About Us

Get to know us

Meet the team

Shelly Adams

Managing Partner

I’ve been a senior finance business partner in FMCG for household brands, in commerical, operational and strategic roles. I’m here to listen to your challenges and find a programme that meets your specific needs. I keep things running smoothly and research each new project to make sure we tailor the exercises and case-studies to your situation.

Oliver Deacon

Associate Partner, Europe

I’m a former Microsoft Finance Director and a qualified PCC Executive Coach. I bring a refreshing and inspiring perspective to modern finance, helping teams to manage change through integrating the skills of the next generation of finance.

Iain Dewson

Partner Europe & Americas

I’ve been a finance leader and run a global finance academy for 2,000 people across 28 countries from the L&D function. I saw first-hand the positive impact on people and teams FBP has. So much so that in 2019 I joined as a full-time partner to help spread the message.

Amanda Carlyle

Associate Partner, Europe

I’ve trained over 20,000 finance professionals over the last 15 years, across all sectors and all levels. I specialise in finance business partnering, improving shared service centres, and coaching. I joined the team in 2021 to support FBP Academy delivery and coaching

Damien Smith

Associate Partner, APAC & Middle East

I have spent 25 years in the corporate world working in oil & gas, retail and Vodafone, O2 Telefonica, Virgin, BlackBerry and Sony. I’ve worked in commercial finance, HR and Legal, finally realising an ambition to switch to sales and marketing.

We’ve seen both sides

We don’t run finance courses. Your people are good enough accountants. We all work from direct experience, not from text-books. And we don’t give you theories, just simple, practical and easy to use tools that work in all situations and work fast!

We’ve all been senior finance leaders, but our unique approach to finance business partner training comes from our direct experience leading sales and marketing teams and being partnered by finance.

A global family company

We work globally with big companies, but you’re working with a family company.

Shelly and Andy began in the UK, followed by Iain, and Andrew Jepson is in Australia. After many years of working alone delivering finance business partner training on different sides of the World, our shared passion brought us together.

Since then we’ve become business partners and friends. We are proud of what we do, and we never forget why we are doing it.

We don’t run finance courses.

Your people are good enough accountants.

Andy Shambrook FCA, Founder

Meet our Founder Andy Shambrook. He started off working life as an auditor, became a finance business partner, head of finance and finally finance director of Dulux Paints UK, part of ICI/AkzoNobel.

He then spent 3 years as Dulux sales director, selling to major UK retailers, distributors, and independents.

Then for 2 years he was Director of New Business, with a cross-functional team of sales, marketing, IT, finance and logistics.
He launched e-commerce selling direct to consumers with home delivery, and opened up multiple new distribution routes with grocers, department stores, and even fashion retailers.

In 2014 Andy and his best friend raised £500k venture capital and launched an online spend anywhere gift card powered by MasterCard. The business continues to grow to this day bringing exciting new innovation in that market.

Andy also started The Finance Business Partner in 2014, and in the last few years it’s grown exponentially.

It’s for finance people but it’s not a finance programme. He designed it to show you what we learned in sales, marketing, e-commerce and a VC-backed start-up that we wished we’d know when we worked in finance.

For many years it was just Andy, flying all over the World from the UK. Then in 2018 he joined forces with Andrew Jepson, who wrote the book Compliance to Commercial and designed and runs Australia’s most successful FBP course. Iain Dewson joined the team in 2019 after running a global finance academy and bringing a wealth of experience in senior finance roles.

They grew the business rapdily and then lockdown hit – disaster for a face-to-face training business! So we moved it all online and created a blended programme that our clients loved. We’re now busier than ever and have gathered a select team of people with similar backgrounds to us to help us reach more finance people around the World.

We all work from direct experience, not from text-books. And we don’t give you theories, just simple, practical and easy to use tools that work in all situations and work fast!

See you there!