gunnercooke LLP

Charity & Philanthropy

Partner

Michele combines a passion for helping charities and not for profits succeed, with an enthusiasm for advising philanthropists and social investors on how best to support the causes close to their hearts.

With a 30-year career spanning contentious and non-contentious areas of the Law, Michele has developed a niche where she combines her practical and legal skills to great effect in the fast-developing and increasingly vital areas within the Third Sector and Civil Society.  She aims to equip charities to best face the challenges and demands upon their services while ensuring that those who wish to support charities do so in the most effective and tax-efficient way.

Michele understands the sector from the inside out, having worked in-house with a major national military charity and at senior executive level for a start-up heritage charity.  She is able to bring wisdom, insight, and pragmatism to every situation, and is particularly well sought after by charities facing reputational and operational problems.  On the Philanthropy side, social investors and families wishing to create charitable foundations value her knowledge of what truly brings about change and the access she has to a wide range of relevant networks.

Previous Law Firms

Partner, Pothecary Witham Weld, Church & Charities (2018–21) Solicitor, Morrisons LLP, Private Client and Charities (2017–18) Director of Development, The Choral Foundation, Hampton Court Palace (2012–16) In-House Solicitor, The Royal British Legion (2010–12) Associate and Partner, Peters & Peters, White Collar Crime (1990–98) Trainee Solicitor, JP Malnick & Co (1988–90)