Governing Body

Lucy Williams is the Group Head of Conduct, Policy and Whistleblowing at HSBC plc. Prior to this role, Lucy was the Executive Committee member and Head of Regulatory Compliance for HSBC UK Bank, responsible for overseeing the commercial, retail, wealth and private banking operations of HSBC in the UK. She held this role from 2013. She was the first senior executive to relocate from London to Birmingham in 2015, ahead of the opening of the Bank’s new UK head office there. She still lives locally with her family and is a strong advocate for the region.  She says of this move that it taught her much about the place that banking has in a community and the role that teams play in reflecting the values of HSBC on those around them. She’s proud to lead a global team from a regional base and thinks the connectivity it gives them to our customers and colleagues improves their performance.   

Lucy joined HSBC in June 2013 from Prudential plc where she was the Director of Group Compliance. Prior to that, she was Head of Compliance at Aviva Life UK. Her earlier career included a range of roles over some years at the Financial Services Authority, in the Markets Division and Retail Supervision, and managing ABN AMRO’s Government Affairs team in Brussels.

Outside of work Lucy supports a range of globally-renowned arts organisations with a regional base – she is a Board member of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Lucy is proud to Chair the Independent Schools Governing Body of the King Edward VI Foundation Birmingham and be a Board member of the wider Foundation. Together, the 10 schools reflect the multicultural and diverse population of the city, and are committed to excellence and accessibility. 

Lucy is married with three children, all of school age. 

Gill Ball is a qualified accountant with the majority of her career spent within Higher Education. She was Director of Finance at the University of Birmingham for 20 years until retiring from that role in December 2014. The University of Birmingham is a significant global, national and local organisation with a turnover of £680m, 35,000 students and 7,200 staff.

Within the King Edward Foundation, Gill is a member of the Board, Chair of the Audit Committee, a Trustee of the Staff Pension Fund, a Governor of King Edward VI Handsworth School, Chair of the Finance Committee there and a member of the Site Committee.

Gill is an advisor to Accelerus Education Limited, director of Professional Higher Education Services Ltd and an Associate of AdvanceHE. She was formerly President of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) – the largest global accountancy body with 170,000 members and 340,000 students. Gill was also in a Non-Executive Director role as Deputy Chairman of an insurance mutual and Council member of one of the UK Research Councils.

Gill was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2012 for services to Higher Education.

Professor Geraldine Brodie is Associate Professor in Translation Theory and Theatre Translation at University College London and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Her research centres on theatre translation practices in contemporary London, with The Translator on Stage (Bloomsbury 2018) among recent publications.

Geraldine read English as an undergraduate at Brasenose College, Oxford, followed by 12 years working in audit, tax, professional development and graduate recruitment at KPMG in London and New York. She is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales and a member of the Chartered Institute of Taxation. She continues in her role as the managing director of a private property investment and management company specialising in the residential and commercial sectors in South East England.

Geraldine has been a member of a range of charitable, voluntary and industry boards and organisations. Current appointments include the Barbican Centre Trust and the Independent Schools Governing Body of the Foundation of the Schools of King Edward VI in Birmingham, where she was herself a pupil. She also sits on the Norman Wates Family Committee of the Wates Foundation, an independent grant-making family trust supporting the charitable and voluntary sector.

Obaid Choudhry was a pupil at King Edward’s School before going on to read Natural Sciences at St John’s College in Cambridge.

He is a Director at Rothschild & Co, having joined the firm in 2011, and now advises both public and private clients on a range of corporate finance matters including mergers and acquisitions. Prior to this, Obaid completed his ACA with Deloitte and is a chartered accountant.

He also sits on the Board of the Health Exchange, a community health and well-being focused charity based in Birmingham.

Chris Hosty was educated at KEHS Edgbaston before obtaining a degree in Mathematics from York University. After completing her PGCE at Nottingham University, Chris taught in Bristol and at Edgbaston High School. Chris joined the Maths department at KEHS in September 1987 and retired in July 2018. She was appointed to the ISGB in March 2020.

Barnaby Lenon taught at Eton for 12 years, was Deputy Head of Highgate School, Headmaster of Trinity School Croydon and Head of Harrow (12 years). He has been a Governor of 22 schools.

Barnaby is Chair of Governors and joint founder of the London Academy of Excellence school in Newham, East London, one of the most successful state schools in England. He is Professor of Education at the University of Buckingham, Chair of the Independent Schools’ Council, a Trustee of the Yellow Submarine charity, and a consultant to the Robertson Foundation which sponsors schools in New York and South Africa (amongst other things). He is a member of the Ofqual standards advisory group.

He has recently published two books, Much Promise: successful schools in England and Other People’s Children: what happens to the academically least successful 50%? 

George Marsh was educated at King Edward’s School and the University of Sheffield (civil and structural engineering).

He spent most of his career with construction company Galliford, including 10 years as Chief Executive. He has since been involved as non-executive Chair of a number of construction companies, including leading MBOs and PFI Projects, and has been actively involved in industry affairs for 40 years. A former Chair of Governors and Pro-Chancellor of Coventry University, George has recently served as a trustee of the Engineering Council.

George served in the TA Royal Engineers for 30 years, ultimately commanding the RE Specialist TA as a Colonel and working on projects on the worldwide military estate and is currently a Board Member of the West Midlands Reserve Forces and Cadets Association.

An active Deputy Lieutenant of the West Midlands, George previously served as Vice-Lord Lieutenant and acting Lord-Lieutenant.

Ian Metcalfe, a qualified solicitor, retired as managing partner of international law firm Wragge & Co in 2014 after eight years in post. Prior to managing the business, Ian was a corporate partner at the firm for 14 years, acting for several substantial public and private companies and private equity houses on a wide range of transactions.

Ian now pursues a “portfolio” career, with a range of non-executive appointments, combining his interests in sport and business. Ian is Chair of Commonwealth Games England and a non-executive director of the global waste management and environmental services group TRRG Holdings Ltd, a joint venture between the Dutch Terberg Group and the Spanish Ros Roca Group.

In the public company world, Ian is the senior independent Non-executive Director and Chairman of Remco at Mercia Technologies plc and a Non-executive Director and Chairman of Remco of Arena Events Group plc.

A double rugby blue, Ian represents Cambridge University RUFC on the Council of the Rugby Football Union, having previously served nine years on the Board of the RFU, chaired the Professional Game Board and sat on the Board of ER 2015 Limited, the organising body for the 2015 Rugby World Cup.

Gayatri Sehdev is an alumna of King Edward VI High School for Girls. She studied Law at Downing College, Cambridge and completed her MBA (graduating as a Palmer Scholar) at The Wharton School, Philadelphia.

Gayatri currently works for Refinitiv, a Blackstone-backed financial services business, where she is both Assistant General Counsel and Company Secretary. Prior to serving on the ISGB, Gayatri served as a board observer for CARIE (a charity in Philadelphia that advocates for the rights of the elderly) and a governor of a federation of schools in London.

Amanda Smith came to read Law at the University of Birmingham and never left! She qualified as a Chartered Accountant with PwC with experience in the Audit & Assurance Practice and Corporate Finance followed by a career at FTSE 100 Compass Group Plc.

Amanda is the Vice Chair of Governors at an Outstanding maintained primary school in her home town of Sutton Coldfield, where she also Chairs the Finance and Resource Committee, and sits on both Teaching & Learning and Staffing.

Together with her husband she is also a supporter of the Assisted Places scheme. Outside interests include being a keen theatre supporter, being a patron of the Birmingham Hippodrome, Royal Shakespeare Company and Town Hall Symphony Hall locally as well as the Old Vic.

Hywel Thomas is Chair of the Foundation Board. He is Emeritus Professor of the Economics of Education, University of Birmingham and was the Director of the Centre for Research in Medical and Dental Education at the University. He was Head of the School of Education for 10 years, from 1993-2003.

His research and writing included studies on resource management in schools (DFE/OECD), the school workforce (DfES), smoking prevention strategies (EU), the career paths of graduates (HEFCE), designing a curriculum for training medical general practitioners (RCGP) and evaluating selection processes for medical speciality training (DH).

Hywel has undertaken work for The World Bank, UNESCO, the British Council and the Department for International Development (DfID). He has been Education Adviser to the British Council and specialist adviser to the OECD.

Professor Shearer West was appointed as the seventh Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of Nottingham in October 2017.

Shearer is a Professor of Art History and has held several significant leadership roles in universities and higher education. She obtained her BA degree in Art History and English at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, and her PhD in Art History at St Andrews.

A Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, the Higher Education Academy and the Royal Historical Society, she also has a number of international roles, most recently acting as main panel chair for the national research assessment exercise for Humanities in Norway and serving on the steering group to introduce impact into the Excellence in Research exercise in Australia.