“The Diploma gave me the skills and confidence to take on the next challenges”
September 29, 2025
At this year’s ILM Conference, Caroline Myers, Legacies Manager at Yorkshire Air Ambulance (YAA), was announced as the inaugural recipient of the ILM Diploma High Achiever Award 2025.
Having attained an incredible 97% (the highest ever result) in her studies for the Diploma in Charity Legacy Management, Caroline says she felt “very proud and privileged” to have received the award. Here, she talks about how she has been transferring that knowledge and understanding into her daily role.
Having spent her early career in marketing and communications, Caroline’s route to her current role came after she began volunteering at an animal charity. The position included managing grant applications and, in 2016, she spotted that YAA was looking for a grants officer. Joining on a part-time basis, the following year she took on legacies, a role which in 2021 became her sole focus.
“I achieved the CiCLA qualification in 2018 and appreciated how useful and valuable the ILM study courses are,” she says. “I’m a believer in life-long learning and, after six years in a legacy administration role, studying for the Diploma qualification appealed as I felt it would help me develop the wider skills and charity sector knowledge needed to progress professionally.
“The self-directed study gave me the flexibility to work at my own pace, so it was easy to fit around work, home and social commitments. Being able to select from a diverse range of optional study units was also good, as it meant I could tailor my learning to my own skills, needs and interests.”
Recognising there was a lot to learn, Caroline studied one unit at a time over a three-four month period, combining her studies between the regular study time which YAA supported her with as part of her learning and development, as well as working in her own time.
“I found reading around the study topics was so interesting and incredibly useful, and essential when it came to completing assignments. I will keep many of the books for future reference, as they were so enlightening, particularly on ‘soft skills’ topics such as emotional / social intelligence, body language etc. I completed the qualification over two years, which was the right pace for me,” she adds.
Caroline is very grateful to the ILM Corporate Partners who supported her Diploma studies through the mentoring programme, continuing: “ILM Director David Hawes was very generous with his time and so easy to talk with about the Financial Management and Accounting unit and, as a fellow air ambulance colleague, it was great to make that professional connection too.”
She also paid tribute to Robert Nieri at Shoosmiths and Roman Kubiak at Hugh James, who led the revision sessions, adding: “They are at the top of their game and I so enjoyed talking with them, they were patience and professionalism personified.”
Closer to home, Caroline says she made the most of her internal charity resources; networking with colleagues, asking for advice and information from finance, human resources as well as YAA’s Senior Management Team and Trustees on more general charity management issues, such as HR policies, legal compliance and ethics.
She cites talking to the Finance Director about ethical investment policies as being a typical example of being able to ask questions that would not normally come up in day-to-day legacy work.
With legacies contributing over half of the YAA’s income, Caroline says not only were colleagues genuinely interested in the questions she was asking, but their input really helped when researching assignments.
Her internal networking helped both raise the profile of legacies management within the charity and of the ILM’s Diploma course and she says: “Previously, legacies management was seen as more of an administration procedure but now people understand much more about it and I proudly include the distinctive red Diploma logo in my email signatures.”
Caroline concludes: “At the end of each unit there is a reflective exercise which asks you to consider what went well, what proved challenging, and what strengths and weaknesses became apparent. Although there were no points awarded for completing this section, I found it fundamentally integral to the whole learning experience and possibly spent as much time considering this as I did the assignments themselves. It often helped me think about and understand my own emotional responses and behaviours and how they may impact interactions with others.
“I feel I am much more self-aware now and that’s especially important when liaising with lay executors, who are bereaved and likely to be in a very vulnerable position. Understanding my own reactions better helps me meet the challenge of dealing with those situations.
“Overall the Diploma was an excellent learning experience and, thanks to support from my line manager, I really enjoyed having the opportunity to undertake it. I feel like I am a more rounded and self-aware colleague, legacy peer, and public-facing representative of my charity. The Diploma has certainly given me the skills and confidence to take on the next challenges in my legacies career.”