Board of Governors

Meet the members

Mark Burch Chair
Janey Walker Deputy Chair
Vice-Chancellor Professor Debra Humphris

Independent members

Marc Allsop
Maddalaine Ansell
Trevor Beattie
Jeff Cronkshaw
Dr Amanda Feggetter
John Gill
Andrew Grainger
Jacqueline Minor
Paul Robb
Dale Simon CBE

Teaching staff

Professor Elizabeth Ostler
Dr Lara Perry

Student members

Ramy Badrie
Sihem Ziada

Co-opted members

Alan Baser
Dr Paula Hearsum
Professor Robin Middlehurst

Mark Burch

Chair of the Board of Governors

Currently a Managing Partner at private equity investment firm ARCIS Group, Mark combines over 30 years’ of working in financial services with extensive non-executive experience in the education and creative industries sectors.

Mark began his executive career at American Express before moving to Kleinwort Benson as Assistant Director where he oversaw a number of public company mergers and acquisitions. He later joined ING Barings becoming first Head of Corporate Finance and then Head of Private Equity where he established and led an investment group. He joined ARCIS Group in 2002 as a Managing Partner where he oversees the management of over $600 million of funds across European private equity funds and businesses.

Away from his financial services career, he has held a number of non-executive posts including at the Hackney Empire, Charleston Trust, Arts Educational Schools, Chiswick and Theatre Investment Fund (Stage One). He is also a Director of the FSE Group, a Community Interest Company serving on the Investment Committee for the South East Seed Fund.

Mark has an MA in Modern History from New College, Oxford and an MBA from Columbia University, New York.

Janey Walker

Deputy Chair of the Board of Governors

Janey has been Deputy Chair from 1 August 2016, and one of the 12 independent members of the Board, a member since 1 August 2014. She is a member of the Finance and Infrastructure Committee.

Janey is a non-executive member of the content board at Ofcom advising on editorial standards and regulation in broadcasting.

Previously Managing Editor and Head of Education at Channel 4, she has senior editorial and commercial experience in television, digital media and education. She was Managing Director of the Indie Training Fund, a not-for-profit organisation providing TV training for production companies and freelancers, and she developed and launched IGGY (a global online network for gifted students aged 13 to 18) at the University of Warwick. She graduated from the University of York with a degree in history/politics. She has won a number of awards including an international Emmy and the Fellowship of the Royal Television Society. She is a Trustee of the University of Brighton Academies Trust.

Professor Debra Humphris

Vice-Chancellor

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 Deputy Vice-Chancellor; Pro-Vice-Chancellor – Learning and Teaching; Pro-Vice-Chancellor – Research; Chief Operating Officer; Registrar and Secretary. Debra is a member of the Employment, Finance and Infrastructure, Nominations and Remuneration Committees of the Board of Governors.

More about Professor Debra Humphris

Independent Members

Marc Allsop

Marc is one of the 12 independent members of the Board, a member since 1 August 2015. Marc is Chair of the Finance and Infrastructure Committee and a member of the Nominations and Student Affairs Committees. He is an alumnus of the university, having graduated in 1998 with a BA(Hons) Management Studies with French degree.

Marc is currently Senior Vice-President – Head of Global Business Development at Aimia Inc (a global leader in loyalty management, listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange). In this role, he leads the team who plan and execute the expansion of Aimia’s strategy into new territories worldwide. Prior to joining Aimia, he held various posts at American Express Europe Ltd, including Vice-President and Head of Business Development for their European business, from graduation in 1998 until March 2013.

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

Maddalaine Ansell

Maddalaine is a graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge where she read Classics. She then took the CPE and LPC at the College of Law, Chester and qualified as a solicitor practising with Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and later the US law firm Sullivan and Cromwell LLP. After six years, she joined the civil service on the fast stream.

She has held a number of appointments including with the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit, Home Office, DIUS and BIS. She was Deputy Director for Skills Strategy & Communications for John Denham. During this time she was seconded to BERR to co-lead the development of Peter Mandelson’s Industrial Strategy. She worked on the 2011 Higher Education White Paper for David Willetts and was then asked to lead the International Knowledge and Innovation Unit where she led the development of the International Education Strategy and set up the £375 million Newton Fund. Maddalaine then acted as Chief Executive of University Alliance for four years. She joined the British Council as Director for Education in November 2018.

Trevor Beattie

Trevor is one of the 12 independent members of the Board, a member since 1 August 2014. He is Chair of the Audit Committee and a member of the Staff Appeals Committee. Trevor is currently Chief Executive of the South Downs National Park, with an in-depth knowledge of the environment, planning, housing and regeneration and a long track record as an Executive Board Director.

He graduated from the University of Bristol with a degree in Economics and Politics, taking urban economics as a specialist subject. He spent 10 years (1988-1997) as Private Secretary to the Minister of State for Local Government and Inner Cities, having entered the Civil Service in 1978 (Department of Transport). He was a member of a small core team which established English Partnerships and subsequently became its Southern Regional Director. He is also a member of the Greater Brighton Economic Board.

Jeff Cronkshaw

Jeff is one of the 12 independent members of the Board. 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.

Dr Amanda Feggetter

Amanda is one of the 12 independent members of the Board; a member since 1 August 2016. She is a member of the Employment Committee. Amanda is a chartered occupational psychologist with over 25 years’ experience. Most recently she has spent seven years in personnel, advising on HR strategies. She was educated at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Birkbeck College and Cranfield Institute of Technology. She is currently a co-opted member of the Medical Services Committee of Combat Stress and an independent specialist adviser to the Board of Directors of the Institute of Directors. She has been employed at the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and as a consultant psychological adviser to the Adjutant General on Human Sciences. She has also served as a non-governor member on the HR Committee of the University of Westminster, a process verifier for the Council for the Registration of Forensic Practitioners, a Harassment Investigating Officer for the MoD, and is currently a governor of Roedean School. Amanda is a member (and former President) of the European Association of Aviation Psychology, an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society, a member of the British Academy of Forensic Science, a former member of the Editorial Board for Medicine Science and the Law and a retired Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine.

John Gill

John is one of the 12 independent members of the Board; a member since 1 August 2016. John is a member of the Finance and Infrastructure Committee. John holds degrees from the universities of London and Sussex. He has had 40 years’ experience in major arts organisations in the public sector covering roles as administrator, curator and director and been instrumental in the establishment of several arts organisations in the UK. He has an in-depth knowledge of the creative industries in the south-east region. Currently he is Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Camden Arts Centre, a member of the Stuart Croft Foundation (a newly-formed charitable trust), Chair of the Westgate Trust in Lewes, a research fellow at Harvard College (holding the Bader Visiting Research Fellowship in the Visual Art of the Theatre) and continues to advise a variety of arts organisations on policy development and strategic planning. He has been Chair of Brighton Lighthouse Media, created Brighton Photo Biennial, a Council member and Chair of the Faculty of Fine Arts at The British School at Rome, initiated and developed an innovative, accessible and culturally-diverse programme of exhibitions, music and events at the South Bank Centre, and curated many exhibitions of contemporary art in a wide range of venues within the UK.

Andrew Grainger

Andrew joined the Board in October 2018 as one of 12 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.

Jacqueline Minor

Jacqueline is one of the 12 independent members of the Board, a member since 1 August 2014. She is Chair of the Remuneration Committee and a member of the Employment and Staff Appeals Committees.

Jacqueline was the Head of the European Commission's Representation in the UK, responsible for representing the European Commission and reporting to it until February 2017. She had overall responsibility for the UK Representation and the activities of the three offices in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales and is the Commission's Spokesperson in the UK. A lawyer by training she began her career in the European Institutions at the Court of Justice in 1984. She moved to the European Commission in 1987 to work on the recognition of diplomas and later had a second spell at the court working as referendaire to two British judges. She was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Birmingham in 2016 and became a honorary Senior Fellow of Regent's University, London in 2017.

Paul Robb

Paul is one of the 12 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.

Dale Simon CBE

Dale is a qualified barrister (currently non-practising) and an equality and diversity specialist who has worked in the criminal justice system for over 30 years. She began her career as a criminal defence barrister in 1986 and then moved into the public sector in 1992 where she held a variety of frontline, operational and strategic roles; specialising in equality and diversity and professional standards including the Head of the Office of Judicial Complaints and the Director of Public Accountability and Inclusion for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). In 2013 Dale was awarded a CBE for services to equality and diversity in recognition of her success in driving the CPS violence against women and girls strategy and increasing the diversity and talent pipeline of the CPS. In 2014 Dale commenced a portfolio career and now runs her own management consultancy company specialising in organisational equality and diversity ‘health checks’, bespoke diversity and inclusion programmes and workplace mediation.

Teaching staff

Professor Elizabeth Ostler

Lizzy is one of the two teaching staff members of the Board; a member since November 2014, having previously served on the Board. She is a member of the Staff Appeals Committee. Lizzy joined the university in 1997 and is now Professor of Chemical Biology and Deputy Head of School (Quality Assurance). She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and Chartered Chemist, and Senior Fellow of the HEA, working on the chemistry of human ageing and lecturing in Analytical Chemistry.

Dr Lara Perry

Lara is one of the two teaching staff members of the Board, elected in 2019. Lara has been working in the university’s School of Humanities since 2006, and previously served as its elected staff representative on the university’s Academic Board (2010-15). Lara studied for her PhD in History at the University of York as a Commonwealth Scholar, following an MA in History at the University of British Columbia. Her research concerns the art and visual culture of 19^thC England, especially the formation of museums and the relationship between their historic and present forms. She is a member of the Association for Art History and is involved in their regional and national programs for widening participation in art history.

Student members

Ramy Badrie

Ramy, an international student from Syria, is currently serving a second term as the Brighton Students’ Union’s Vice President for Education following his re-election. His time in the role has seen the Students’ Union launch an education campaign to enhance the learning and teaching experience, as well as a housing campaign, gaining the support of the local council and MPs. He has worked to advance student representation in quality assurance and has been involved in project areas including the postgraduate portfolio, race equality and digital inclusion by furthering work on the recording of teaching activities. He is passionate about widening participation to higher education and was recently appointed to a national student panel with the Office for Students, advising England’s independent regulator for HE on its strategy and activity.

As a student, he studied law and served on the committees of the Law, Debating and Amnesty Societies. He represented his cohort as a course rep, in addition to participating in Model United Nations and moot court competitions. Before moving to Brighton, Ramy studied criminal justice in the US and was subsequently involved with the United Nations Children’s Fund and various charities in the Middle East, focusing on the Syrian refugee crisis.

Sihem Ziada

Sihem is currently in her first term as President of Brighton Students’ Union, after studying BSc in Chemistry at the university, where she completed a citizen science project on the development of a home-made instrument to test for pollutants in stormwater. During her time as a student, Sihem has served as an active ambassador of the student voice, being actively involved in the development of the new prayer facilities. In her second year, she served as President of the Islamic Society, liaised closely with the Student Union, and led the Christ-Church Vigil. She received the Volunteer of the year award in 2018.

Her passions lie in campaigning for inclusive spaces, maximising employability for students and equal opportunities as well as bridging between university students and the local community through sustainability work.

Co-opted members

Alan Baser

Alan started working at the university in 2003 after a period at the University of Sussex. He has had several different roles, his current job as Risk & Compliance Manager means that he works on every campus of the university and gets to meet colleagues from many diverse areas. He is also a Residential Advisor living in halls providing pastoral support to resident students. He is an active member of the LGBT+ staff network group.

For eight years, Alan was a member of both the Governance Board and the Sector Advisory Group of the Universities UK Code of Practice for Student Accommodation Management. He has represented UUK to central government and has been the UUK representative to the committee of management of the Accreditation Network UK.

As a World Sailing International Judge and International Umpire Alan officiates at pinnacle level sailing competitions throughout the world including the London and Rio Olympic Games. He has been a member of or has chaired several committees at the national governing body for sailing, and has represented it on the council of Sports Officials UK.

Alan is Chair of the Board of Directors of Actually Community Interest Company, whose principal function is to run the Brighton & Hove Actually Gay Men’s Chorus. In addition to ensuring the good governance of the CIC, Alan loves to perform with the chorus and as Chair represents them throughout the Brighton & Hove LGBTQ community.

Dr Paula Hearsum

Paula is one of the two teacher members of the Board and a member since 1 August 2017. She is currently the Academic Programme Leader for Media and Creative Industries and a member of the Appeals Committee. In terms of her contribution to university governance, Paula intends to contribute by offering her skills in teaching, research and student-focus as she has engaged in all three areas in her time at the university since she joined in 2006, firstly as an HPL and then progressed from Senior Lecturer to Principal Lecturer. In 2016 she completed her PhD by Publication at the university and in 2017 was awarded a Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy. During her time at the university Paula has been a level tutor, a Course Leader, led course development and curriculum reviews as well as overseen Admissions and been a member of the Mitigating Circumstances Panel since 2008. Paula is currently on the Athena SWAN group for the School of Media.

Paula's industry background is music journalism and online editorial strategy and she has held a variety of senior leadership positions within the media and educational sectors. Her research considers the media representations of the deaths of popular musicians and she is currently undertaking an Oral History project in collaboration with the British Library on the emergence of Popular Music Studies in the UK. She intends to lend her position to support the university to be the very best it can be.

Professor Robin Middlehurst

Robin has worked as a senior academic in the University of Surrey, Institute of Education (now UCL) and Kingston University. She has served as a governor at Southampton Solent and Roehampton universities and as a trustee of the British Accreditation Council. She is also a new governor and chair of the Nominations and Governance Committee of the membership association, Independent Higher Education. Beyond her academic and executive roles in universities, she has held senior positions within national agencies including HEQC (later QAA) and the Leadership Foundation (now AdvanceHE) and acted as adviser to the Executive of the Higher Education Academy during a period of significant challenge leading up to the merger of the three agencies that now make up AdvanceHE. She co-designed the ‘Top Management Programme’ for higher education, now a flagship programme of AdvanceHE.

Robin has a long-standing interest in ‘higher education futures’ following ground-breaking research on borderless education that led to the establishment of the Observatory on Borderless Higher Education by UniversitiesUK and the Association of Commonwealth Universities. She remains a member of the Advisory Board of the OBHE and has been a Contributing Editor on higher education futures for the higher education policy blog, Wonkhe.