The Foundation

Richard Rivers is the former Head of Corporate Strategy at Unilever. He joined Unilever in 1969 and was the Chief of Staff, working with the Executive Committee of the Board on Unilever strategy to 2010. Mr. Rivers was also a Senior Vice President for Strategy in the HPC Division. He has held posts as a General Manager for Unilever’s European Laundry Detergents business and as a Senior Vice President for the global skincare category. Mr. Rivers spent his early career in marketing and sales and for five years was Managing Director of a United Kingdom advertising agency. He serves as a Member of the Advisory Board at Unilever Technology Ventures.

Baroness Sally Morgan of Huyton started her career as a secondary school teacher. She currently works as adviser to the Board of the charity, ARK, and is also chair of Future Leaders. She is a Non-Executive director of both Carphone Warehouse and Southern Cross Healthcare. Sally also sits on the Board of the Olympic Delivery Authority. She was appointed Chair of Ofsted in March 2011 and serves on the advisory panel for the Virgin Group. As a member of the House of Lords since 2001, her particular interests are public services and, as a former Minister for Women, equality issues. Sally worked for Tony Blair from 1995 and then in No.10 Downing Street as Director of Government Relations until May 2005.

Richard Eyre’s career began in advertising media where he spent 16 years. In 1991, he became Chief Executive of London’s Capital Radio plc, leading the move to acquire radio companies outside London and playing a role in building the industry’s revenue share. He was recruited to be Chief Executive of ITV in 1997, tackling a demotivated and declining network. He published aggressive audience targets and built a new network team to achieve them, annoying three Prime Ministers by moving News at Ten in pursuit of this goal. In February 2000 he became Chief Executive of Pearson Television, producing TV programmes in 35 countries. He struck a blow for global culture by cancelling production of Baywatch but then created Pop Idol. When the business was merged with Bertelsmann’s TV and Radio assets to found RTL, the largest broadcasting company in Europe, he became Director of Content and Strategy. Having completed the integration of the businesses he turned his back on a lucrative air miles package to fulfill his ambitions to walk to the North Pole and to write a novel which was finally published in 2005. He is now a full-time Non-Executive director with board and advisory roles for a range of organisations primarily in media and tech companies, but including Grant Thornton and the Eden Project, whose board he chairs.

David is one of the UK’s leading marketers, having been UK Marketer of the Year twice (1999 and 2005), as well as Advertising Age’s Global CMO of the Year (2006). He was awarded an MBE in 2006. Recently David held the role of Director of Commercial and Marketing at England 2018, the organisation bidding for England to host the 2018 Football World Cup. He was responsible for building UK public support and presenting England’s plans to FIFA. Previously he was Director of Marketing for London 2012, the organisation which successfully bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games. David worked with Sebastian Coe to build UK public support for the bid, and sell London’s proposals to the International Olympic Committee around the world. He devised and directed the crucial final presentation in Singapore described as the fiercest competitive pitch of all time. Before London 2012, David was in the airline industry, having been Sales and Marketing Director of the low cost airlines Go and easyJet. He was a founder director of Go along with Barbara Cassani, and was responsible for all commercial activities. He is a Director of four companies: Dyson, Glasses Direct, The Property Investment Market and New Moon Television.

Stephen is co-founder and Chairman of Saxton Bampfylde. He read Social and Political Science at Cambridge University and studied Corporate Finance at London Business School. He began his career working for IBM and Whitehall, where he spent nearly ten years before moving into top level executive search. For 25 years he has been involved in the recruitment of executives to senior positions across a wide variety of commercial sectors from health care to media, consumer, technology, and professional services, with clients including Tesco, BP, Carphone Warehouse, and Lloyds Banking Group. Additionally he has unique experience filling higher education, regulatory and senior government posts. Stephen helped establish the worldwide professional association AESC in Europe and was its international director for a number of years. Outside executive search, he has been involved with the advisory boards of the Business Schools at Cambridge and City Universities, is a Trustee of the Yvonne Arnaud theatre, and Chairman of the Guildford Cathedral Council.

Laurence Newman spent 20 years at the London office of international accountants and consultants KPMG, where he established and directed their Leisure and Tourism Consulting Group. He was a KPMG partner for 13 years until he retired from KPMG at the end of 2002. He currently runs Big Picture Consulting, a specialised consulting and project management practice. Clients include British Waterways, the London Development Agency (LDA) and Visit London. Laurence has been a Trustee of Comic Relief since 1997 and is a member of their Investment Committee and Remuneration Committee. He is also a Trustee of the Waterways Trust, which runs the country’s main inland waterway museums in Gloucester, Ellesmere Port and Stoke Bruerne, and he chairs their Museums Management Board. He is a Trustee of Creativity, Culture and Education, a large Arts Council funded charity that delivers the Creative Partnerships programme into 2000 schools. Laurence chairs the Resources and Audit Committee at CCE. He is a Non-Executive Director of Grove End Housing Ltd, responsible for about 400 apartments in St John’s Wood, London. Most recently, Laurence has been appointed as a Non-Executive Director at Epsom & St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust.

Anthony has had an illustrious career in business and financial journalism and is the recent winner of the Decade of Excellence Award, the most prestigious award in business and financial journalism given annually by the World Press Awards offshoot of the Davos-based World Economic Forum. He was also last year named as the UK Pensions Journalist of the Year by Aon and was judged runner up as Financial Journalist of the Year by the Institute of Internal Auditors. His most recent award is 2009 Columnist of the Year from the Association of British Insurers, and in 2010 he was granted an honorary degree for services to journalism by Aberdeen University. In previous years, he has won most of his industry’s awards including the European Business Writer of the Year and the Wincott Business Journalist of the Year. Anthony was City Editor of the Times from 1981 to 1983 and City Editor of the Evening Standard from 1984 to 1989. In November 1989, he became Managing Director of the Evening Standard, a post he held for six years before returning to the City Office as Editor in 1996. In 2003, he became Financial Editor and economics leader writer for the paper.He has worked for The Observer, The Daily Mail and The Sunday Express, and has served in New York where for three years he was Business Correspondent for the London Sunday Times. He has worked in television and radio, has written books on understanding finance and the City and is a frequent conference and after-dinner speaker and moderator on the City and media matters. In addition to journalism, he has also had a commercial career, serving as managing director of the Evening Standard company for six years and being involved with the launch of several magazine and publishing companies.