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.

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.

Eileen R. Heisman, ACFRE, is the President and CEO of NPT. She is a nationally recognized expert on charitable and planned giving. Eileen has been interviewed about philanthropy and donor-advised funds on CNBC, PBS, NPR, CNN International and Bloomberg TV, and by nearly every national newspaper and major trade publication, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Bloomberg, CBS MarketWatch, Financial Advisor, and Investment News. She has been named ten times by NonProfit Times as one of their Power and Influence Top 50, an annual listing of the 50 most influential executives in the philanthropic sector, most recently in 2023. She is currently listed as one of ONE HUNDRED’s top influencers in philanthropy and is the recipient of a 2019 Carnegie Mellon University Alumni Achievement Award. At the invitation of the Chinese government, Ms. Eileen spoke to their emerging nonprofit sector about American philanthropy. She was the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP)’s 2014 Outstanding Fundraising Professional, the highest award granted by AFP to recognize effective, creative and stimulating leadership, and the practice and promotion of ethical fundraising. She was also among the first fundraising professionals to earn the distinguished ACFRE certification. 

Eileen currently teaches a graduate course in philanthropy at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy and Practice and is also a member of the faculty at LEADERSHIP Philadelphia. She is on the Governance Committee for the Nonprofit Leadership Program at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy and Practice. She is a periodic lecturer for the Nonprofit Board Leadership Program at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Eileen is a lecturer and member of the National Advisory Board at the University of Michigan School of Social Work and serves on Carnegie Mellon University’s Dietrich College Board of Advisors (formerly College of Humanities and Social Science). She served as founding chair of Culture Works Philadelphia for seven years. 

Eileen received a master’s degree in Social Work with a concentration in Social Program Evaluation from the University of Michigan and a bachelor’s degree with honors in psychology from Carnegie Mellon University.  She is a member of the third Wharton Fellows Class at the University of Pennsylvania and completed the Executive Program for Philanthropy Leaders at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. 

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.