CAST: Meet the team!
Continuing our series of Q&As with members of the CAST team, we chat to Steve Ketteringham, CAST’s Head of Finance. Steve looks after CAST’s finances — from a strategic, budget-focused level, to the day-to-day nitty gritty of paying bills and invoices.
Hi Steve! Please could you tell us a bit about your background and how you ended up working at CAST?
I trained as a chartered accountant between 1997 and 2000, working for a small accountancy practice in Bath, and dealing with a range of clients, including shops, travel agents, hotels, wholesalers, charities, sports clubs, and a theatre.
I stayed at the same firm until 2006, as Audit and Accounts Manager, then moved to mid-Wales, and to a new role at a local environmental charity — initially as Management Accountant, then as Finance Director from 2008 to 2011 — this was a really enjoyable job, which I still miss in many ways, but also very stressful, trying to steer a wonderful organisation through a number of financial crises.
In 2011 I moved to a (slightly) less stressful public sector role, soon after my eldest daughter was born. This was satisfying in some ways, but I think it’s fair to say I never entirely fitted in to the organisation and its culture.
Moving to CAST in 2021 was, for me, whilst very different to my previous charity role, in many ways a return to an environment in which I felt much more comfortable, and to which (I hope) I have been able to being a wide range of experience, and continuing curiosity about the digital world.
Which sectors have you worked in?
In practice, in the public sector, and in the charity sector. My previous charity role also included a trading company, of which I was a director.
What is the most valuable course or professional qualification you have completed? Are there any you would particularly recommend?
Predictably, I’d have to say my professional accountancy training. I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to work as an accountant !
I might have said my PhD, but I didn’t complete it, so it’s outside the scope of the question. Or rather, I haven’t yet…
What is the most successful or enjoyable project you’ve worked on?
Probably in my first job, when I had the intriguing job of developing a new audit system from first principles — it was more interesting than it might sound, and actually a very unusual thing for a small firm to do. I’m not sure whether it’s still in use !
What skills/knowledge have you picked up over the years which supports your role at CAST?
I think, experience of change, as CAST is very dynamic, and things can change — I have been involved with and/or led various restructurings in various roles, and orchestrated quite significant revisions to budgets, over the years.
I’ve also developed quite a strong ethos that the Finance role in any not-for-profit organisation — whether a charity or in the public sector — is absolutely a support function, but a very important support function — so strive to support what the front-line staff need, whilst providing a steer in line with sound principles and financial governance, and robust, realistic budgeting.
Also having worked for or with organisations in many sectors, I can see similarities in CAST’s ways of working, even when the actual work being done is quite different to anywhere else I have worked.
What would you say is your ‘superpower’? What’s the thing you particularly excel at?
Other than mediocre jokes and historical anecdotes of limited relevance, probably ‘the above’ — bringing a logical, accounting view to the financial aspect of CAST’s work, without losing sight of the broader purpose and objectives.
What’s been your proudest professional achievement?
Probably a slightly negative one — having to reduce staff costs in a previous role, but, finding a way to do so which involved a number of people agreeing to reduced hours, and thus only one redundancy (there could have been many more), and almost everyone feeling they had been fairly treated and understanding why the savings had to be made — not a good situation, but one I feel I handled as well as possible.
