Your speakers

For the first TPAC event we've hand picked a range of great speakers from across the assessment profession to share their experience with you.

Anna
Howard

Head of Qualifications, Innovation and Development CIPFA

Anna is a chartered accountant with 15 years’ experience within the Higher Education sector, managing qualification and assessment development. At CIPFA Anna has been responsible for the implementation of the e assessment platform and has oversight of the assessment regulations and the running of the remote online examinations for the Chartered Professional Accountancy Qualifications. The qualification is delivered and assessed in the UK and also internationally through accredited training providers in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Lesotho and Canada.

Caroline Murray

Qualification Proposition Lead
Chartered Banker Institute (CBI)

Caroline has worked in assessment design and delivery for over 25 years as a Programme Director, Senior Lecturer, and Chief Examiner specialising in Corporate Lending and Risk, Corporate Strategy, Financial Markets, and Ethics. Caroline is currently responsible for all qualifications at CBI from design concept, through to the creation of qualification frameworks and pathways; individual qualification structure and content; assessment strategy, implementation and standards; and ongoing management and update of learning and assessment content.

Geoff Chapman

Senior Consultant and Board Advisor
www.geoffchapman.com

Geoff consults for global exam owners, education solution companies, and the investment community. Solving three decades worth of assessment digitisation challenges across medical, government, and professional sectors, he also successfully founded and exited three education businesses. This includes Acta - a software platform specifically built for examiner recruitment and management. Geoff will share specific insights such as nurturing examiner expertise and goodwill. His website shares free resources and blogs on worldwide assessment issues.

Russell
Ampofo

Director of Education, Training & Examinations Royal College of Anaesthetists

Russell is responsible for developing and delivering the Royal College of Anaesthetists’ education, training and examination strategy in the UK and overseas. Prior to the College, Russell worked at Public Health England, the Faculty of Public Health and Edexcel (Pearson) Education. In these roles, he had varied responsibilities including training, developing curricula, workforce development, examinations, national recruitment and quality.

Nicola
Mellor

Qualifications and Assessment Director
Chartered Insurance Institute

Dr Nicola Mellor is Qualifications & Assessment Director at the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII), a professional body group serving the needs of the insurance, financial planning and mortgage professions. She leads the design, delivery and quality assurance of qualifications and membership assessments, ensuring their validity within the context of a wider proposition for the development of practitioners and the requirements of sector regulators.

Sandra
Holmes

Deputy Director of Education, Regulated Qualifications College of Optometrists

Sandra has worked in Healthcare Education for most of her career. Her current role oversees the delivery of over 8000 assessment visits annually. Assessment visits take place online or face to face in Optometry Practices, they are delivered by a team of approximately 160 assessors based across the UK. The qualifying OSCE runs four times each year with a team of examiners from a range of Optometry Practice settings. The College of Optometrists contracts the services of assessors and examiners in order to deliver the Scheme for Registration.

Andrew Balch

Lead Assessment Consultant Certisense

Andrew has spent the last 20+ years working with awarding bodies and technology providers to develop and deliver assessment portfolios and lead digital transformations across the assessment lifecycle, mostly in the EFL sector. This has included helping to develop human-in-the-loop AI marking models and AI-driven speaking tests.
He is interested in all of the opportunities AI provides to assessment, but particularly those which deliver genuine improvements to learning, achievement and the end-to-end test taker experience.

Catherine Christmas

Senior Assessment Manager, ICAEW (Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales)

I have over 18 years of experience in assessment and in my role as a Senior Assessment Manager, I am responsible for overseeing ICAEW high-stakes exams. My expertise lies in on-demand exams and objective test questions, and I have led innovative solutions including the implementation of a live monitored remote invigilation system at the onset of the pandemic. I am committed to ensuring the quality, integrity and security of exams whilst providing the best experience possible to our students

Jackie Martin

Director of Education and Lifelong Learning Association for Project Management (APM)

Jackie has over 20 years’ experience in education and qualifications in the not for profit/professional body sector. She joined the Association for Project Management in 2019. As Director of Education and Lifelong Learning she is a member of the Leadership Team and her responsibilities include oversight of the development and quality of APM’s qualifications and standards for the project profession. APM delivers approximately 25,000 qualifications a year and these are all delivered online.

Julia Martin

Chief Executive
Independent Schools Examinations Board

Julia is an award-winning Chief Executive with extensive experience in education across schools, FE, HE, Awarding Organisations, publishing and EdTech. She specialises in product innovation and digital transformation, creating cutting edge digital assessments based on world leading research, AI, diverse and flexible new curricula and SEND solutions to equip pupils across the world for their future.

Rayhaan Vankalwala

Senior Associate
Bates Wells

Rayhaan is a Senior Associate in the Data & Privacy department at Bates Wells and advises on a wide range of data protection issues, including in relation to the ethical and legal risks arising from artificial intelligence, general compliance, data breaches and data subject requests, as well as specific queries arising in individual projects, products and services.

Richard Hankins

Director of Quality and Standards
Kaplan Assessments

I have been working in assessment since 2008. Initially, I managed the British Red Cross’ ambulance crew qualifications which were accredited by Edexcel. I then moved to the General Medical Council where I worked on a range of regulatory assessments for registration, revalidation and investigation of doctors. Most recently I was involved in the delivery of a new exam for anaesthesia associates.

I joined Kaplan in February in the new role of Director of Quality and Standards. In this role I am responsible for ongoing quality assurance and development of methodology of the Solicitors Qualifying Exam. I will also work increasingly closely with the Ofqual regulated Kaplan Professional Assessments which develops and delivers a range of assessments for accounting and other professionals.

Romana Moss

Director of Education
The Royal College of Emergency Medicine

Romana Moss specialises in assessment design, academic governance, and malpractice prevention. Romana has overseen major reforms to strengthen exam integrity and promote innovation. With a background in regulatory policy and quality assurance, she works nationally and internationally to advance fair, robust, and defensible assessment practices across professional and medical education.

Tim Burnett

AI & Marketing Consultant + Founder
Test Community Network

Tim Burnett dedicates his time to helping individuals and organisations safely traverse the complex connections between education and technology. Through his consultancy and the conversations he leads in the Test Community Network, he turns fresh ideas about AI and edtech into practical steps that the assessment community can understand and apply. Core to Tim's belief is that organisations and individuals need to have an AI-forward mindset, look beyond their day-to-day, and build their own AI roadmap ensuring they remain the experts in the loop at each step of the journey.

Joseph
Oakley

Associate Director: Assessment & Credentialing Royal Pharmaceutical Society

Joseph Oakley leads curriculum and assessment design and delivery at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. With prior senior roles at the College of Optometrists and Federation of Royal Colleges of Physicians, he has significant experience in assessor recruitment, training, and engagement for both written and work-based assessment models. Joseph is also a senior GCSE examiner himself for a national examinations body and serves as an assessment expert committee member and consultant across a number of other professional bodies, regulators and governmental bodies.

Rebecca Martin

Head of Learning Innovation Royal College of Surgeons of England

Rebecca Martin is Head of Learning Innovation at the Royal College of Surgeons of England, where she supports a team dedicated to designing learning experiences underpinned by robust, fair, and equitable assessment. She recently facilitated the development of new a framework, ensuring that strong assessment design directly enhances the integrity and impact of learning delivery.

Jackie Panter

Head of Equality and Quality Kaplan Assessments

With over 25 years in postgraduate professional education and 27 years as a solicitor, Jackie joined Kaplan Assessments in 2021. She leads a team implementing reasonable adjustments for SQE candidates. Previously Deputy Head of Law at Manchester Metropolitan University, she managed similar postgraduate programmes. A former L7 Solicitor Trailblazer group member, Jackie has spoken at major forums on professional assessments and reasonable adjustments.

Merv Young

Head of Assessment and Quality
Faculty of Occupational Medicine

Having worked extensively across the education, assessment and examination sectors as an administrator, educator and examiner, Merv has a keen focus now on delivering and maintaining quality within all administrative, assessment and organisational processes. His current post is as Head of Assessment and Quality at the Faculty of Occupational Medicine overseeing the provision of an industry accreditation scheme as well as a range of postgraduate qualifications.

Matt Wingfield

Managing Director
Edtech Horizons Ltd

Director
The eAssessment Association

Chair
The Assessment Organisation Network

With 35+ years’ experience within the education technology market, Matt has built-up significant understanding of use of e-assessment within all phases of education.

He is a founding member, director and former chair of the eAssessment Association and sits on JISC’s Edtech and Assessment Advisory Boards.

Matt works as an independent consultant supporting institutions, exam awarding organisations and professional bodies with the procurement and implementation of formative and summative assessment technologies.

More to come

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