People
Non-executive directors
Bernard Horn – Chair
Bernard Horn had a varied career with NatWest spanning 30 years, including six years as a Main Board Director of the NatWest Group (FTSE 100 company). His roles included five years as Chief Executive of the International Businesses, and a similar period as Operations Director, responsible for Operations and IT. He led significant acquisition and disposal activity whilst with the bank.
He is a graduate of the Advanced Management Programme at Harvard Business School. Since leaving NatWest he has developed a portfolio of activities acting both as Chairman and non executive director, concentrating on smaller, entrepreneurial companies in consulting and software development, (some with Private Equity backing). He is also involved in an advisory capacity with a number of Charities and was an active member of the Commission on Unclaimed Assets.
Sir Ronald Cohen
Sir Ronald Cohen is Chairman of the Portland Trust, the Social Investment Taskforce and the Commission on Unclaimed Assets. He was a founding partner and the former Executive Chairman of Apax Partners Worldwide LLP.
He was also chairman of the DTI “Tech Stars” steering committee and a member of the DTI UK competitiveness committee. He is chairman of Bridges Community Ventures Ltd and honorary president of the Community Development Finance Association.
He is a founder director and past chairman of the British Venture Capital Association, a founder director of the European Venture Capital Association and the Quoted Companies Alliance (formerly SISCO). He has served as a member of: London Stock Exchange Working Party on Smaller Companies, CBI Wider Share Ownership Committee and Executive Committee of The Centre for Economic Policy Research.
He is a graduate of Oxford University, where he was president of the Oxford Union, he is an honorary Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, and has an MBA from Harvard Business School, to which he was awarded a Henry Fellowship.
Victoria Hornby
Victoria is an Executive at the Sainsbury Family Charitable Trusts and Adviser to the Charles Dunstone Charitable Trust where her areas of work include disability, disadvantaged communities, criminal justice, the environment, paediatric palliative care, young carers and social investment.
Prior to joining the Sainsbury Family Trusts, Victoria was CEO of an operational international development charity, having previously spent four years living and working in Eastern Europe as Field Director of an aid agency.
Alongside her day jobs, Victoria is a member of the Futurebuilders Investment Committee, the Charity Bank Credit Committee and the New Philanthropy Capital Charity Committee.
Wol Kolade
Wol joined ISIS in January 1993 and is Managing Partner of the business. His role encompasses overall responsibility for the strategic development of ISIS and active involvement in investments. Wol initially trained as an engineer, having studied civil and structural engineering at Kings College, London. After obtaining an MBA from Exeter University, he spent three years with Barclays in various head office roles before joining ISIS.
Wol is a council member and Chairman of the BVCA - The British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association. He is also a governor and council member of the London School of Economics and Political Science, chairing its Audit Committee.
Penny Newman
Penny Newman is CEO of Cafédirect, the UK’s leading Fairtrade hot drinks company which has blazed the trail for Fairtrade, taking it from a niche market and placing it into the mainstream. Today a quarter of a million coffee, tea and cocoa producers benefit from Cafédirect’s trading model, with many consumers enjoying their Fairtrade products. This has resulted in Cafédirect being the leading Fairtrade hot drinks brand in both retail and out of home, as well as the 6th largest coffee brand, the 4th largest Roast & Ground brand, and one of the fastest growing tea brands in the UK. Penny is also a member of the Women’s Enterprise Panel, which was formed by the Chancellor and Secretary of State for Trade and Industry in late 2004 to examine options for the establishment of a national Women’s Business Council and to champion the acceleration of the development of women’s enterprise in the UK.
Penny studied business and marketing and in 1993 she took a lead position at The Body Shop. She was inspired by its ethical business model and five years later she took a post at fledgling fairtrade coffee company Cafédirect. She has now grown the company to reach a turnover of over £20 million.
Geraldine Peacock CBE
Geraldine was appointed Chief Charity Commissioner and the Charity Commission’s first Chair in 2004, with the remit of making the Commission ‘fit for purpose’ to implement the new Charities Act. She left the Commission in July 2006, having laid firm foundations for the Charities Bill and with the Commission charged and invigorated to implement it. Before joining the Charity Commission Geraldine was CEO of two major charities, Guide Dogs for the Blind and the National Autistic Society, and Chair of ACEVO (Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations), Futurebuilders and Groundbreakers.
Geraldine now works independently both in the UK and North America bringing people together and inspiring them to look laterally at issues around social entrepreneurship, investment, leadership and governance for non-profit organisations. She is currently a Patron of Autism Speaks, the Rainbow Trust and the Community Development Finance Association (CDFA), is a Member of the Social Investment Task Force (SITF), and is also a Commissioner on the Commission on Unclaimed Assets. Her most recent appointment is as a non-executive Director at Carbon Search, a new kind of executive search and leadership consulting firm.
Geraldine sits on the Board for Social Enterprise at Harvard Business School, where she lectures on the MBA programme. She is an Associate Fellow at the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, sits on the Said Business School Board at Oxford, and is also a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Charity Effectiveness, Cass Business School, London.
Matthew Pike
Matthew Pike is Director of the Scarman Trust which he set up and has run for more than 10 years. He was also Secretary to the Commission on Unclaimed Assets until the completion of its report in March 2007 when he returned to the Scarman Trust full time and became a Commissioner. He is a Director of Future Builders and a member of the Police Advisory Panel. Matthew has been Assistant and Acting Director of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, a Fellow at the Institute of Community Studies and an Adviser on Civil Renewal to the Home Office. As a social entrepreneur he has set up more than 40 major programmes or new organisations to date.
David Robinson
David Robinson is the Founder of Community Links (www.community-links.org). Community Links work with more than 50,000 people a year through an extensive network of community development projects in East London. This local experience is shared with policy makers and practitioners nationwide through the Links UK publications, training and consultancy programme. David is also the founder and, now chair of We Are What We Do (www.wearewhatwedo.org) originator and joint author of the movement’s current best sellers Change The World For A Fiver and Change the World 9 to 5, co-founder of the Children’s Discovery Centre, and a founding Trustee of TimeBank. Recent publications include Unconditional Leadership and, with others, Enduring Change and Living Values. He collaborated with Gordon Brown on the Prime Ministers book Britain’s Everyday Heroes and now leads the Prime Minister’s Council on Social Action. David’s policy work has been recognised with an honorary doctorate from the Open University and he was named Morgan Stanley Great Briton 2007 for his contribution to public life.
James Strachan
James is currently a member of the Court of Directors of the Bank of England, a non-executive Director of Legal and General plc, Welsh Water and Care UK plc, a Trustee of Somerset House and a Visiting Fellow at the LSE (risk and regulation). Until 2006, he was Chairman of the Audit Commission, the public services regulator and watchdog.
After reading economics and English at Cambridge, he worked in the City both as a commercial and investment banker. Initially with Chase Manhattan, he then spent 13 years at Merrill Lynch, latterly as Managing Director in London and a Board member of Merrill Lynch International.
Since 1994 he has also worked in the voluntary and public sectors. He has been a Board member of Ofgem, the energy regulator; the National Lottery’s Community Fund; the Disability Rights Commission and Save the Children. Now a Vice President, he has also been Chairman, Trustee and Chief Executive of RNID, the leading disability charity. He is a Leadership Patron of the National College of School Leadership. Having been a professional photographer and journalist, he is now an Honorary Fellow of the University of the Arts, London.
Peter Wheeler
Peter Wheeler is Chairman of IPValue, a company that works with major global companies to manage intellectual property (patent) monetization. Until 2001 he spent 20 years in investment banking, where he became a partner of Goldman Sachs. This took him to New York and Hong Kong, where he headed Goldman’s investment banking business for Asia. He has experience in corporate lending and loan syndication, corporate finance, and mergers and acquisitions. He continues to be an active private investor and is a Board Director of Climate Change Capital.
In addition to his business interests, Peter is a founder and trustee of the charity New Philanthropy Capital and the Chairman of Charity Technology Trust and Futurebuilders. He is a trustee of the Young Foundation and sits on the Investment Advisory Committee of UnLTD, a government-endowed organisation with a mandate to develop social entrepreneurs and their projects nationwide in the UK.
Executives
Toby Eccles – Development Director
Toby Eccles is leading the development of Social Finance and has been working on the Social Investment Bank since joining the Commission on Unclaimed Assets in October 2005. Prior to working for the Commission he was Director of Research at ARK, a child focused foundation, where he built programmes around education in the UK and communities with high levels of HIV/AIDS in South Africa. In the commercial world Toby worked in corporate finance at UBS Warburg, and built a next generation internet protocols business for Data Connection, a leading UK software company. He has taken non-executive and investor roles in two technology related start-ups, and is a non-executive director of Antidote, a charity developing emotional intelligence in schools, and a regional board member of the Guinness Trust, a housing association. Toby holds a BA in Maths from Oxford.
Alastair Ballantyne – Director
Most recently Alastair has been acting as Adviser to the Economic Development Office of the City of London Corporation and has been co-ordinating activity related to review of City competitiveness by the Chancellor’s High Level Group. Prior to this he was Head of International Government Relations and Community Affairs at Morgan Stanley International. In this role he was also responsible for developing Morgan Stanley’s global environmental policy. His career at Morgan Stanley spanned 20 years, including working on bond issues and derivatives and providing investment banking advice to governments and companies concerning privatisation. While at Morgan Stanley he was a trustee of Community Action Network and an active participant in Prison Partners (mentoring Belmarsh Prison management). Alastair has an MA in Engineering Science and Economics from Exeter College Oxford.
Annika Tverin – Director
Annika joined Social Finance in September 2008 with extensive experience of advising clients on the process of raising equity capital. Notable equity capital raising transactions include the Initial Public Offerings of Telia (Sweden), Statoil (Norway) and Orange (France) and the rights issue of Ericsson. Prior to joining Social Finance, Annika worked as a Director in the Equity Capital Markets departments of Credit Suisse, ABN AMRO Rothschild and Morgan Stanley. She started her investment banking career in Mergers & Acquisitions at Morgan Stanley and worked for London-based strategy consulting firm LEK Consulting prior to becoming a banker. Annika holds a BA and MA degree in Economics from the US and an MBA (Hons) degree from INSEAD, France. A Finnish national, she is fluent in Finnish, Swedish and German.
Corrinne Callaway – Chief Operating Officer
Prior to joining Social Finance Corrinne spent 16 years working in various City Institutions; including Deutsche Bank as Chief Operating Officer of Global Markets Finance and Deputy Head Of Equities London Branch at Natixis. She is a member of the Securities Institute. She also took a career sabbatical, helping to run a diving operation with Raleigh International in Belize, Central America.
Emily Bolton – Associate Director
Emily has extensive experience in applying business approaches in the third sector to maximise social returns. Prior to Social Finance, Emily worked at REDF, a San Francisco venture philanthropy fund investing in social enterprise. Emily was responsible for leading REDF's portfolio due diligence and managing relationships with portfolio organisations. At REDF, Emily also disseminated venture philanthropy and social enterprise best practices across the US through papers, tools and conferences.
Emily's corporate experience includes working for the strategy consultancy CVA in London, principally in the financial services sector. She also worked in the strategy group of Charles Schwab. Emily holds a BA from Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge and an MBA from UC Berkeley, where she was a Haas Merit Scholar.
Louise Savell – Associate
Louise Savell joined Social Finance in October 2007 prior to which she spent three years as a Programmes Manager for ARK, a child-focused foundation raising money from the hedge-fund industry. While at ARK she developed and managed a substantial portfolio of care system reform programmes in Eastern Europe, in addition to playing a central role in the development of ARK’s international programmes strategy as a whole.
Before joining ARK, Louise spent time in East Africa researching and developing youth HIV/AIDS prevention programmes in conjunction with Students Partnership Worldwide. Louise holds an MPhil in Development Studies and a BA (Hons) in Philosophy, Psychology and Physiology from the University of Oxford, where she was a Scholar. She has recently completed a post-graduate diploma with distinction in Voluntary Sector Management at Cass Business School.
Marva Gowie – PA / Office Manager
Marva joined Social Finance in September 2008 prior to which she spent ten years at Citibank working as a PA and training coordinator. Her previous career includes ten years at World Jewish Relief where she was Appeals Administrator and Secretary.
