Mr Basi Akpabio, OW
Member of the School’s Education Committee
Basi is Creative Director at Agatha Christie Ltd with a focus on Film and TV. He has been part of the team responsible for bringing new audiences to the ‘Queen of Crime’ with English language adaptations such as And Then There Were None, Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?, as well as Disney’s big screen Poirot franchise. Globally he has helped develop shows in Sweden, France, Japan, South Korea, India and China. Basi has a BA in History from Girton College, Cambridge and is a former Westminster pupil. He lives in London with his husband.
Dr Sarah Anderson
Safeguarding Link Governor
Member of the School’s Education Committee
Sarah works for the UK Health Security Agency where she co-leads the Programme Delivery Unit. Prior to this she was National Lead for Tuberculosis (TB) Strategy and TB Programme Delivery. She previously worked as a regional epidemiologist, a consultant in Health Protection, a clinician, and a GP. Alongside Sarah’s paid work, she is a medical adviser to the Royal Geographical Society where she advises expeditions on medical issues and co-edits the ‘Oxford Handbook of Expedition and Wilderness Medicine.
Chris Barrie (Nominated Common Room Governor)
Chris is Group Director of Corporate Affairs and Investor Relations at Associated British Foods where he is responsible for reputation and brand positioning, and for external and internal communications. He has worked in financial communications as an advisor for many years and was a journalist at the Guardian newspaper. He is married to Elspeth, a book editor, who served on the Westminster School Parents Committee and sings with the Westminster Choral Society. Their three sons are former Westminster pupils.
Ms Maria Bentley
Maria has over 40 years of experience in global financial services having worked at Credit Suisse First Boston, Goldman Sachs, UBS and Nomura. She has held senior investment banking roles and HR director roles during that time, and is now a portfolio non-executive director serving on the boards of Picton Property Income Limited, RBC Global Asset Management (UK) Ltd, Dalwa Capital Markets Europe Limited and Peel Hunt Limited. Maria is a graduate of Oxford University, lives on a farm in Dorset with her husband and has a daughter and a son who is a former Westminster pupil.
Mr Nabeel Bhanji, OW
Interim Chair of the School’s Finance and General Purposes and a member of the Investments Committees
Nabeel is a Senior Portfolio Manager at Elliott Investment Management, an investment firm with more than $50 billion in assets under management where he has a global mandate focused on activist and special situations investing. Prior to joining Elliott in 2012, Nabeel worked in private equity at Apax Partners and Goldman Sachs. Nabeel attended both the Westminster Under School and the Great School and holds a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Balliol College, Oxford University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He lives in London with his wife and two daughters.
Mr Trevor Bradley
Trevor spent 13 years as a portfolio manager, Partner and Main Board Director at investment management firm Ruffer LLP. Prior to that he worked at McKinsey & Company and was a portfolio manager at Mercury Asset Management. He is now a Non-Executive Director of Abrdn Diversified Income and Growth Trust, and a Director of a private family investment company, where he chairs the Investment Committee. He is also a Trustee Director of BBC Children in Need and chairs their Investment Committee, too. He is a Justice of the Peace, sitting in Westminster and City Magistrates’ Courts and holds a first class degree in Natural Sciences from Queens’ College, Cambridge.
Mr Edward Cartwright, OW
Estates Link Governor and Interim Health and Safety Link Governor
Member of the Finance and General Purposes, the Governance and Nominations and the Investments Committees
Edward has over three decades’ experience in global financial markets. He spent 20 years in investment banking and over a decade more in fund management. Roles included Head of Japanese equities at Jefferies & Co, Global Head of Research at Commerzbank Securities, and Head of Listed Investment Companies at LGT Capital Partners. He became CEO of Arcus in 2019 and is Chair of Hub Residential Ltd and of Squarestone Operations.
Ms Jessica Cecil
Special Educational Needs and Disability Link Governor
Member of the School’s Education Committee
Jessica is a leading media industry figure and an expert in the field of disinformation, currently working as a consultant to media and tech companies. She founded the Trusted News Initiative (TNI), the world’s only alliance of major international tech companies and news organisations to counter the most harmful disinformation in real time. Jessica was for many years at the BBC and served as Chief of Staff to four Directors-General. She also led a 30 partner-strong initiative to get the world to learn how to code. The result was the creation, manufacture and distribution of a codeable computer, the micro:bit. 6 million micro:bits have now been sold in 50 countries and are used by 25m children from Singapore to Finland. Jessica’s background is as a news journalist and documentary maker. She was an international news producer and assistant editor of BBC Newsnight. She is an Emmy nominee for the prime time TV science documentary Human Instinct. Jessica is a Non-Executive Director of the Digital Catapult, the UK authority on advanced digital technology. Jessica is also a Trustee of the University of Bristol, where she chairs the Equity, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Oversight Committee. She sits on the Council of Advisors for RAND Europe and is an Adjunct Fellow of the Queen Elizabeth II Leadership School at Chatham House, the Royal Institute for International Affairs.
Mr John Colenutt
Deputy Chair
Chair of the School’s Audit, Risk and Compliance Committee
Member of the Education and the Remuneration Committees
John taught Economics at Westminster School after graduating from Oxford in 1984. He then worked as an economist at HM Treasury before moving to the City in the late 1980s, where he spent most of his career as a partner at the investment bank Cazenove (later JPMorgan Cazenove), with roles including Chief Operating Officer. In 2010, John joined the educational charity Teach First as Chief Operating Officer, and later became acting Chief Executive Officer. In 2014, he moved to Genomics plc, a tech spin out from Oxford University, taking the business from start-up through early growth phase. He recently studied for a Masters in history at King’s College, and is now COO and Director of the ‘healthtech’ business, Mobilise Care Ltd.
Professor Maggie Dallman OBE
Diversity and Inclusion Link Governor
Member of the School’s Education Committee
Maggie is Vice President (International), Associate Provost (Academic Partnerships) and Professor of Immunology at Imperial College London. In her Vice President and Associate Provost roles, Maggie is the academic lead on, respectively, the College’s International Relations, Schools Outreach, and Societal Engagement Strategies. Maggie joined Imperial College in 1994 as a lecturer in the Department of Biology, coming from the University of Oxford where she had held a Nuffield Medical Research Foundation Junior Research Fellowship followed by an MRC Senior Research Fellowship. At Imperial College she became Reader in Immunoregulation in 1996 and Professor of Immunology in 1999. Maggie has held a variety of senior positions at Imperial College, becoming Dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences in 2008. Maggie took up her roles as Associate Provost (Academic Partnerships) and Vice President (International) in January 2015 and February 2018 respectively. Maggie has over 35 years of experience in experimental research in university and industrial environments. Her interests have focused on understanding dysregulated and inappropriate immune responses with the goal of developing novel biomarkers and therapeutic interventions. Maggie participates in a range of external activities: currently, she is Director and Trustee of the Francis Crick Institute and adviser to several International Universities.
Dr Tristram Hunt
Member of the School’s Archives and Education Committees
Dr Tristram Hunt is the Director of the V&A, the world’s leading museum of art, design and performance. Since taking up the post in 2017, he has championed design education in UK schools, encouraged debate around the history of the museum’s global collections and overseen the transition to a multi-site museum. Formerly Member of Parliament for Stoke-on-Trent he has a doctorate in Victorian history from Cambridge University and is the author of several books, including, most recently, the Radical Potter: Josiah Wedgwood and the Transformation of Britain (2021).
Ms Penelope Kirk
Penelope has been involved in education for the past thirty eight years, twenty five of these in headship. Currently, she works as a Head’s mentor and education consultant both in the UK and overseas. Penelope has been a Team Inspector with ISI and is a former Vice Chairman of IAPS. She is also a Governor at an HMC and IAPS school in Hampshire and is the Education Advisor to The Banda School in Nairobi, Kenya. Additionally, Penelope is an Ambassador for the Murray Parish Trust, a charity specifically involved in raising funds for paediatric support. She lives in Hampshire and can often be found fly fishing on the banks of the Rivers Itchen and Test.
Dr Dominic Luckett
Member of the School’s Education Committee
Educated at the University of Leicester and Magdalen College, Oxford, Dominic was Head of History at Harrow and then Deputy Head at Worth School. He was appointed Headmaster of Mill Hill in 2007 before becoming Headmaster of Sherborne in 2016. He has published various articles on early Tudor history, has been a governor of several schools and was a member of the Council of the University of Leicester between 2009 and 2018. In 2019, he was named as the Tatler Best Head of a Public School.
Mr David Mahoney
Formerly Chief Operating Officer at the England and Wales Cricket Board and awarded an MBE in 2020 for services to sport, David joined Manchester Square Partners in January 2024. David acts as a sounding board and advisor for senior leaders. He supports them with business challenges, career management and helping them to be in control of their futures, particularly during periods of change or transition. David has a particular interest in the issues that arise at the interface of the public and private spheres, purpose in leadership and the challenges that come with leadership in the public spotlight. He also enjoys working with COOs, chiefs of staff, and seconds in command to help them navigate the particular challenges of those roles. David works across several sectors, including sports, tech and finance. He worked on media and tech issues for over a decade at Ofcom and in government and across a number of high profile policy and regulatory matters in media, tech and sport. He was previously a lawyer and is an accredited coach. David is also a board member of Sport England and England Netball. In his spare time, he is a sports and golf addict and very amateur photographer.
Mr Richard Neville-Rolfe, OW
Chair of the School’s Investments Committee
Member of both the Finance and General Purposes Committee and the Estates Strategic Committee
Richard was educated at Westminster School from 1972-1975 and attended New College, Oxford from 1976-1979 where he obtained Honour Moderations in Mathematics and graduated with honours in Politics, Philosophy and Economics. He worked at James Capel & Co from 1985 to 1990, the HSBC Group from 1990 to 2003 and Odey Asset Management from 2003 to 2008. He is currently an Investment Director at Odey Wealth Management. He is married with three children.
Mrs Claire Oulton
Interim Link Governor for Westminster Under School
Chair of the School’s Education Committee
Member of the Remuneration Committee
Claire Oulton read Modern History at Oxford and then did her PGCE at King’s College, London. She started her teaching career at Benenden and, after four years there, was appointed Head of History at Charterhouse, a role she held for six years. In 1994, at the age of 32, she was appointed Head of St Catherine’s Bramley (750 pupils, 4-18, all girls, boarding and day). From 2000-2014, Claire was Head of Benenden (550 pupils, 11-18, all boarding). During her time at Benenden, Claire helped set up an Academy and sat on its Governing Body and Education Committee for some years. In 2014, Claire stepped down from headship as she felt that twenty years in that role was enough for anyone. RSAcademics then asked Claire to head up their executive recruitment division and she was appointed Head of Leadership Appointments UK. As such, Claire oversees all their CEO and Headship appointments across the UK. Claire has spent many years on the GB of Charterhouse and then Harrow; she also sits on the grant-making committees of various charities. Claire lives on the Isle of Wight and is married to Nick, a publisher, and has two daughters.
Ms Grace Yu
Member of the School’s Estates Strategic Committee
Grace has over three decades of leadership experience in environmental conservation and sustainability. She is currently a trustee of The Aurora Trust (a Sainsbury Family Charitable Trust), a grant-making charity addressing climate change. She is an advisor and trustee of a number of other environmental organisations: the African Rainforest Trust, Conservation International, the Rainforest Alliance, and the Cyclades Preservation Fund. Grace is also a leader in developing the seaweed farming industry in Scotland, where she is a founding advisor to EcoCascade, a social enterprise company which provides primary processing to local farmers. A licensed attorney, Grace has a son and a daughter that are former Westminster pupils, and was the chair of Westminster School Parents Committee (WSPC) during their attendance.