Our Board and Executive team

Chair 

Ann Harris OBE

Ann previously worked for 40 years as a civil servant, latterly holding senior Civil Service roles in finance and programme management. She was awarded an OBE in 2009, for her services to DWP. Ann’s roles outside DWP include acting in a trustee role for the Civil Service Pension programme, management board and operations committee. Ann is also an audit committee member for the Gambling Commission and volunteers regularly for her local Citizens Advice Bureau, where she is a volunteer trustee. She previously served with TPAS as a non-executive director for 18 months prior to becoming Chair.

Chief Executive

Michelle Cracknell

Michelle Cracknell was appointed Chief Executive of the Pensions Advisory Service in October 2013. Michelle started her career as a pensions adviser for Advisory & Brokerage Services Ltd, where she worked for 20 years becoming a director and qualifying as an Actuary in 1997. Her work involved giving advice to companies on their pension arrangement and she also ran the self-administered pensions team that administered SSAS and SIPPs. In 2007, she joined Skandia as the Strategy Director and continued her interest in investment platforms and pensions when she left and did 3 years as a consultant. She is a regular commentator on pension matters in the media. Throughout her career, her key desire has been to make pensions more accessible to the employees through the provision of information

Non-Executive Directors

Geoff Shanks

Geoff has spent the last 30 years in insurance/financial services as an executive. During his years in the financial service sector, Geoff developed proven risk management, strategic, operational and commercial skills demonstrated in life, pensions, and non-life insurance, in the mutual sector and in quoted blue-chip companies, such as Prudential, NatWest Life and Zurich. He is currently in the process of building a Non-Executive Director portfolio, focusing on FCA/ PRA-regulated businesses and Pension Trustee roles.

Alan Woods

Alan is an independent consultant working in the fields of financial services, public policy and people development. His previous roles include Pensions Policy Director at DWP and Director of Life and Pensions at the Association of British Insurers. He has also acted as a specialist adviser to the Work & Pensions Select Committee and to the Pensions Regulator. Alan is a Governor at the Pensions Policy Institute and also volunteers as an adviser here at TPAS.

Baroness Drake of Shene

Baroness Drake of Shene is a Labour Peer appointed to the House of Lords in 2010. She is a prominent public figure, whose high profile roles included former presidency of the TUC, Chair of PPF Reconsideration Committee, and member of the advisory group to the Independent Public Services Pension Commission (Hutton report, member of the Turner Pension Commission, NED and acting Chair of the Personal Accounts development Authority.

Colleen Keck 

Colleen is a Non-Executive Director and remuneration committee member for TPAS and also a director of private company City Music Limited, and of a number of charities and not for profit organisations. Since 2011, Colleen has been the Deputy Chairman of the Copyright Tribunal. She has also been a lawyer for more than 30 years, most recently at international law firm Allen & Overy LLP, where she was a partner for over 22 years and was the head of the commercial IP group and the life sciences group for much of that time.

Michelle Cracknell

Chief Executive

Michelle Cracknell was appointed Chief Executive of the Pensions Advisory Service in October 2013. Michelle started her career as a pensions adviser for Advisory & Brokerage Services Ltd, where she worked for 20 years becoming a director and qualifying as an Actuary in 1997. Her work involved giving advice to companies on their pension arrangement and she also ran the self-administered pensions team that administered SSAS and SIPPs. In 2007, she joined Skandia as the Strategy Director and continued her interest in investment platforms and pensions when she left and did 3 years as a consultant. She is a regular commentator on pension matters in the media. Throughout her career, her key desire has been to make pensions more accessible to the employees through the provision of information.

Charlotte Jackson

Charlotte joined TPAS as Head of Information and Guidance on 2nd August 2010 from Citizens Advice, where she led on their relationships with key partner organisations across London and the South East regions. As part of this, Charlotte was responsible for the establishment of a number of new bureau services, the development of the London Advice Executive and a range of recession-related partnership initiatives aimed at increasing levels of debt advice and financial capability work amongst target communities. In total, Charlotte spent eight years with the Citizens Advice service, covering a variety of roles from business management consultancy in mergers and restructures across the bureaux network to devising and implementing new projects and initiatives.

Jonathan Kalemera

Jonathan Kalemera is a Chartered Certified Accountant who also holds an MA in Accounting and Finance. He is a highly experienced senior management professional with wide-ranging experience as Finance Director and Interim Chief Executive. He has worked in the public, private and voluntary sectors of the economy, and has experience in making these sectors work together including transferring Central and local Government services to the private sector and managing public sector services delivered in partnership with the private sector.

He has successfully managed financial and other services including IT, Estates and Procurement and has a strong track record of providing strategic direction during significant periods of change

He has had significant experience of specifying, procuring and implementing new finance systems including the development of an online purchase order system linking around 140 offices across England and Wales in 2002 when he was Director of Finance for a Non-Departmental Public Body.

He has key experience on major projects and when he was Director of Finance and Performance at the London Development Agency, among other things, he developed and implemented the financing strategy for acquiring and remediating land for the 2012 Olympic Games and the relocation of individuals and businesses from that site. The total package amounted to £1.5bn including arranging a £500m loan facility which was unprecedented for Regional Development Agencies.

Melinda Riley

Melinda Riley joined TPAS’ senior management team in January 2014 as head of policy, technical and advocacy. Her last role was in the senior management team for pensions policy for DWP. She led policy development and implementation on automatic enrolment information and on broader pensions information policy. Melinda is responsible for ensuring all our advisers have the right technical support and for developing a long-term strategic approach to our major stakeholders. She is also building on TPAS’ reputation to ensure that TPAS’ voice is heard and respected in the pensions world.

If you need more information, please contact us. A pension specialist from our team will be happy to help with whatever pensions-related question you have. Our help is always free.