Meet The Team – Joanna Larsen-Newell
03 Nov 2025
Blog
When did you join Oliver Wight?
1st October 2025
Tell us about yourself! What does your day-to-day role at Oliver Wight involve?
I have joined the Oliver Wight team as Head of Finance which has quite a wide remit, the main areas cover:
- Overseeing day to day financial operations, such as client invoicing, paying suppliers and employees, processing the associates’ transactions and interacting with the wider OW network.
- Keeping the management team informed of the business’ progress via management accounts, commentary and financial metrics.
- Maintaining the business’ financial health via cashflow forecasting, currency management and credit control.
- Supporting forward planning and strategy decisions.
- Overseeing our compliance obligations like HMRC filings, annual LLP filings and tax returns.
What attracted you to the role?
Having previously worked for a consultancy business, I really enjoyed being surrounded by people who are passionate about the work they do and seeing how they support their clients. As consultants they’re subject matter experts so I really value being surrounded by that wealth of knowledge and I take it as a learning opportunity.
With it being a similar operating environment for me, I feel like it brings a really nice mix of same but different experience and I have enjoyed seeing how another consultancy business operates. The size of the business really appealed to me too, I love the variety that comes with working for a small business. It provides a really enjoyable mix of regular finance duties as well as other projects cropping up as and when depending on the current focus.
Prior to joining the Oliver Wight team what did you do?
My previous role was also Head of Finance for a consultancy business based in central London which I really enjoyed but found the remote working setup a bit lonely. Previous to that I had setup and run my own accountancy business which was a brilliant experience, a huge learning curve and it really ignited my passion for working directly with business owners. Both these roles had been working from home so I’m happy to be back in an office part of the time with the OW team around me.
What three words best describe you?
- Reliable – having participated in a 360 review process at my previous role, everyone who responded put this as their top attribute for me! So I feel that I can safely say that this is accurate… assuming that I haven’t jinxed it and will now miss an important deadline!
- Conscientious – this is one I would choose for myself and maybe it’s too similar to the one above, but I feel that I always strive to do a good job in all aspects of my life, so I hope that this comes across in my work.
- Positive – I generally stay quite chirpy and not much gets me down. And while some people would call me quiet, but I hope they see that as a quiet positivity and I would hope that people find me a cheerful presence.
What is your idea of a utopian workplace?
An office where there is tea on tap, or ideally I could have a bottomless tea pot on my desk, or best of all a butler who will bring me a fresh cup of tea on the hour, every hour…. and a biscuit if I’m having a hard day.
What emoji best represents you?
I catch myself using this far too much, as it’s my usual way of communicating a standard “Yep/ Got that/ No problem” response without wanting to waste any more words.
What are your interests outside of work?
I have 2 boys, aged 9 and 6, so I spend many happy hours with them outside of work, I book most of my annual leave around the school holidays so we have fun days out, or days at home spent crafting, building lego, staging nerf battles, building dens, marble runs and train tracks.
When I am not looking after my boys, I attempt to go running, I’m part of a local running club, I joined initially to try and increase my speed and learn some new running routes. Two years later, I have accepted I will never be a quick runner but I’m trying to increase my distances instead. I don’t like to say it out loud but I’d like to try to run a half marathon in 2026.
You’re an animal for a day – what are you and why?
The giant squid has the largest eyes in the whole animal kingdom, they are the size of dinner plates. I am very short-sighted and cannot do anything or go anywhere without my glasses or contact lenses. So the thought of having eyes that big which surely must give them great vision sounds amazing. Although I’m not a big fan of swimming, so maybe this giant squid could have a shore day and hang out in a good vantage point keeping a close eye on everything and everyone around me.
Share with us the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given.
While I wish that I could share some priceless piece of financial wisdom, but I feel that much of my knowledge has come from my own experience so I don’t really have any prized pieces of financial advice. However as well as wrangling numbers and spreadsheets, I’ve spent large chunks of the last decade wrangling small boys, and a piece of parenting advice which has stayed with me, which I feel is relevant from toddlers up to teenagers, and I often fall back on in challenging moments is: “they need your love the most when they deserve it the least”.
