New trustees appointed as Harpur Trust shakes up its governance
The Harpur Trust has appointed nine new trustees through an open recruitment process after an 18-month shake-up of its governance structure.
The governance review is intended to streamline decision making and to make best use of the time of volunteers and staff through a smaller, more diverse and inclusive Board.
Trustees are unpaid volunteers who are legally responsible for the charity. The new trustees have a range of backgrounds and are specialists or leaders from a wide range of fields, including business, education, research and law. Many of them live in and around Bedford. All of them went through an open recruitment and selection process, including advertisements in the local and national media and social media.
The trustees provide leadership and direction to The Trust and make sure the charity’s income is spent wisely and the endowment is carefully invested.
The new trustees are:
- Tanaka Chiimba – an entrepreneur with a background in business strategy and transformation, with experience in the public, private, and not-for-profit sectors in the UK and Africa.
- Stephen Dance – a Cabinet Office and Treasury Director with long term education and charity governance experience.
- Gregg Davies – a former headteacher and education director, with extensive experience on school governing bodies and as a schools’ inspector.
- Victoria Espley – has extensive leadership experience within the education and university sector from both voluntary and executive roles.
- David Pye – a specialist senior researcher in local government with significant council and school governance experience.
- Sebastian Reger – a solicitor in the City of London specialising in investment management with a variety of voluntary sector experience.
- Amandeep Rehlon – a Head of Division at The Bank of England with charity and governance experience at a Foundation supporting two London state secondary schools.
- James Rolton – a senior real estate investment director with experience in a range of non-profit roles.
- Kelly Young –General Counsel & Company Secretary, Executive Director of Marie Curie, and corporate solicitor.
As part of the review, the size of the Board of Trustees reduced from 25 to 17, and the chairs of our schools stepped down as trustees to focus more of their time on the governance of their schools.
Chair Shirley Jackson (BMS) stepped down in January, and Chairs Neil Harris (BGS), John Holland Kaye (BS) and Sarah Wheeler (Pilgrims) all stepped down on 10 July. To maintain strong links, four trustees have been appointed as Link Governors to our schools, sitting both on a school governing body and on the Board of Trustees: Stephen Dance (BMS), Gregg Davies (Pilgrims) David Pye (BGS) and George Ratcliffe (BS).
Chair of The Harpur Trust Rhian Castell said: “I am delighted we have been able to recruit such a highly skilled group of people to join our Board, and from such a diverse range of backgrounds.
“Although we have recruited trustees through public events for many years, we have never advertised through the local and national media and social media for such a large group at one time. Being a trustee is a challenging role, and is entirely unpaid, so I am grateful for the work that they do for our community.
“I also want to thank all those former trustees who have worked so hard for us as volunteers for so long. We are lucky that so many of them have agreed to stay on our school governing bodies, so their expertise will not be lost to us.”
Find out more on Our Trustees page.