Head of Consumer Strategy & Policy at
the Financial Conduct Authority
Sarah McKenzie is Head of Consumer Strategy & Policy at the Financial Conduct Authority. Sarah’s department is responsible for delivering research and insight to ensure the FCA understands consumers, their needs, attitudes and experiences. Sarah also oversees the overarching FCA consumer strategy and cross-cutting consumer policy work including on vulnerability.
Sarah has over 15 years’ regulatory experience across various disciplines including supervision, projects, policy, innovation and market-focused work in retail and wholesale competition. Sarah’s work has had a consistent focus on identifying harm and delivering significantly better outcomes for consumers.
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Sarah started her career at Lloyds TSB, firstly as a graduate trainee before moving into management roles.

Helen Pettifer
Director, Helen Pettifer Training
Helen is truly passionate about Customer Service, having worked as a Customer Service Manager in the security industry, leading teams providing on-site support and call-centre services. She now runs her own Customer Service Training company based in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire.
As a consultant and trainer, she brings advice and support to companies on both internal and external customer experience and engagement, with a specialism in supporting vulnerable customers.

Mark Earls
HERD Consulting
Mark Earls is a pioneering and award-winning writer and consultant on marketing, communications and behaviour change.
He has written a number of highly influential books and articles like HERD and I’ll Have What She’s Having which apply insights from contemporary behavioural science to modern business and behaviour change challenges.
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In particular, his work on the emerging social models of behaviour (social influence and social decision-making) are probably only 2nd by that of Mark Zuckerberg in making “we” vs. “me” popular and useful.

Richard Bellingham
Head of Compliance, Ofgem
Richard started work at Ofgem in 2010 initially working on administration of the RO (Renewables Obligation) scheme and FIT (Feed-In Tariffs) across compliance and accreditation activities.
Most recently Richard has taken a position heading up the Retail compliance team in Ofgem’s London office. The team deals with supplier compliance across a range of issues and works closely with colleagues in Enforcement, Licensing and Policy to deliver better outcomes for consumers.
Before joining Ofgem Richard worked as a development chemist for a large pharmaceutical company.

Alison Mackey
Senior Manager of Behavioural Risk, RBS
Alison has worked for RBS for 14 years in a variety of roles including lending, customer complaints, risk and latterly Internal Audit. Alison is a Senior Manager in the bank’s Behavioural Risk team, part of the Internal Audit function. The specialist team uses a dedicated methodology to identify patterns and drivers of behaviour which could lead to poor outcomes for the bank and ultimately the customer.
Alison is passionate about performing innovative, insightful and impactful work with the team and influencing others to think differently about risk and the customer experience.

Dr. Tom Reader
London School of Economic
Dr Tom Reader is an Associate Professor and the Deputy Head of Department for research in the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science. He directs the MSc in Organisational and Social Psychology.
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Dr Reader’s work examines the relationship between organisational culture and risk management.
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His research coalesces around the following issues: can employees within an organisation accurately and reliably assess its culture for managing risk, and to what extent are unobtrusive metrics (e.g. complaints, incident data, reports) a more insightful indicator of culture.

Dr. Alex Gillespie
London School of Economics
Alex Gillespie is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science at LSE and Editor of Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour. He has published six books and over a hundred papers.
He is an expert on communication, divergences of perspective, misunderstandings, trust and listening.
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He has been involved in developing several tools, including: the Interpersonal Perception Toolkit for Communication Disorders, GUIDE, and the Healthcare Complaints Analysis Tool.

Prof. Moira Clark
Director, The Henley Centre for Customer Management
Moira Clark is Professor of Strategic Marketing at Henley Business School and Director of The Henley Centre for Customer Management. She also serves as a consultant to a number of leading UK and international companies.
Her major area of research and consulting is in Customer Management, Social Networking, Customer Retention and Internal Marketing. She has worked extensively in the area of culture and climate, its impact on retention and loyalty and the critical linkages between employee behaviour and customer retention.

Caroline Wells
Money Advice Trust
For almost three decades Caroline has championed the consumer and employee voice. Her background as a customer insight professional, complaints handling and consumer vulnerability expert across a number of industries has given her an excellent grounding in what makes for a good customer experience.
Formerly head of outreach and customer insight at the Financial Ombudsman Service, in 2017 she set up on her own to work with businesses and organisations as an independent consultant.
Caroline works with the Money Advice Trust as a Senior Subject Matter Expert (Consumer vulnerability and Customer Service), and in 2018 was appointed as a Commissioner to Energy UK’s Commission for Consumers in Vulnerable Circumstances.

Hayley Craft
Customer Relations Manager, Virgin Holidays
Hayley Craft is the Manager of Customer Relations at Virgin Holidays. She has been with the company for just over three years, transforming the way Virgin speaks to their customers, evolving the product and service delivery to provide a better customer experience.
She is fiercely ambitious and passionate about continuous improvement, whether that be in the work environment or personal life. She is a certified mediator and is undertaking a start-up business degree in her free time.

Geoff McDonald
International Mental Health in the Workplace Campaigner
Geoff McDonald is a renowned international speaker on mental health support in the workplace having previously been a global VP at Unilever for 25 years.
Through his company, Minds@Work, he aims to help businesses and leaders improve the mental health support function and culture within organisations to make for happier, more motivated, people.
The positive affect of which will be felt by customers.

Sharon Darcy
Director, Sustainability First
Sharon Darcy is a champion of consumer concerns in energy and water and has worked with Sustainability First since 2013.
She served on the Council of Which? until April 2019, prior to which she was a long-standing board member of Consumer Futures (and its predecessor bodies, Consumer Focus and energywatch).
She is a board member of the Solicitors Regulation Authority, a member of the UK Regulators Network Expert Panel and of the British Academy Public Policy Committee.

Richard Watson
Lecturer, Author and Futurist
Richard Watson is the founder of nowandnext.com, a website that documents global trends.
He is the author of five books about various aspects of the future, and has written for Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies and Mckinsey & Company. His last book, Digital Vs Human, was published in 2017.
He is also a visiting lecturer at both Imperial College Business School and London Business School.

Martyn James
Head of PR, Resolver
& Director of Martyn James Media
Martyn James is an award-winning public relations expert with nearly 20 years of experience of working with the media.
He's also a money and consumer rights specialist and a regular commentator on television and radio.
Martyn is Head of PR for Resolver, the free consumer complaint platform. He also worked for the Financial Ombudsman Service for nearly 10 years.

Patrick O'Connor
New Product Development Manager, Resolver
Patrick has been with Resolver since 2018 and as New Product Development Manager, works closely with Data Science teams and businesses to find compelling insights that lie behind consumer complaint data and what the impact is for consumers, businesses and entire sectors.
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Adrian Morley
Change and Implementation Manager, the Co-op
Adrian Morley is Change and Implementation Manager at the Co-op, and recently led them to Gold Winners status at the UK Complaint Handling Awards in the category of the Resolver Vulnerable Situations Award.
Adrian is a customer centric, strategic thinker with more than 20 years experience delivering results in a variety of Marketing and Operations roles within Utilities and Financial Services sectors.

Vanessa Hudnott
Vulnerable Customer Strategy Manager, Aviva
Vanessa Hudnott has more than 20 years experience within the financial services sector.
She is an experienced and highly organised Customer Service Manager, skilled at dealing with all aspects of customer demand.
She leads the Aviva vulnerable customer activity by supporting the implementation of the Aviva Vulnerable Customer strategy.

Joe Duffield
Vulnerability Lead, UK Regulators Network
Joe Duffield is Vulnerability Lead at the UK Regulators Network during a secondment. He is also Competition Policy Manager at Ofcom.
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Joe is a collaborative policy adviser and project manager with a strong knowledge of regulation. He is passionate about organisations which seek to improve people's lives and hold strong values at the core of their mission.

John French
CEO, Consumer Council
John French is the CEO of the Consumer Council, who provide free, independent support and advice for all consumers and businesses in Northern Ireland. They also have powers to investigate complaints about energy, water, transport and postal services and undertake research to understand local consumer issues.
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John has nearly 20 years of experience in governance, policy, strategy and international relations.

Sue Buckle
Resolution Delivery Manager, Yorkshire Building Society
For nearly 20 years Sue Buckle has led customer management teams, and since 2012, has been with Yorkshire Building Society.
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As Resolution Delivery Manager, Sue oversees the delivery of the complaints and vulnerable customer policies in the customer facing and enabling functions.
She leads the development of first point of first contact resolution across customer facing teams and drives the identification and delivery of customer solutions that support vulnerable customers ability to access products and services.

Russel Hamblin-Boone
CEO, CIVEA
Russell is the CEO of the Civil Enforcement Association and leads reforms on behalf of the civil enforcement industry.
He established from start-up a public affairs, communications and policy function for a newly formed trade association and has managed successful public affairs and media campaigns on behalf of retail, energy and the financial services industry.
Russell has extensive experience as industry spokesman in broadcast and print media.

Sarah Lawrence
Director, CWSL Training
Sarah is a complaint handling expert and Director at CWSL Training. Having worked in the financial service sector for more than 20 years, with more than 16 years at the Financial Ombudsman Service.
During this period she worked as an adjudicator, investigating and mediating complaints in various product areas. As an experienced adjudicator, she worked closely with ombudsmen on some of the most complex cases.
Sarah now helps FCA regulated businesses achieve consistent complaint handling by changing their culture