Nigel Webb, Interim Chair
Appointed 1 January 2017, reappointed 1 January 2021; appointed Interim Chair 1 November 2023.
Nigel is a Chartered Surveyor with over 39 years of experience in property investment and development. He is former Director and Head of Development at The British Land Company Plc, one of the country's leading property developers.
He has been responsible for over 15m sq ft of development including some of London's landmark buildings, including The Leadenhall Building ("Cheesegrater"), The Broadgate Tower, The Willis Building, the UBS headquarters at 5 Broadgate, Clarges, Mayfair, Ropemaker Place and development of the Regents' Place campus.
Nigel is a Non-Executive Director at Barratt Redrow PLC and Precede Capital Partners, and a non-exec Board Advisor to Sir Robert McAlpine.
Kavita Puri
Appointed 2 July 2018, reappointed 26 January 2022
Kavita Puri is a multi award-winning journalist, executive producer and broadcaster at the BBC where she has worked for over 20 years. She presents documentaries on BBC Radio 4 and the World Service, including The Inquiry. She is the creator and host of the acclaimed Three Million on BBC Sounds which won Gold for Best New Podcast at the British Podcast Awards 2024. She devised and presented the landmark series Partition Voices for Radio 4, which won the Royal Historical Society's Radio and Podcast Award and its overall Public History Prize. She is the author of Partition Voices: Untold British Stories which was adapted at the Donmar Warehouse and on tour in 2024. She is the creator and presenter of Three Pounds in My Pocket for Radio 4, the first social history of British South Asians, which is on its fifth series. While editor of Our World, its foreign documentaries were recognised with awards including the Royal Television Society and the Foreign Press Association. Kavita was named Journalist of the Year by the Asian Media Awards, and is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She worked for many years at Newsnight and studied Law at Cambridge University.
Sir Ben Elliot
Appointed 1 January 2017, reappointed 1 January 2021
Sir Ben Elliot is the co-founder of the international concierge group Quintessentially, which he started in London in 2000. Ben also co-founded Hawthorn Advisors, a corporate communications business, in 2013.
He is the Founding Trustee of Quintessentially Foundation, which works with numerous charities with a mission to help children and young people living in poverty. Since he founded the Foundation, it has raised more than £14m for various charitable causes. Sir Ben is the Chairman of the Philanthropy Board of the Royal Albert Hall and a Trustee of The Eranda Rothschild Foundation. He served as Chairman of the Conservative Party between 2019 and 2022, and was the Government's first Food Surplus and Waste Champion from 2018 to 2022. He is also the Honorary Treasurer of the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) and is a UK partner of the world-renowned restaurant Din Tai Fung. He graduated with a BSc in politics from the University of Bristol and is married with two children.
Marc St John
Reappointed for a four year term from 1 February 2023 – 31 January 2027
Marc is a former partner and head of investor relations at CVC Capital Partners (1999 – 2018). He also worked for Citicorp in New York, Paris and London (1985 – 98) and The Colorado Springs School, Colorado (1980 – 82).
He serves or has served as chair of the board at Power2 (a leading youth charity), London (2013 – 2021); Trustee and Executive Committee Member of Colorado College (2015 – 2020); St Antony's College Financial Advisory Committee, Oxford (2009 – 18); the Corporate Advisory Group to the British Academy (2018 – 2020); the European Venture Capital Association, Brussels (2002 – 08); and the American University of Paris, Paris (2000 – 05).
Marc has dual USA/UK citizenship, is married to Dr Julie Newton, a Research Fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford University. He holds a Masters in International Relations from Columbia University and a BA from Colorado College.
Jonathan Anderson
Reappointed for a four year term from 1 February 2023 – 31 January 2027
With a curatorial approach to fashion, making and brand building, Jonathan Anderson has earned both critical acclaim and commercial success through his collections designed as Creative Director for LOEWE since 2013, and his eponymous label, JW Anderson, since 2008. In 2024 he earned a place in Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2024.
An alumnus of London College of Fashion, Anderson has created collections and products collaborating with brands such as Uniqlo and Moncler, and in 2015 became the first fashion designer to be awarded both Menswear and Womenswear Designer of the Year by the British Fashion Council.
In 2016 he founded the LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize – the world's first international award for contemporary craft – and a year later curated the Disobedient Bodies exhibition at The Hepworth, Wakefield. In 2020 he was named an Honouree of the Creativity Fashion Award by the British Fashion Council.
Most recently, Anderson has been awarded both the International Designer of the Year Award by the CDFA and the Designer of the Year Award by the British Fashion Council. He also received an Honorary Doctor of the Arts from the University for the Creative Arts (UCA) in July 2024.
David Bomford
Reappointed for a four year term from 31 March 2023 – 30 March 2027
After studying chemistry at the University of Sussex, David Bomford went to the National Gallery, London, where he became Senior Restorer of paintings; during nearly four decades there he worked on many important paintings and organised an award-winning series of exhibitions and catalogues on the techniques of European painters, including early Italian artists, Rembrandt and the Impressionists.
In 2007, he moved to the J Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, as Director of Collections and then as acting Director of the museum. In 2012, he moved to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, as Chair of Conservation and Head of European Art. While in Houston, he was in charge of the design and construction of a new state-of-the-art conservation building and curated exhibitions on subjects including Rubens, Michelangelo, Van Gogh, Spanish Colonial painting, the Habsburgs and the British monarchy.
David Bomford has been the Secretary-General of the International Institute for Conservation; editor of the international journal Studies in Conservation; Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford; and has had visiting professorships in conservation and art history in Mexico City, in Sao Paolo, and at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts, National Gallery, Washington. He has many academic interests, including the study of unfinished art.
C. Allegra Berman
Reappointed from 1 March 2024 – 29 February 2028; appointed Senior Trustee July 2024
Allegra is Global Head of Institutional Sales, responsible for the sales of all markets products, covering FX & EM Rates, equities, securities financing, global debt markets and securities services. Allegra is a member of the Markets and Securities Executive Committee.
Prior to this role, she was Co-Head of Securities Services, leading a business including custody, clearing, fund administration and securities lending. Previously, Allegra was Head of the Financial Institutions Group, EMEA and Global Head of the Public Sector Group in Global Banking. She was responsible for delivering the full range of financial products and solutions across this client base. Before joining HSBC in 2013, she spent 12 years at UBS, where she latterly co-led UBS's Debt Capital Markets business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa and was Global Head of Public Sector Fixed Income. This was in addition to her role as Vice Chair of Global Capital Markets.
Allegra was a Non-Executive Director of HSBC Asset Management UK (2016 – 2018) and a Board Member of the International Capital Market Association (2011 – 2013). She served on the Board of Trustees of the National Portrait Gallery (2011 – 2019) where she was Chair of both the Gallery's Investment and Finance Committees. In October 2021, Allegra was appointed to the Board of Trustees of the Wolfson Foundation and is Chair of the Risk and Audit Committee.
Allegra has an MA in Modern Languages from Magdalen College, Oxford, where she was a Trustee of the Development Board (2014 – 2023).
Amanda Levete CBE
Reappointed from 1 March 2024 – 29 February 2028
Amanda Levete is a Stirling Prize winning architect, and founder of the architect studio AL_A. Recently completed projects include the Victoria and Albert Museum Exhibition Road Quarter, MAAT Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology in Lisbon, Central Embassy in Bangkok; a headquarters building for Sky, Maggie's Cancer Centre in Southampton and two buildings for Wadham College, Oxford. Ongoing commissions include Paisley Museum in Scotland; D'Ieteren's HQ in Brussels and the Belgrade Philharmonic Concert Hall in Serbia. Amanda is a regular radio and TV broadcaster, writes for a number of publications and lectures throughout the world. In 2018 she was awarded the Jane Drew Prize, in 2019 she was elected an Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and in 2021 she became a Royal Academician.
Professor Christoph Lindner, Ex-officio Trustee
Appointed 1 January 2024
Prof Lindner is the President and Vice-Chancellor of the Royal College of Art where he also holds the title of Professor of Visual Culture. He previously served as Dean of the Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment at University College London. Previously he was Dean of the College of Design at the University of Oregon, and Professor of Media and Culture at the University of Amsterdam where he created and led the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis and directed the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis. His leadership work focuses on advancing educational access and equity, intercultural understanding, and environmental sustainability in the art and design fields. He is a fellow of both the Royal Society of Arts and Royal Geographical Society.
Lindner is a leading international scholar of cities and visual culture and has published 15 books in the fields of art, architecture, media and urban geography, including Aesthetics of Gentrification, Deconstructing the High Line, Imagining New York City, Global Garbage, Cities Interrupted, and Paris-Amsterdam Underground.
Amanda Spielman
Reappointed from 1 March 2024 – 29 February 2028
Amanda Spielman is a Visiting Professor in Practice at London School of Economics and chair of the Academic Advisory Council at GEMS Education. She has previously been His Majesty's Chief Inspector at Ofsted, the education and children's social care inspectorate and chair of Ofqual, the exam regulator.
Before this she was chair of Ofqual, the qualifications regulator, and research and policy director at the academy chain Ark Schools. Her early career was in strategy consulting, finance and investment at KPMG, Kleinwort Benson, Mercer Management Consulting and Nomura International.
She has also been a council member at Brunel University London and the Institute of Education, a director of the Wales Millennium Centre, and a school governor.
Rusty Elvidge
Appointed 5 September 2022
Rusty has been a collector since he was at Bristol University and used to buy antique silver and jewellery at auction rooms and fairs in the West Country. He has also collected Regency furniture, English watercolours and, over the last 20 years, paintings by the Bloomsbury set, Modern British artists, as well as Contemporary Art and Pottery.
Rusty has worked in finance all his career: at Salomon Brothers on the trading floor, then at Credit Suisse heading the global foreign exchange business, and over the last decade has been on the Private Banking side as financial adviser to some of the most successful UK based entrepreneurs.
Rusty has worked in Japan, Switzerland and the US, though predominantly in the UK, where he is based full time, working for UBS.
Professor Rosalind Polly Blakesley
Appointed 5 September 2022
Rosalind Polly Blakesley, a prize-winning author and art historian, is Professor of Russian and European Art and a Fellow of Pembroke College at the University of Cambridge. She has served on the boards of the National Portrait Gallery, Fitzwilliam Museum, Hamilton Kerr Institute and Kettle's Yard, and is currently a Trustee of the Samuel Courtauld Trust.
An expert on the visual culture of imperial Russia and the Baltic region, Polly's books include Women Artists in the Reign of Catherine the Great, The Russian Canvas, The Arts and Crafts Movement, and the co-edited volumes Russian Art and the West and From Realism to the Silver Age. She has worked on exhibitions including An Imperial Collection at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC; International Arts and Crafts at the V&A; and Russia and the Arts, which she curated at the National Portrait Gallery as part of a pioneering exchange with the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. Awards include the Pushkin Medal, the Art Newspaper Russia Best Book Award, and the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize.
Zewditu Gebreyohanes
Appointed 5 September 2022
Zewditu is a Senior Researcher at the think tank The Legatum Institute and Deputy Editor of the digital history publication History Reclaimed. She is a Young Ambassador of the International Churchill Society.
Zewditu was formerly the Director of the pressure group Restore Trust. Between 2021 and 2022 she worked at the think tank Policy Exchange, where she was Head of the History Matters Project: a policy unit focussing on the preservation of British history and heritage. In 2020 she served on the government commission on housing and architecture 'Building Better, Building Beautiful' as an assistant to its late Chair, Professor Sir Roger Scruton.
Zewditu has been passionate about art and design from a young age and enjoys drawing, painting and sewing. She is of British-Ethiopian descent and speaks Amharic and Tigrinya.