Unrivalled experience

Tobin Aldrich leads our Global and Strategy Divisions. Tobin is a respected and sought-after international fundraising and non-profit marketing strategist, working at a regional, national and global level. He has worked with over 70 non-profits in over 40 countries across the globe to deliver a wide range of strategic projects.

A graduate of Cambridge with an MBA from Cass Business School, Tobin has two decades of experience as a senior fundraising leader including roles as Director of Fundraising with WWF, Concern Worldwide, Sightsavers and National Deaf Children’s Society. In total, teams led by Tobin have raised over £500m and recruited over one million new regular donors.

Tobin is considered a global expert in individual giving and of all channels including digital, DRTV and offline channels. Amongst other achievements, Tobin was responsible for creating and rapidly growing Concern and Sightsavers' regular giving programmes, scaling WWF's animal adoptions programme, developing Centrepoint's Room Sponsorship regular giving scheme and for Sightsavers’ award-winning Million Miracles campaign, which raised over £30 million to fund a million sight-restoring surgeries in developing countries.

Imogen Ward oversees and works across all four of the AAW Group’s divisions. She is highly skilled and experienced in understanding the challenges of growing organisations within a complex context, and has particular expertise in establishing and supporting start-ups, philanthropy income streams and working with INGOs.

Imogen has worked in top leadership roles in the conservation, health and education sector for over 25 years. Her previous roles include Chief Executive of Lessons for Life – a charity that helps children in Africa attend and receive an education that equips them for life – Executive Director at the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and Director of Marketing and Communications at the emergency medical charity MERLIN (now part of Save the Children).

A previous Trustee of EIA, Empower and The Misfit Foundation, she is currently on the board of the BBC’s Charity Appeals Advisory Committee, having been appointed in recognition of her deep understanding of international aid and development.

Mark Astarita is widely considered one of the most influential fundraisers of his generation. He has led teams raising over £1.5 billion for humanitarian causes and was awarded an OBE in 2015 in recognition of his services to fundraising. He works primarily with the AAW Group’s People division.

Mark is well known in both the UK and internationally, often utilising his experience through his involvement in a variety of charities and public bodies. Over 14 years as Director of Fundraising he trebled the income of the British Red Cross. Mark is a former Chair of the Institute of Fundraising and Director of Fundraising and Communications at the National Deaf Children’s Society.

Mark has been a trustee at VSO, served on the board of St Joseph’s Hospice in Hackney and is currently Vice-Chair of trustees at St Clare’s Hospice in Essex.

Deniz Hassan, is one of the sector’s leading digital practitioners and a regular speaker on digital fundraising at conferences. Most recently he was the digital lead behind the UN World Food Programme's recent astronomic global digital growth – taking the charity’s digital programme from a standing start to a multi-million pound individual giving programmes in the world, driving income in more than 100 countries and five languages.

Deniz has worked with a wide range of charities, big and small, national and international, and has an unparalleled record across both strategic and operational digital planning, technical infrastructures, media buying and analysis.

A skilled and dedicated fundraising and marketing professional with over 20 years’ experience, George was MD at direct marketing agency TW CAT before establishing Audience, building it into a respected fundraising and communications agency. She now works as Planning Director across the AAW Group.

Poppy is a senior fundraising and marketing strategist with over 20 years' experience. She's a passionate innovator with a knack for spotting new and emerging opportunities and extensive experience of developing new mass fundraising campaigns and strategies. With much of her career spent at Cancer Research UK in a wide variety of roles, including Head of Strategic Marketing and Head of Fundraising Campaigns, Poppy has a real breadth of knowledge and experience. Poppy now works as an independent consultant with clients including Unicef UK, Macmillan Cancer Support, Crisis and Save the Children. She has been an AAW Associate Consultant since 2017.

Ali has worked in recruitment consultancy for over 20 years and has in-house and agency experience across the not-for-profit and commercial sector. Working closely with Mark and the search team, Ali project manages all our Executive Search campaigns.

Emma leads the candidate searches for AAW’s Executive Search campaigns and brings a wealth of experience in recruitment within the commercial and not-for-profit sectors, as well as in corporate and major donor fundraising, and prospect research.

Suzie has worked in the recruitment sector for 18 years. She was ranked as one of the top consultants at Brook Street and the highest performing consultant at CF Appointment’s NFP division. In addition to managing multiple interim placements at AAW, Suzie has been instrumental in numerous Executive Search campaigns

Samantha has over 14 years’ experience within Senior customer service roles as well as administration.

Working closely with Suzie, Sam assists on searches, keeping our database up to date as well as interacting with prospective candidates.

Jane is responsible for managing all logistics in relation to search campaigns. Jane built her career working as a PA to executives in the advertising industry and running her own ‘virtual PA’ service for commercial clients.