For information on how membership of the Audit Committee works, see Membership structure.
The current membership of the Audit Committee is as follows:
Professor Andrew Wathey (Chair) - external member of the University Council
Click on name to see personal profile.
Baroness Sally Morgan - member of the University Council
Click on name to see personal profile.
Dr Pieter van Houten - member of the University Council
Click on name to see personal profile.
Ms Suzi Brennan - external member
Suzi
has more than 30 years experience as a senior leader in finance,
working across a variety of sectors including education, media and
publishing. She was Deputy Chief Financial Officer at Pearson plc until
2021, looking after internal and external reporting, controls, tax and treasury
for the global group. She has extensive commercial finance experience and
expertise in transformation and system implementation projects.
Following
graduation in Maths and Industrial Economics from Nottingham University, she
began her career at Deloitte, training as a Chartered Accountant and spending
several years in audit.
Since 2021, Suzi has been Deputy Chair of the Royal Ballet School and acts as advisor/director for various small start up companies.
Mr Gary Ernest - external member
Gary has spent the majority of his career working in a number of senior finance, supply chain and audit roles, initially for 23 years at Unilever and for the past 9 years at Rentokil Initial. His most recent role is Director of Risk & Internal Audit, reporting to the Group CFO and the Chair of the Audit Committee. He currently has responsibility for overseeing the risk management across the business and implementing the internal audit plan across the 70 country operations; he will retire from this role in July 2020. Within Unilever he was posted overseas to China and the Netherlands. He is a member of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA).
Gary has always maintained a keen interest in tertiary education. In 2012 he was appointed a Governor of Kingston University (his "local" university) where he was also Chair of the Audit & Risk Committee. His term as Governor expired in 2019. He is delighted to have been appointed to the Cambridge University Audit Committee in 2020 where he hopes to apply his 30 years knowledge from working in multinational businesses and experience of working in the university sector to improving the governance, risk and control framework in the University.
Gary is a graduate of Trinity College with a degree in Computer Science. Following his graduation, he was appointed Manager of the ADC Theatre in Cambridge from 1983 to 1987.
Mr David Germain - external member
David has more than 30 years’ experience as a leader of global technology and digital strategy. David is the Group Chief Information Officer at QBE. The international insurer and reinsurer. Previously David worked for a number of world leading Financial Services institutions in C-suite roles (RSA, General Electric, NatWest Group, Deutsche Bank, Close Brothers).
In 2019 David was ranked ninth in the Financial Times Top 100 Black Asian Minority Ethnic (BAME) Technology Leaders. He was a Finalist for CTO of the Year 2019 awarded by the Inclusive Technology Awards, and also a Finalist in the STEM category awarded by the Black British Awards.
David was featured in 2021 Hot Topics Global CIO100 list for his leadership excellence, resilience and innovation. The 2020 and 2021 Power-list CX50 as one of the most influential Customer Experience influencers in the UK by Marketing Week. He was awarded the prestigious Inspirational Leader in the UK 2020 for services to society, awarded by Computing and the British Computer Society.
David is a Non-Executive Director and honorary fellow for a number of institutions and technology author/ advisor.
David is married with three children.
Ms Elly Hardwick - external member
Elly's focus is on strategy, data, and digital transformation. She is an active Non Executive Director, serving on the boards and audit committees of Greek systemic bank Alpha Bank and specialty (re)insurer Axis Capital, and on the board of software provider Itiviti. Her previous executive roles include founding CEO of fintech startup Credit Benchmark, Head of Innovation at Deutsche Bank, and Chief Digital Officer at UBS.
Elly holds an MA(Cantab) from St Catharine’s College Cambridge and an MBA from Harvard Business School. She is a keen rower and amateur musician, and her two eldest sons are choristers at King’s College.
Nicola Robert - co-opted member
Nicola is Bursar at St Catharine's College and as such is responsible for the College's finance and administration and is its Chief Compliance Officer.
Nicola is a graduate of Emmanuel College, where she read History. She holds a Masters in Charity Finance from Cass Business School and is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales.
Nicola started her career as an auditor at Ernst
& Young LLP before moving to S.W.I.F.T Brussels where she was responsible
for Financial Planning & Analysis and SAP Business Systems. She has worked
in the UK charity sector since 1999 holding roles as Finance Director, Trustee
and Finance/Audit Committee member in a number of charities. She
became Endowment Manager of Gonville & Caius College in 2014 and
was appointed Bursar at St Catharine’s College in May 2019.
Membership of the Audit Committee provides Nicola with the opportunity to understand better the University's systems, processes and issues. The colleges are legally separate from the University but they are integrally bound up in the wider University's functions and strategic objectives, therefore there is plenty to offer to and take away from the work of the Committee.
Professor Tony Green - co-opted member
Tony Green is Professor of Haemato-oncology in the University of Cambridge and Honorary Consultant Haematologist at Addenbrookes Hospital. In 2000 he was appointed Head of the University Department of Haematology, and in 2016 Director of the Wellcome-MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute. In work which has spanned basic, translational and clinical research he has explored the transcriptional control of normal blood stem cells and more recently the mechanisms by which blood stem cells are subverted to cause haematological malignancies.
He has held multiple academic, clinical and educational leadership roles, both nationally and internationally, has been appointed to visiting professorships at several universities, elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (2001) and President of the European Haematology Association (2015-2017).