We’re incredibly excited to announce the 11 trustees joining the Lab’s board, including experts in values-based banking, fintech, new economics, systems change, responsible tech and the co-operative movement.
The trustees were recruited through an open process launched in January this year, in which we sought to strengthen and diversify our board. The response to the recruitment was exceptional – giving us the opportunity to expand the board significantly and explore how we can take an innovative approach to governance that reflects our values of collaboration, action learning and empowerment.
We’re particularly excited by the diversity of experience and thought the new trustees bring to the board, as our chair, Caroline Ellis, explains:
“We know that one of the biggest barriers to change in finance is the lack of diversity throughout the sector. This means that the financial system isn’t representative of the people it’s meant to serve and we’re not benefitting from the multiple perspectives that would better equip us all to change the system. As a civil society organisation working to support people to transform finance, we felt it was essential to actively recruit for that diversity at board level.”
The new trustees are:
- David Carrington (vice-chair) – former member of the Supervisory Board of Triodos NV and former director of Big Society Capital
- Marsha Taylor-Daniel (vice-chair) – Business Development Director at Infosys and chair of NCT Trading
- Brhmie Balaram – Associate Director of the RSA’s Economy team
- Kit Beazley – Head of Brexit Implementation and former Head of Finance at Triodos Bank UK
- Simon Borkin – Programme Development Lead at Co-operatives UK
- Katie Boswell – Deputy Head of Funders at New Philanthropy Capital
- Mikael Down – Executive Director, Assessment and Insights at Banking Standards Board (joining September 2019)
- Nana Francois – Head of Cash Strategy and Business Performance at Absa and Executive Director at Women’s DNA Fund
- Casey Lord – Head of Product at Nutmeg
- Laurie Macfarlane – Economics Editor at Open Democracy and Head of Patient Finance at UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose
- Amit Shah – founder of Dust Jacket and director at Big Life Group.
The new trustees join our chair, Caroline Ellis (social and organisational change consultant), our treasurer, Kate Ormiston Smith (Director, Finance and Operations at the B Team), and Sue Charman (former Director of Corporate Stewardship at WWF-UK).
You can see full profiles of all of the trustees here.
Our new trustees join the Lab at an exciting time, as Lab Fellowship goes from strength to strength, our intrapreneurship pilot starts to make waves in finance, we see important steps towards a more enabling environment for purpose-led finance, and we prepare to launch a new programme of support for our community of changemakers in finance. Over the next two years, the trustees will help us shape our strategy for 2021 and beyond – the next stage of the journey towards a financial system that serves people and planet.
If you’d like to get involved in our work or support us on the next stage of our journey, please get in touch.