Meet The Team at BlueZebra
Meet our professional services and tech specialists who are keen to provide you with a solution!
Sarah Charlton - Co Founder
Sarah has a BSc (Hons) in Applied Accounting and is a Fellow member of the Association of Chartered and Certified Accountants. Her career spans over 30 years working within the legal sector for both small and medium sized law firms, fulfilling roles from practice manager through to COFA. During her career she has worked with a number of legal regulators, professional bodies and government organisations.
Sarah is a regular speaker and author on tech solutions within the professional service; accountancy, legal and so forth. Sarah combines her wealth of experience in change management and tech solutions. She has a keen interest in crypto assets as well as AI.
Before starting a family in 2009 Sarah was an Army Reservist, having served overseas to include a number of operational tours: serving in Bosnia and Iraq where her financial management experience was utilised by the Coalition Provisional Authority. Sarah dealt directly with local ministers to assist and oversee the budgets for all local provinces within the southern region of Iraq.
Sarah thrives on opportunities to share her knowledge and experience with others whilst bringing value through improvements and efficiencies which aligned well with her more recent role as Chief Executive Officer. She is often referred to by her peers as the Mary Poppins of the profession!
.jpg)
James Wright - Co Founder
James’ career in Legal Finance spans over 25 years. Working in medium to large law firms, managing their legal finance functions.
His knowledge and experience in understanding the SRA Accounts Rules has enabled him to provide extensive support to the COFA and build processes and procedures to enable compliance.
James has managed a large number of SRA audits, resulting in no material breach reports being submitted to the SRA.
James measures his success in Legal Finance on the teams he has managed, being a mentor and support to them to enable their own success.
James has also been a Tutor for the Institute of Legal Finance and Management for their Diploma course, which during his time saw the number of students passing their final exam rise to 90%.
James has also written practice and guidance notes both internally and for external clients and legal software providers.
His awards include employee of year, office go to for two years, support team of the year and the Institute of Legal Finance and Management Aran bowl winner for outstanding contribution to the Institute.
David Payne - Co Founder
David graduated from the University of South Wales with a Bsc Hons Degree in Renewable Energy Systems.
His current roles include CTO of Zebra EM, they are a software management company; developing and managing software in the Renewables and Waste Industries.
Also leading the engineering department at Qube Renewables; designing, building and managing small scale renewable energy projects around the world. Previous roles include Financial Administrator at New Law Solicitors, Operations and Software Engineer at Sony UK Technology Centre as well as spending 5 years in the Royal Navy Reserves travelling to Antarctica, Chile, Cyprus and the Falkland Islands. He has recently got professional registration becoming an Incorporated Engineer at the Institute of Engineering and Technology.
Julia Charlton – Consultant
Julia has over ten years experience within university IT: procuring hardware and software (e.g. Adobe, Bloomberg, Stata); setting up and maintaining desktops and laptops (PC and Mac); 1st and 2nd line support (staff and students).
Had previously spent 5 years teaching English in Turkey (strong interest in e-learning and training), then on return to the UK passed a PGDip in web and interactive media.Over ten years experience within university IT: procuring hardware and software (e.g. Adobe, Bloomberg, Stata); setting up and maintaining desktops and laptops (PC and Mac); 1st and 2nd line support (staff and students). Had previously spent 5 years teaching English in Turkey (strong interest in e-learning and training), then on return to the UK passed a PGDip in web and interactive media.
Help Desk Support • Apple Certified • Teamwork • Troubleshooting • Bloomberg for Education