Jo Stocks

Personal statement

Jo is Chief Financial Officer at Bath Spa University, and has a wealth of experience in Finance, much of it within the Higher Education sector. She is also a Fellow Member of the Association of Chartered Management Accountants (CIMA).

She has been working at Bath Spa since March 2021, when she joined us as Director of Strategic Planning on a short-term contract, having left the University of Surrey where she spent 11 years. Jo was appointed Finance Director at Bath Spa in January 2022, and then progressed to Chief Financial Officer in September 2022, with overall responsibility for Finance, IT & Digital Transformation and the Strategic Projects & Change team.

At Surrey, Jo worked across a number of Finance roles, latterly supporting the Chief Operating Officer with creating, implementing and monitoring the financial strategy and planning for the COO’s portfolio of professional services departments.

Jo also led some significant business change projects, including redefining the capital planning process and programme to be more aligned to strategic aims, initiating the university’s workload planning process and developing an activity-based costing approach to measuring schools performance building out from the compliance driven TRAC data and process.

Before entering Higher Education, Jo managed the finances of some not-for-profit start-up companies, including a nursery management company and a sports events company (The Tour of Britain) where the importance of working capital management and customer/supplier relationships was finely tuned.

Jo studied French at the University of Hull, and it was her sandwich year placement with James Capel stockbroking firm in Paris which led her into Finance. Jo took a five year ‘break’ from Finance and general management when she worked overseas in Turkey and New Zealand as a teacher (CELTA).

In her spare time, Jo enjoys sports including golf and football, running and doing parkrun, as well as walking her very energetic Labrador, Maya.