Board of Governors

Meet the members

Independent governors

Ben White Chair
Marc Allsop
Sue Berelowitz
Dr Robert Coles
Jeff Cronkshaw
John Gill
Andrew Grainger
Sarah Guerra
Pascal Richard
Paul Robb
Anna White

Ex officio

Vice-Chancellor Professor Debra Humphris

Co-opted governors

Peter Houghton

Staff governors

Andy Davies
Dr George Tsekouras
Sarah Craik

Student governors

Ilia Mirsky Katz (Students’ Union President)
Osasu Atomon (Students’ Union Education Officer)

Independent governors

Ben White (Chair)

Ben is currently in his first term as Chair of the Board of Governors.

Marc Allsop

Marc is one of the independent members of the Board, a member since 1 August 2015. He is Chair of the Finance and Infrastructure Committee and a member of both Nominations and Remuneration Committees. He is an alumnus of the university, having graduated in 1998 with a BA(Hons) Management Studies with French.

Marc is currently Chief Commercial Officer at Ecrebo, a UK based marketing technology company that provides capabilities to many retailers in the UK and US. Prior to this, he was Chief Commercial Officer and Director at Bink, a UK based fintech backed by Barclays and Lloyds Bank. He has previously served in senior global management roles, including as Senior Vice-President – Head of Global Business Development at Aimia Inc, a TSX listed Canadian business. In this role, as a company officer,  he led the team who executed the expansion of Aimia’s strategy into new territories worldwide, as well as driving investments in key businesses across the globe. Prior to joining Aimia, he held various posts at American Express, including Vice-President and Head of Business Development for their European business, from graduation in 1998 until 2013.

Marc is a resident of Brighton and Hove, having remained in the city following his graduation from the School of Service Sector Management.

Sue Berelowitz

Sue has extensive leadership experience in children's services and human rights across the public and charity sectors at operational and board level. She was Deputy Children's Commissioner for England and Chief Executive of the Office of the Children's Commissioner from 2008–2015. In this role she chaired two groundbreaking national enquiries into child sexual exploitation, setting out for the first time the scale and scope of this abuse in England resulting in significant policy and practice changes. Sue sat on multiple ministerial advisory boards contributing to national policy on issues including children's mental health, safeguarding, sexual violence and children in custody. She was an adviser to the then Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Kier Starmer, on sexual violence against children.

Prior to this, Sue held leadership positions in local government children's services with responsibility for the full spectrum of front line services covering everything from early years and youth services to all aspects of children's social care.

Sue is chair of the human rights charity Freedom from Torture and previously chaired the board of the former Greater Brighton Metropolitan College. She was formerly a board member of Sussex University ESRC Impact Acceleration Steering Committee, on the Advisory Board of the Safer Societies Institute at Huddersfield University and a governor at Stanford Junior School. Sue has held Visiting Professorships at Bedfordshire University, Institute of Applied Social Research and Huddersfield University, Secure Societies Institute.

Sue gained her BA (Eng and Psych) at University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg prior to emigrating to the UK in 1974. She qualified as a Speech and Language Therapist in 1982 and obtained her Masters in Social Work at Sussex University in 1992.

Sue has lived in Brighton since 1983.

Dr Robert Coles

Robert is one of the independent members of the Board, a member since 1 May 2021. He is also a member of the Audit Committee.

Robert is the Director of Cumberland House Consulting Ltd, specialising in audit, risk and cyber security strategy, programme delivery and Non-Exec and Board Advisory roles. He holds a number of commercial board positions including Chair of the Crossword Consulting Ltd Board, Non-Executive Director of Crossword Cybersecurity PLC, and board advisor to Think Cyber Ltd and the Government of Singapore Ministry of Health. Robert has over 35 years of audit, risk and cyber security experience and has held a number of senior leadership positions, including for the NHS and health and care system, GSK, National Grid, Merrill Lynch and Royal Bank of Scotland, and he was an audit partner at KPMG.

Robert is an Honorary Professor at UCL and is an executive sponsor for the Cyber Masters Programme at Cranfield University. He was awarded a PhD in psychology by the University of Leeds for his work on the perceptions of information and IT risk and has published and presented on this and other topics. He continues to undertake research in these areas. He was also awarded an MBA from Manchester Business School.

Robert is a resident of Worthing.

Jeff Cronkshaw

Jeff is one of the independent members of the Board. He is Chair of Audit Committee. He is an alumnus of the university, having graduated in 1998 with a BA(Hons) Computing and Information Systems degree. 

Jeff is the Group Managing Director for LanciaConsult, a senior technology advisory firm based out of Singapore and with offices in Germany and the United Kingdom. Jeff has been working within large technology delivery programmes for approaching 20 years. The first six years of his career were spent in the pharmaceutical industry with Eli Lilly and Company, followed by almost ten years with Accenture in their technology consulting practices in London and Singapore before co-founding LanciaConsult in 2012.

In his role as head of LanciaConsult he is responsible for the global growth, team development, and client value propositions for the firm globally.

Jeff and family recently relocated to Hamburg (Germany) after over 8 years living and working in Singapore and South East Asia.

John Gill

John has been an independent member of the Board since August 2016. He is a member of the Staff Appeals Committee and the Gift Oversight Group. He was formerly a member of the Joint Board of Brighton & Sussex Medical School. John holds degrees from the Universities of London and Sussex. In 2015–16 he was a Visiting Research Fellow at Harvard.

John has 40 years’ experience in major arts organisations in the public sector as director and curator. He initiated and developed an innovative, accessible and culturally-diverse programme of exhibitions, music and events at the South Bank Centre, London, and has since curated many exhibitions of contemporary art in a wide range of venues in the UK. He has been instrumental in the establishment of several arts organisations and charities in the UK and has an in-depth knowledge of the creative industries in the south-east region. Locally, he has chaired the Boards of Photoworks, Brighton Photo Biennial, Lighthouse and The Westgate Trust. Until recently he was Chair of the Board of Camden Arts Centre, and was a founder-member of the Stuart Croft Foundation. John continues to advise a variety of arts organisations on policy development and strategic planning.

He was made MBE in the 2023 New Year Honours for 'services to arts, to culture and to education'.

Andrew Grainger

Andrew joined the Board in October 2018 as one of independent members. He is also a member of the Finance and Infrastructure Committee. Andrew is a chartered surveyor with over 35 years experience in property across several sectors including higher education, the airline industry, urban regeneration and the drinks industry. For 9 years, until summer 2018, Andrew was Director of Estates for University College London (UCL) with one of the largest and most complex university estates in the UK. Andrew led the £1.7bn transformation of UCL’s central London estate and its expansion onto the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

Andrew is the sole external member of Trinity College Dublin Estate Policy Committee. Earlier in his career, Andrew was Head of Property with British Airways PLC for 6 years, culminating in the opening of Heathrow Terminal 5, he also spent 10 years engaged in the regeneration of London Docklands with the London Docklands Development Corporation.

Andrew is a trustee of Street Action, a small charity supporting and working with African Street Child projects.

Sarah Guerra

Sarah is currently in her first term as one of the independent members.

Pascal Richard

Pascal joined the Board as an independent member in April 2023. He is also a member of the Finance and Infrastructure Committee.

Pascal has 20+ years of experience in financial services, with broad financial, capital markets and regulatory expertise within an international context built in senior positions at leading global financial institutions, regulatory bodies and credit rating agencies.

Currently an Executive Director at Santander Corporate & Investment Banking in London, he previously held various positions at Lloyds Banking Group, most recently as Chief of Staff and COO for their Capital Markets division. Prior to this, Pascal held various senior positions at the UK Financial Services Authority (now Prudential Regulation Authority, Bank of England) where he was notably involved in reshaping the European banking regulation after the 2007-2008 Global Financial Crisis, at US investment bank Merrill Lynch & Co. and previously started his career as a securitisation credit analyst at credit rating agency Fitch Ratings.

Pascal has an MSc in Management from Kedge Business School, a top-10 French business school based in Bordeaux (France), as well as studied at HEC Montreal in Canada.

Paul Robb

Paul is one of the independent members of the Board: he has been a member since 1 August 2017.

Paul is a Chartered Accountant by profession and since qualifying has spent over 25 years working in the technology and professional services sectors. He went to Loughborough University, graduating in 1984 with a BSc(Hons) in Accounting and Finance.

Paul has significant experience in the outsourcing business having personally led and contributed to many large, including several landmark, programmes while working for some of the leading organisations in the field. He has held senior management and board roles in commercial, business development and delivery functions. Recently he has also worked on the consulting side of the business as a partner at one of the major global practices.

Currently Paul is a non-Exec Board member of an innovative IT business and his local golf club.

Paul is married and enjoys high-handicap golf, ‘white-knuckle’ horse riding and scouring the countryside looking for Ben his very fast greyhound.

Anna White

Anna joined the Board in April 2023 and is an independent member of the Board.

Anna has 20+ years of legal experience across the public, private and charitable landscape. She spent approximately 10 years working at law firms in Sydney, New York and London. Highlights include structuring life science projects out of Silicon Valley, negotiating cutting edge synthetic securitisations and advising the board of Conrad Black’s former company as they rebuilt after scandal. Anna moved in-house in 2010 and, in 2016, pivoted towards mission driven work on innovation, sustainability and education. As General Counsel of EIT Climate-KIC, Europe’s leading public/private sustainability initiative for innovation, research and education, she built the legal and procurement functions from scratch and, in 2021, Anna and her team were shortlisted by the Financial Times Europe for In-house Legal Team of the Year (ESG Category). In late 2021, seeking a new challenge, Anna joined Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, one of the largest NHS Foundation Trusts in the UK, and leads a legal department and team focussed on innovation and commercialisation.

Anna has a Master of Laws from Yale Law School (USA) and Bachelor of Laws and Bachelor of Commerce from the University of New South Wales (Australia). She is a qualified lawyer in four jurisdictions: England and Wales (UK), New York (USA), Ireland (EU) and New South Wales (Australia), and is published in the field of corporate governance and public/private innovation. Anna is a trustee, governor and volunteer for a number of different charities/organisations in the sustainability and education sectors. She is also an Alumni Interviewer for prospective candidates to Yale University and, in a prior life, was a radio presenter for human rights legal despatches.

Ex officio

Professor Debra Humphris

Our Vice-Chancellor, Professor Debra Humphris, is responsible for leadership and management of the university, within the policies laid down by the Board of Governors of which she is an ex-officio member. This includes line management for the Registrar and Secretary, and the Pro-Vice-Chancellors for Education and Students, Academic Operations, Research and Knowledge Exchange and the Directors of Finance and People. Debra is a member of the Finance and Infrastructure and Nominations Committees of the Board of Governors. She is a Director of UUK, a member of the UUK Student Policy and Regulation Network and Chair of Universities’ Alliance.

More about Professor Debra Humphris.

Co-opted governors

Peter Houghton

Peter joined the Board as a co-opted member in April 2022.

He has had a long career in senior management in the NHS and Senior Civil Service, including chief executive positions at Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Huntingdon; South West London and St George’s Mental Health NHS Trust; and Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire Strategic Health Authority. During his time at the Department of Health he was Regional Director of the Eastern Region of the NHS and Director of the National Leadership Network. He has also carried out senior roles in strategic planning, leadership development and innovation.

Peter graduated in Literae Humaniores from Keble College, Oxford University, and has professional qualifications in health care administration and health economics.

Peter, who was born and raised in South Yorkshire, has lived in Brighton and Hove since 2007. Since retiring from the NHS, he has undertaken consultancy work, and provided support to local health and social care voluntary organisations. Amongst his interests are a love of classical music and opera, writing poetry, and spending time at his holiday home in Languedoc.

Staff governors

Andy Davies

Andy was elected to the Board in 2022 as one of the academic staff members. Following ten years as a secondary history teacher in Oxford and Dorking Andy joined the university in 2009 as a member of the School of Education where he is currently the associate dean for academic operations. During his time at the University of Brighton Andy has collaborated and worked with a wide variety of committed and inspirational staff and students in a number of roles including lecturer, deputy head, assistant head and course leader as well as wider roles such as membership of the Academic Board and exam board chair for partner colleges. Andy is a graduate of the University of Brighton (MA Professional Development in Education) and before that studied at the University of Oxford (MSc Educational Research Methods and PGCE Secondary History) and the University of the West of England (BA History).

Outside of the university Andy is a member of the University of Brighton Academies Trust Education and Standards Committee and external examiner for Liverpool John Moores University. In his spare time Andy enjoys spending time with his family and playing music with Brighton’s The Crucks.

Dr George Tsekouras

George was elected in the Board in November 2021. He is the Director of CENTRIM, the Centre for Change, Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management, a Centre of Research and Enterprise Excellence at the University of Brighton. He is also the Innovation Chair of the British Academy of Management (BAM).

His research focuses on innovation and entrepreneurship in themes such as open innovation for SMEs, enabling innovation through peer-to-peer learning networks, innovation coaching for entrepreneurship, new product development, university-industry links and public-private partnerships for entrepreneurial innovation, and innovation for non-high tech SMEs.

George has raised and managed research and enterprise projects worth over £20m while he has been the lead partner of three major research consortia. He has been the Academic Lead in a number of major enterprise projects such as the BRITE project with Plus X, the project that developed innovation coaching currently used in the EIC Accelerator programme etc. He is also the founder of the Profitnet programme which supported more than 2,000 SMEs in UK, Ireland and South Africa and worked closely with the Green Growth Platform to enable SMEs to take advantage of the sustainability agenda.

Sarah Craik

Sarah has 20-plus years’ marketing experience, acquired within the financial services and HE sectors. Originally working in banking, specialising in international finance operations and relationship managing mid-large corporate clients, Sarah moved into a marketing communications role within Commercial Banking. Sarah joined the university in 2012 and was initially responsible for managing advertising to support student recruitment, overseeing the move in to digital advertising. More recently, as a member of Portfolio Development Group, Sarah has designed, implemented and managed portfolio reviews and designed and runs the market assessment process which supports portfolio development. Sarah has held chartered marketer status since 2010.

Student governors

Ilia Mirsky Katz

Ilia is currently in his first term as President of the Brighton Students’ Union, having previously served as Education Officer. He previously graduated from the University of Brighton with a Biomedical Science BSc(Hons) degree. During his time as a student, Ilia was committee of the award-winning society ‘BioSoc’, that successfully led to all students that attended the society’s revision sessions to pass their assignments. Ilia also founded the ‘Medic-Link’, a society that gives assistance and support to students wanting to pursue a career in medicine by creating a network of information with quick access to prospect doctors and by keeping information up to date for applicants. Ilia also represented his cohort as a course rep for two years, which led him to develop a strong relationship with the BSU and untimely gave incentive to become an Education Officer.

Ilia is passionate about representing students in their journey through higher education by ensuring they have the best experience while developing important skills throughout their studies. Ilia aims to maximise the opportunities provided for students so that they can achieve their goals.

Osasu Atomon

Osasu is currently in his first term as Education Officer of the Brighton Students’ Union.