Mission & Team

Mary Boakye is a finance lawyer with over 25 years’ international capital markets and investment experience, globally and across multiple sectors. She has advised corporates, investment funds, financial institutions and governments across Africa, Europe, Asia and the United States.

Mary is a dual-qualified solicitor and New York Attorney with a stellar career including in leadership at leading global firms in New York, London, South Africa and Hong Kong. She worked at Allen & Overy and Dentons where she was head of the firm’s Africa Financial Markets Group. She also co-led the team that advised on Ghana’s 2007, 2013, and 2014 sovereign bond issues. Mary is the founder and CEO of Oriol Associates.

Mary is a board member of The Fore Trust and Dentons’ Board Diversity Committee. She has served on numerous advisory boards including the Technical Committee of the World Bank / AfDB All-Africa Conference on Law, Justice, and Development, Business Advisory Board of H.E. Kofi Annan’s Africa Progress Panel, and the China Europe International Business School’s Africa Foundation for Governance and Leadership.

Widely regarded as a leading authority on doing business in Africa, ‘Powerlist’ named her as one of the UK’s 100 most influential blacks and ‘The Lawyer ‘as one of the UK’s “Hot 100 Lawyers” being “skilled in dealing with complex regulatory environments and jurisdictions”. She has been recognized by Cranfield School of Management in its 100 Women to Watch and 50 BAME Women to Watch lists and by the Legal week Class of 2021 as one of U.K.’s leading female lawyers.

Mary holds an LLB, Law (Hons) from Brunel University, Solicitors Final Exams from the University Law, Guildford and Distinctive Leadership in Organisational Leadership from Leadership College, London.

Holly Welch Stubbing is a nationally recognized leader in philanthropy with over 25 years of experience and thought leadership on giving and grantmaking.

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Holly joins National Philanthropic Trust (NPT) after serving since 2017 as president and CEO of E4E Relief, a national charitable organization offering emergency financial relief programs for global companies and communities. E4E Relief has awarded more than $260 million in emergency financial relief grants in 120 countries since 2020, assisting individuals impacted by catastrophic disasters and financial hardships.

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Prior to leading E4E Relief, she worked for Foundation for the Carolinas, where she led advancement, philanthropic services, investments and legal affairs. Together with the team, she grew the organization from $180 million to nearly $4 billion in charitable assets.

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Holly is an American Marshall Memorial Fellow of the German Marshall Fund and has received the Charlotte Business Journal’s Women in Business award and 40 Under 40 distinction. Holly was named one of the Mecklenburg Times’ 50 Most Influential Women in Charlotte and recognized as the Charlotte Association of Fundraising Professionals’ Fundraiser of the Year.

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She holds a Global Executive Master of Business Administration degree from Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, a Juris Doctorate from the University of Dayton School of Law, and a Bachelor of Arts with honors in speech communications and international studies from Wake Forest University. She is a member of the North Carolina and Tennessee Bar Associations.

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Holly is married to Matt Stubbing, a real estate developer specializing in affordable housing, and has two children.

David Rowe, OBE, spent 5 years in the British Army before leaving to work in finance. He spent 16 years at Schroders where he initially worked as a fund manager before becoming Managing Director of their UK Charities and Private Client business. After Schroders, he spent 17 years at UBS where he had responsibility for many different areas including their UK intermediary, Philanthropy, and Charities businesses. During his time at UBS, he created the UBS UK Donor-Advised Foundation, which is now the second largest DAF in the UK. Other locations in UBS (Switzerland and Singapore) have now replicated the UK philanthropy model.

He holds a degree in Economics from Exeter University. He is the Treasurer of SSAFA ‘the Armed Forces Charity, a trustee of the Army Sports Control Board and the Honorary Treasurers’ Forum. He is a Visiting Fellow in Charity Investments at the Bayes Business School, City University of London. He has been married for nearly 30 years and has a daughter and son. Amongst his interests are golf and gardening during the daytime and cooking and bridge in the evening. David was appointed as an Officer of the British empire (OBE) in His Majesty The King’s first Birthday Honours.

Ceris Gardner is one of the founding partners of Maurice Turnor Gardner LLP, a boutique private client law firm established in 2009 following the demerger of Allen & Overy LLP’s highly-rated Private Client Department.  Her areas of expertise include tax, estate planning, family governance, charity law (she is well known for advising both grant-making and operational charities on matters of charity law, governance issues and tax) and immigration.  This means that Ms. Gardner is able to adopt an holistic approach when providing advice.  She has a particular interest and involvement in encouraging families to consider philanthropy and in helping them to plan their giving strategy.

Ms. Gardner is actively involved in the charity sector, serving as a trustee of Philanthropy Impact (a body which incorporates the European Association for Planned Giving, Philanthropy UK and the Philanthropy Advisers Forum) and Crimestoppers.

Vivien Gould is currently the Senior Independent Director of The Lindsell Train Investment Trust PLC, and a non-executive Director of Baring Emerging EMEA Opportunities plc, Schroder AsiaPacific Fund PLC and Third Point Investors Limited.

Ms Gould has many years’ experience of the financial services industry and the charitable sector.

Ms Gould started work in financial services in 1981. She was a founder Director of River & Mercantile Investment Management Limited (1985) and served as a senior executive and Deputy Managing Director with the Group until 1994. During this period, the Group developed into a boutique investment management company specialising in the management of closed-end investment companies. She then worked as an independent consultant and served on the boards of a number of investment management companies and listed investment trusts from 1994-2001. Between 2001 and 2004 she served as an executive with Gartmore Investment Management. Ms Gould then served as a non-executive director of Cooper Gay (2006-2010), one of the largest privately-owned insurance and reinsurance groups in the UK. She served as a non-executive director of Waverton Investment Management (2014-2017), a privately-owned discretionary portfolio manager for private clients, charities and institutions.

Ms Gould has been actively involved in the charitable sector since 2005. That year she became a Trustee of the Stroke Association and Chairman of its Investment Committee (to 2014), and a Trustee of Cobalt Health (to 2015), a medical charity specialising in the provision of diagnostic services with cutting-edge scanning technology. Ms Gould has also served as a Trustee of the John Ellerman Foundation (2011-2017), and was a member of the Investment Committee and the Finance Committee.

Richard Cassell is Of Counsel in the private client and tax group at Withers, based in London, having been a partner there for over 15 years and previously a partner at another major US law firm.

Mr. Cassell advises on US and international tax and trust and estate planning, with clients based in Europe and the US. He specialises in US tax strategies for individuals, international trusts and closely held business structures. Mr. Cassell devotes a significant part of his practice to cross-border philanthropy and pioneered the use of dual qualified charitable structures.

Mr. Cassell was educated at University College London and qualified as a solicitor before moving to the US and attending the University of Pennsylvania Law School and has practiced in Washington DC and London. He is admitted as a solicitor in England, as a member of The District of Columbia and US Tax Court Bars.

Mr Cassell is a trustee of several charitable trusts and a school governor and is a former trustee of Philanthropy Impact, a membership group for charities and their advisors.