Interim Chief Executive Officer
Vicky is a much-respected voluntary sector leader who headed up civil society leadership body ACEVO as chief executive for more than five years. Other charity sector roles include interim CEO of national human rights and advocacy charity POhWER, cross-sector collaboration body The Whitehall & Industry Group, and CEO of comms membership organisation CharityComms.
Vicky has also worked in the private sector, most notably for 16 years at independent publishing company Haymarket, initially as a journalist before moving into the business side as a publishing director.
In 2023 she was made an OBE for services to the charity sector.
Vicky is excited to be working alongside UK Youth’s passionate and committed executive and board team to empower young people through the life-changing and life-saving influence of youth work.
President
The former motor racing champion became president in 1999 and continues to work tirelessly to promote the charity. Nigel has taken on a host of fundraisers raising more than £1 million for UK Youth.
Patron
HRH, patron since 2003, makes a number of personal appearances each year on behalf of UK Youth, and has a genuine understanding and passion of the positive impact UK Youth has on young peoples lives.
Chair of Trustees
David was appointed as a trustee of UK Youth in February 2020.
David has 45 years’ experience in engineering and business. He served on the global management board of Accenture for 11 years prior to retiring in 2014. His leadership roles at Accenture included group chief executive of the Resources industries, chair of the UK and Ireland Geographies and chief geographic strategy and operations officer across 55 countries.
Since retiring, David has a wide portfolio of roles and interests. He was formerly chair of Moixa Energy and the international chair at the Royal Academy of Engineering. Other current and continuing roles include: advisor to the board of Arup, chair of the audit committee of Arup, advisory board member of Immerse, a virtual reality tech start-up, and BecomingX.
He has been a long-term supporter of TeachFirst and serves on the Teach For All UK Board.
Vice-chair of Trustees
Matt has worked in financial services for more than 20 years and specialises in leading large transformation programmes and managing significant-sized teams in multi-regional structures. He is chief executive officer of 10th Bridge Consulting and has previously held senior positions at Holley Holland Consulting, RBS, Deutsche Bank and PWC, in a variety of change-related roles.
Honorary Treasurer
Daniel is a senior manager at PwC, providing audit and specialist assurance services, with a particular focus on working with the central government and not-for-profit clients. He was appointed to the Charities SORP Committee in February 2020. Daniel is a chartered accountant and holds the ICAEW Diploma in charity accounting. He is also a chartered manager and has a master’s degree in educational leadership and management.
Trustee
Godfrey is a senior secretariat lead for the Covid-19 Taskforce in the Cabinet Office. He has held several roles within the Civil Service. His career and volunteering have focused on supporting young people to fulfil their potential. Godfrey sits on the people committee as race lead, working and motivating leaders across the Civil Service assimilating their challenging feedback, enhancing their capability to cultivate young and BAME leadership within the Civil Service. He is also a Governor of a local school.
Trustee
Aaron is a strategy consultant and was previously business manager at Global Markets Consultants, a management consulting firm in the City of London. He was elected Common Councillor for Tower Ward, City of London, in January 2022. In 2018, he climbed Mount Kilimanjaro with a PwC team, raising more than £5,000 for UK Youth. Aaron joined UK Youth as a trustee in 2016.
Trustee
Obum currently leads DeepMind’s efforts to build an AI ecosystem that supports inclusive and equitable use of AI to maximise benefit to society. He has dedicated his career towards enabling people from underrepresented groups to access a quality computing and AI education, and to thrive in whatever career they choose to pursue afterwards. In 2022, Obum was made an OBE in the New Year Honours’ List for services to computing and AI education, and championing diversity and inclusion in the tech sector.
Trustee
Anna is chief of staff for finance at Pearson. She is a qualified accountant with extensive commercial finance experience in the education and media sector. In her career, she has held various finance roles in Pearson, Nuffield Health and PricewaterhouseCoopers and has recently been shortlisted for NXT GEN Female Finance chief financial officer of the future award.
Trustee
Ben works as part of Sport England’s external affairs team to champion the organisation’s work in grassroots sport and physical activity across Westminster and Whitehall. Previously policy adviser for the Sport and Recreation Alliance, he led their policy, influencing and advocacy work around public health, mental health and helping more children and young people to be active.
Trustee
Jolanta is chief executive of Ambitious about Autism, including the School Trust. She chairs two sector infrastructure bodies – Autism Education Trust and the Autism Alliance. Her career includes director roles in national voluntary sector organisations, including I CAN and the Governance Hub, a national body set up to support the governance of the third sector.
Trustee
Jodie is the chief executive officer of Oxfordshire Youth, vice-chair of the Oxfordshire Children’s Trust Board, chair of the Children and Young People’s Forum and co-chair of the Charity Leaders Forum. A strategic leader and big picture thinker, Jodie is passionate about equality, social justice, system change, youth voice and the power of youth work to change lives.
Trustee
Gabrielle is an academic foundation doctor in North Central London and a multi-award-winning children and young people’s health advocate. She has worked across the charitable sector, healthcare system and with government advocating for children and young people. A long-term patient and the youngest original member of the NHS Assembly, she role models the inclusion of patients in strategic decision- making.
She most recently worked at Children in All Policies 2030, an initiative launched in 2021 to further global progress to the sustainable development goals through multi-sectoral action and the recommendations of the WHO – UNICEF – Lancet Commission.
Her current thinking is focused on individual and systems leadership and how we can equip and mobilise all healthcare professionals to lead with and for kindness. As a member of the International Planning Advisory Committee for the IHI BMJ International Forum for Patient Quality and Safety in Healthcare, she is considering how patients and trainees can be equal partners in quality improvement work.
Trustee
Iain has been a trustee of UK Youth since 2016, including chairing the board’s impact and risk committee.
Iain has more than 25 years of experience in the technology sector within some of the world’s largest technology companies, through to young innovative startups. He is currently the chief revenue officer of financial management software company, Moss, where he is responsible for their growth globally.
Prior to Moss, Iain has worked extensively in Europe, the UK and Australia and has held senior positions at technology firms including Stripe, Google, IBM and Cisco, across sales and marketing, partnerships, operations and engineering.
Iain is a native Australian and resides in London with his wife and two daughters. On weekends, you will often find him cycling in the Surrey Hills, on tennis courts in south-west London, or enjoying watching his daughters grow up.
In addition to his service to UK Youth, Iain has also served as a patron and volunteer for many charities in Australia and the UK and is currently an enthusiastic contributor to the Friends of Richmond Park.
Trustee
Nneka is a senior director at Alvarez & Marsal, where she leads the firm’s UK wealth management performance improvement proposition. Prior to this, Nneka spent more than three years as chief operating officer at Morrinson Wealth and circa 10 years in management consulting, initially at Accenture and then Deloitte. During this time, Nneka also served as chief of staff to the Deloitte UK chairman. Nneka’s experience includes working with global financial institutions to deliver large-scale programmes and she continues to work with boards, executive teams and senior leaders across financial services to assess strategic opportunities, address complex challenges and optimise outcomes for clients.
Nneka is a non-executive director at BusinessLDN. Nneka is a passionate mentor and advocate of social mobility and inclusion. She is a mentor with the Social Mobility Foundation, Girls Are INvestors (GAIN) and Women of Colour Global Network and previously held mentoring roles at the Amos Bursary and Cherie Blair Foundation for Women. Nneka was a school governor for six years and continues to support schools through Inspiring the Future and Women of the Future.
Nneka studied for an MEng in engineering, economics and management at the University of Oxford. Nneka passed Chartered Financial Analyst level one and is an active participant in Toastmasters.
Trustee
Jon is an executive director at the Youth Endowment Fund and previously a special advisor within the Department of Education and a business analyst at McKinsey. He founded three youth initiatives, including the National Citizen Service, founding, and scaling a charity from three volunteers to 1,000 staff.
His main priority in life is to be a decent human – and support young people to progress through the youth work he has been involved in, to serve young people through the initiatives he has founded and be a decent husband and father.
Interim Chief Operating Officer
Oby brings a blend of leadership, strategic insight, and operational acumen, to guide UK Youth through significant organisational development and change. Her career which began in finance, evolved into leading operations within tech start-ups dedicated to social impact and using technology for good.
Oby holds more than a decade of leadership experience in scaling organisations, enhancing internal capabilities, and overseeing comprehensive operations including finance, human resources, legal, compliance, and delivery. She is committed to nurturing diverse and inclusive organisational cultures and championing the voices of underserved and underrepresented communities.
Oby previously served as the chief operating officer of Built-ID, where her leadership led to the attainment of B-Corp certification and facilitated the company’s successful acquisition by a leading PropTech firm. Before that, Oby served as vice-president operations at Endless OS Foundation, a global non-profit EdTech dedicated to democratising access to technology. There, she led global people and diversity change projects, demonstrating her ability to deliver impactful change in complex environments.
Chief Impact Officer
Jacob ensures the charity’s work is informed by the best available evidence, the needs and preferences of young people, and continuous learning. He joined UK Youth in 2021, after eight years leading research and strategy at mental health charity Mind.
His career has included multiple research projects, service development, and policy roles focused on young people. These include working on youth unemployment policy for Jacinda Ardern, former Prime Minister of New Zealand. He is also chair of trustees at Off the Record, the South West’s pioneering youth mental health charity.
Director of Network Delivery
Thora comes to UK Youth with a senior career spanning, operations, strategy, programme development and delivery across the education and youth sectors.
Previously, Thora worked at the Teaching School Hubs Council, where she led the executive team in the annual £17 million delivery of the Government’s national 87 teaching school hubs. Within its first year, the network was able to scale to deliver training to more than 30,000 people.
Director of Youth Sector Innovation
Kayleigh has 20 years’ experience in the youth sector starting her journey as a member of her local youth club.
In her current role, Kayleigh is responsible for leading and mobilising an innovative leadership development programme to attract new leaders to the youth sector.
She is a JNC-qualified youth worker with a passion for developing projects that bring communities together and supporting young people to have their voices heard.
Director of Outdoor Learning
David is responsible for overall management and strategy of UK Youth outdoor learning and the leadership and development of UK Youth’s Avon Tyrrell Outdoor Activity Centre, a successful social enterprise business.
With more than 20 years’ experience of working in the outdoor learning and youth sectors, David is instrumental in the centre becoming a leader in the delivery of outdoor learning for young people in the UK. David also has considerable experience of leading charity operations and sits on several external professional groups that include safeguarding advisory panels.
Before joining UK Youth, David was in the military where he led several summer and winter expeditions to various countries. He remains a keen participant in outdoor activities.
Director of Income Generation and Strategic Communications