Catherine Eve Poole is a British writer. She was Interim CEO of the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland in 2023-4, and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2022. Prior to that, she was the Third Church Estates Commissioner from April 2018 to October 2021, one of the most senior lay people in the Church of England. She was the first female Chairman of the Board of Governors at Gordonstoun, a private school in Moray, Scotland, from 2015-2021. Her books include Robot Souls, Capitalism's Toxic Assumptions and Leadersmithing, which was Highly Commended in the 2018 Business Book of the Year Awards. She received an OBE for services to education and gender equality in the 2023 New Year Honours List.

The Church Commissioners is a body which administers the property assets of the Church of England. It was established in 1948 and combined the assets of Queen Anne's Bounty, a fund dating from 1704 for the relief of poor clergy, and of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners formed in 1836. The Church Commissioners are a registered charity regulated by the Charity Commission for England and Wales, and are liable for the payment of pensions to retired clergy whose pensions were accrued before 1998.