Our trustees

The trustee board is led by our Chair, Warren Buckley.

Warren Buckley

Chair

Warren is Retail Director at Thames Water and is responsible for all customer facing activity at Thames Water including all legal entities. Previously, he was Global Head of Contact Centres at HSBC plc, where he was responsible for the onshore and offshore contact centres for its Retail and Wealth business, including customer experience transformation and sales and service performance. 

Prior to HSBC, Warren held several positions at BT including Managing Director of Customer Service and Operations at BT Retail, and Managing Director of Service Management at Openreach, having previously held customer service, experience and operational leadership roles at Orange, Avaya, Lucent Technologies and Vodafone.

Lucinda Bell

Treasurer

Lucinda grew up in London. She went to Oxford University where she studied law and gained a first class degree. After university Lucinda trained with a large accountancy firm. Following qualification as an ACA, Lucinda moved into industry where she  held a number of senior finance roles in the real estate sector, culminating in her role as chief financial officer, for over six years, at FTSE100 company British Land. As well as her finance responsibilities, Lucinda was also the executive director lead for sustainability.

Lucinda now has a portfolio of non-executive director roles and sits on the Boards of three listed companies in a range of sectors. Lucinda’s skills include strategic development, finance, risk and governance. Lucinda also sits on the remuneration committee at two of these companies.

Lucinda is married with two daughters and enjoys being outside, especially walking her cocker spaniel.

Jabbar Sardar

Deputy Chair

Jabbar Sardar is Global HR director for BBC Studios, the commercial subsidiary of the BBC which oversees TV production, channels and distribution globally.  With over 5,000 people (3,000 staff and 2,000 freelancers) based across sixteen countries, the organisation was formed in April 2018 by merging the legacy distribution (BBC Worldwide) and production (BBC Studios) arms of the BBC.  Jabbar joined the BBC in January 2016. For the past five years he has featured as one of HR magazine's ‘HR Most Influential practitioners’.

Jabbar joined the BBC from Cafcass, where he was Director of HR and OD. Here he led an agenda of total organisational and cultural change, moving Cafcass from being ‘on the edge’ in 2010 to ‘cutting-edge’ in 2014, culminating in 2014 when Cafcass was assessed by Ofsted as ‘Good with Outstanding Leadership.’ 

Jabbar is Chair of the International Advisory Board at the School of Management at the University of Bradford. He is also on the Steering Group for the Employers Initiative on Domestic Abuse (EIDA).

Ann-Marie Harkin

Ann-Marie Harkin was born in Weston Super Mare, and was educated at La-Retraite High School in Bristol before attending Cardiff University to study French and German. Ann-Marie graduated in 1986 with a B.A. (Hons), moving then to accountancy, joining the National Audit Office in the same year as an Assistant Auditor. 

Ann-Marie achieved CIPFA status with the NAO in 1989 having worked during this period auditing the Ministry of Defence in Bath and later the Welsh Office in Cardiff. As a senior and principal auditor with the NAO she enjoyed a varied role, encompassing financial and performance audit work in Wales and at the Research Councils in Swindon.

In 1999 Ann-Marie became the Private Secretary to the first Auditor General for Wales, and was involved in setting up the AGW’s office in Cardiff Bay and in establishing protocols for working with the National Assembly’s Audit Committee. After three years in this role she took on the role of Manager, managing audits for the Sports Council, Arts Council, DVLA and various charities.

Ann-Marie joined the Wales Audit Office on its formation in 2005, working as Financial Audit Director and Engagement Lead for several Health and Local Government accounts, the Senedd Commission, a number of Welsh Government Sponsored Bodies and North South and Gwent Police. Passionate about learning and development, Ann-Marie has also led the significant expansion of the Audit Wales trainee and apprentice programme and chairs the Finance Skills Development Group - a pan-Wales collaboration of Public Bodies which promotes the value and importance of a career in Public Finance. In 2016 Ann-Marie won the prestigious Leading Wales Women in Leadership Award.

In March 2021 Ann-Marie was appointed Executive Director of Audit Services. As the most senior audit professional within Audit Wales, she leads the delivery of financial and performance audit of over £17 billion public expenditure each year and is responsible for the development of strategic and professional relationships across the Welsh Government, Senedd, public sector, professional groups, UK and international audit agencies, academia, media and other relevant organisations.

Ann-Marie lives in Cardiff with her partner, five children and one grandchild. She enjoys reading and travelling.

Ashok Vaswani

Ashok Vaswani 

Ashok Vaswani is Barclays’ Chief Digital Strategy Officer. During his tenure at Barclays, Ashok led the drive to digitize the UK Retail Bank, taking a 328-year-old bank from analogue to digital.
In addition, he focused on transforming the consumer and payments businesses, and having done both of these successfully, he now leads the digital efforts across the Group.

Prior to his current role, he managed the consumer banking, private banking and payments businesses across the UK, Europe and the US. Ashok has worked in every continent, having lived in many parts of the world including Dubai, Istanbul, Brussels, New York, Singapore and London. Ashok spent 20 years with Citigroup, and his last position at Citigroup was CEO, Asia Pacific.

Throughout his career, Ashok has demonstrated a real passion for two intertwined objectives: one, building franchises with a purpose; and two, promoting education.

In addition to his executive role, Ashok is a Non-Executive Director on the board of the London Stock Exchange Group – a systematically important financial services company. He also serves as a Director on The Clearing House in the US, as well as an advisor to Rutberg & Co. Ashok is a national trustee with Citizens Advice in the UK.

Given his passion for promoting education, Ashok is a Director for Pratham UK, the largest NGO in India, within the education space. He is also a Director on the S.P Jain Institute of Management, London and a Founder Director of Lend-a-Hand, a non-profit organisation focused on rural education in India.

Ashok graduated from Bombay University and has postgraduate degrees from both the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and the Institute of Chartered Secretaries of India.

Ashok was born in India, and now divides his time between London and New York.

Finola McDonnell

Finola McDonnell joined the Financial Times in 2018 as chief communications and marketing officer. She is a member of the FT Group executive board, which is responsible for corporate governance, strategy and performance. FT Group employs 2,300 people worldwide, including a network of 700 journalists in over 40 countries.

As CCMO, Finola oversees global communications, brand management, commercial marketing, and partnerships and events. Her team is based in London, New York and Hong Kong. 

Previously, she worked for US news outlet CNBC where she held the position of vice president of international communications and marketing. She spent most of her career working in the public affairs industry, having started out in the NGO sector.

Jonathan Mogford

Jonathan Mogford is Director of Policy, and member of the Corporate Executive Team, at the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, an Executive Agency of the Department of Health and Social Care, where he is responsible for the Agency's EU, Brexit, international and regulatory policy work and for the Agency's corporate strategy, business planning, accountability and partnership work. 

Jonathan’s earlier career has included roles leading UK Government and European Commission policy work on climate change mitigation (in DEFRA), pharmaceutical industry policy and EU Affairs (in the Department of Health).

Jonathan was Chair of Citizens Advice Wandsworth (CAW) from 2010,  and on the CAW Trustee Board for about 18 months before then.  He remains on the CAW Trustee Board as Vice-Chair.

Mark Haysom

After graduating from Leicester University, Mark Haysom had a thirty-year career in newspapers, during which he rose from trainee journalist on a small local weekly newspaper in the north of England to Managing Director of Mirror Group. In 2003 he moved into education as Chief Executive of a large government agency (the Learning & Skills Council). With a staff of 5,000 and a budget that ultimately reached £14 billion, he remained there for six years – working closely with a succession of Secretaries of State, including Charles Clarke, Alan Johnson and Ed Balls. In recent years he has served on the boards of a number of charities dedicated to overcoming poverty and disadvantage and was Chairman of one of the UK’s leading addiction charities, Phoenix Futures. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Leicester University in recognition of his career in newspapers in 2005 and the CBE in 2008 for his contribution to education. His first novel, “LOVE, LOVE ME DO” was published in 2014 and his second, “IMAGINE”, in 2015.

Rolande Anderson

Rolande Anderson is a member of the Equality Committee and Chair of the Trustee Development Group.

Rolande has had a wide-ranging senior career in Government, and now works as an independent non-executive.

She is Vice-Chair of Governors at London Metropolitan University, a Senior Assessor at the College of Policing and  a Trustee of St Mungo’s and  the mentoring charity Brightside. She is an Honorary Associate of Newnham College, Cambridge, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

In Government, she was Director General of the Office for Civil Society in the Cabinet Office until 2010 and prior to that held a range of senior roles including Regional Director of the Government Office for the South-East of England and Chief Executive of the Radiocommunications Agency

Rolande has mentored for Government schemes for women and for disabled and BME civil servants, and for the Whitehall and Industry Group Women’s Leadership Programme.

Will Cavendish

Dr Will Cavendish is Arup's Global Head of Digital Services, and Leader of the London-based Advanced Digital Engineering Group. In these roles he is responsible for leading Arup’s work to support clients to take advantage of the major transformation in their world that is being brought about by digital and other advanced technologies. While at Arup, he has worked at senior level with clients around the world, and in sectors as varied as property, cities, aviation, rail, energy, and technology.

Previously he was Applied Strategy Lead at DeepMind, responsible for understanding the ground breaking developments taking place in Artificial Intelligence, and working with key partners to apply them for public good in areas such as health and energy. 

Will has also served as a World Bank economist; has lectured at Oxford University and Imperial College; has a doctorate in economics; and was made a Companion of the Order of the Bath by the Queen in 2015.