Our Trustees

Michael Samuel MBE, Chair

Michael is also Co-Founder and Chair of Full Fact (a charity which aims to check and correct facts reported in the news) and Civic (which aims to support a major change in the approach of communities and organisations). He is a Trustee of Helpforce and manages five family Charitable Trusts. In business, over three decades he built up Mayborn Group and was Chair of AGL communications agency. Today, he is Chair of Muddy Puddles and Chair of Murex Energy. In the New Year’s Honours list 2020, Michael was awarded an MBE in recognition for his services to young people and to mental health. He is married with four adult children and lives between London and Somerset.

Catherine Bedford

Catherine is a solicitor specialising in complex financial and private law children’s matters. She joined Lee & Thompson as a Partner in 2007 and founded the firm’s family law group. She is now a member of the Board at Harbottle & Lewis, a leading law firm in the UK. Catherine also sits on the Board at the National Gallery Foundation. Originally from Canada, she studied English Literature at McGill University and then moved to the UK to read Law at Oxford University. She is married with two children.

Tori Cadogan

Tori is the Education Editor for Tatler, where she produces the annual Tatler Schools Guide which reviews the UK’s top 250 Independent schools and features key issues and voices in education. Tori hosts the annual Tatler School Awards and has produced a series of podcasts called Tatler Talks: Education, focusing on wellbeing and mental health within the education system. Tori recently presented and produced a series for Schroders Asset Management, and regularly chairs talks on education and teenage mental health for the Birley Group.

Previously, Tori was a Senior Broadcast Journalist and Producer for BBC News. She has written and contributed to articles for The Telegraph, The Sunday Times & The Economist. Tori is an Ambassador for Made By Dyslexia.

Antonia Cowdry

Antonia has been the HR Director for Barclays UK since 2020.  Prior to that she spent twenty-one years at Deutsche Bank, where her roles included Head of HR for Asia Pacific and the Global Head of HR for the Corporate and Investment Bank. Antonia is passionate about helping organisations to improve their performance whilst making them great places to work.  She draws on her background in management consulting and internal communications to lead and embed sustainable change in dynamic environments. 

She lives in London with her husband and two sons.  

Andrew Evans

Andrew is the co-founder and CEO of Smart Pension, a Fintech with over a million people in the UK saving for their retirement, and presence around the globe. There is a focus on digital innovation, transparency and technology.

Andrew has been on the trustee board of a large multi-academy trust in South London, looking to serve local communities by providing children and young people with the best education possible, as well as being a Governor for Hatcham College in Lewisham.

Andrew is an advisor and supports a number of smaller social enterprises with focus on children, such as Advocacy Academy and MyPocketSkill.

Pamela Hutchinson OBE

Pamela is Global Head of Diversity and Inclusion at Bloomberg. She has over 20 years’ experience in managing diversity across engineering, financial services, technology and media. She has provided coaching and guidance to senior leaders, while promoting and progressing inclusion across the business. Pamela has been instrumental in establishing ethnic diversity as an imperative across the City, and has campaigned prominently for equality. She has featured in the 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 Powerlist of Britain’s most influential people of African and African Caribbean heritage. In February 2020, she was inducted as a member of the Executive Leadership Council and appointed to the Employers Board at The Global Institute for Women’s Leadership (GIWL) at King’s College London. Pamela received an OBE in the Queens New Year Honours List 2022 for services to Diversity and Inclusion in the Financial Services Sector.

Anne-Marie Huby

Anne-Marie was co-founder and managing director of the charitable giving platform JustGiving until its acquisition by Blackbaud Inc in 2017. Anne-Marie then joined another purpose-led business, online learning platform MyTutor, which she chairs.

Initially trained as a journalist in her native Belgium, she began her career on national radio, before joining the humanitarian group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in the early nineties. Having launched MSF’s international communications and fundraising team in Brussels, Anne-Marie served as executive director of MSF UK for seven years. In her spare time, she runs a local campaign for renewable energy in North London. 

Namrata Kamdar

Namrata Kamdar is an entrepreneur with deep expertise in developing and growing personal care/beauty brands and businesses globally. 

Since 2002, Namrata has worked internationally for various consumer goods companies including Coke, Pepsico and Unilever; on several billion euro brands, specialising in marketing to those identifying as female and to multicultural audiences. 

In 2020, Namrata founded boutique British beauty brand Plenaire. Plenaire is an award-winning, ethical skincare brand whose mission is to connect beauty to emotional & mental well-being, for a natively digital Gen Z audience. 

Namrata holds a bachelor's degree in Business from the University of Delhi and an MBA from the McCombs school of Business at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in Consumer Psychology and Global Business Management. She lives in Fulham, London with her husband and two children.

Professor Linda Mayes

Linda is the Chair of the Yale Child Study Center in the Yale School of Medicine and Chief of Child Psychiatry in the Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital. She is the Arnold Gesell Professor of Child Psychiatry, Pediatrics, and Psychology at the Child Study Center, and Deputy Dean of Professionalism and Leadership at the Yale School of Medicine. Linda is also Director of Anna Freud - Yale Child Study Center Bridge Program. She oversees a collaborative master’s programme in developmental psychopathology and neuroscience, offered collaboratively between Yale and University College London (UCL). She is also a child and adult psychoanalyst, and a member of the faculty of the Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis. 

Peter Oppenheimer

Peter is Chief Global Equity Strategist and Head of Macro Research in Europe. He joined Goldman Sachs in 2002, was named Managing Director in 2003 and Partner in 2006. Peter previously worked as Managing Director and Chief Investment Strategist at HSBC, was Head of European Strategy at James Capel, Chief Economic Strategist at Hambros Bank, and began his career as an economist at Greenwells in 1985. Peter is also a Trustee of Mitzvah Day, a charity bringing people together from all backgrounds through Jewish-led social action, and a member of the Motability Endowment Trust Investment Committee.  

Daniel Peltz OBE

Daniel is CEO of London Freeholds Ltd, following a career in real estate and asset management with GUS Property Management Ltd and British Land. He is a Governor of Birkbeck College and chairs the Estates Strategy Committee, and an Honorary Fellow of both King’s College and Birkbeck College. Daniel is a Trustee of the National Gallery Foundation, MCC Foundation, Warburg Institute, Music in Secondary Schools Trust, Institute of Jewish Studies at UCL, and City of London School Bursary Trust. He is a Governor of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies at Oxford University, and panellist on the Education Panel of the Wolfson Foundation. In 2015, he was awarded the OBE for philanthropic and charitable services. In his spare time, he is a novelist.

Professor Steve Pilling

Steve is Head of the Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology and Director of the Centre for Outcomes Research and Effectiveness at UCL. He is also Director of the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health (NCCMH), which is concerned with the implementation of evidence-based practice, development of the mental health workforce, and the future development and delivery of mental health services. For 15 years, Steve has had a central role in the development of NICE mental health guidelines. His research interests include trials of complex interventions, psychological treatment (particularly treatments for depression and the competences required to deliver effective interventions), systematic reviews in mental health and their use in clinical guidelines, and the use of routinely collected data to inform treatment selection.

Dominic Shorthouse

Dominic was founder and managing partner of the mid-market private equity firm, Englefield Capital, until its sale to the Brenninkmeijer family. He was a Partner of Warburg Pincus & Co until January 2001. Dominic graduated from Oxford University with an MA in Latin and Greek literature and philosophy, and has an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is now a farmer and an active private investor.

Sarah Wood OBE

Following an academic career, Sarah co-founded Unruly, a global video advertising marketplace acquired by News Corp in 2015. She is a former board member of Superdry plc, sits on the boards of Tech Nation and City Ventures, and is an ambassador for The Prince's Trust ‘Women Supporting Women’ programme. Sarah has been named Veuve Clicquot Businesswoman of the Year, City AM Entrepreneur of the Year, and has been awarded an OBE for services to technology and innovation. Having co-founded City Unrulyversity, a free pop-up university inspiring the next generation of digital entrepreneurs, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from City University. Sarah is also an active angel investor, a mentor at UCL’s Hatchery, and author of ‘Stepping Up: How to accelerate your leadership potential’, which calls for more diverse and empathetic business leaders.