James Donaldson Group appoints Arlene Cairns as new chief financial officer

Arlene Cairns

Taking up her new role yesterday, Ms Cairns joins from Aviva, where she was chief finance operations officer responsible for leading global finance operations as well as leading their global finance transformation. Arlene joined Aviva three years ago from Alliance Trust Savings where she was CFO.

Prior to this, Ms Cairns held several senior finance and strategy roles across the UK, Ireland and Australia working for Westpac Institutional Bank, Allied Irish Bank, RSA and Zurich Financial Services. This is in addition to her time as a management consultant at EY in the UK and Australia, where her focus was on transformation and performance improvement. Arlene will succeed Andrew Donaldson as CFO following his promotion to CEO in April 2020.

Andrew Donaldson, CEO of the James Donaldson Group, said: “I couldn’t be more thrilled to welcome Arlene to the Group, where she will undoubtedly drive and modernise our finance operations. Arlene has a proven track record of leading finance functions and driving strategic transformational change and improvements in global organisations. Her extensive corporate experience makes her well suited to take on the role of CFO and an excellent addition to our senior leadership team. I look forward to seeing the impact of her presence as our new CFO.”

Arlene Cairns added: “I’m excited to be joining the James Donaldson Group’s leadership team and leading finance, while supporting Andrew and chairman Michael Donaldson to continue the growth and development of the JDS Group and contribute to the future success of the business.”

Additionally, Ms Cairns was a board director for homeless charity Social Bite, and part of the team delivering the Social Bite Communities village in Edinburgh in 2018. She is also part of the University of Edinburgh Women in Executive Leadership Group.