Our Trustees
John Coughlan | Radha Chakraborty | Ellen Broomé | Matthew Cripps | Gautam Dalal | Tim Hobbs | Hilary Murray Hill | Anthony Kessel | Nigel Langstaff | June O’Sullivan | Ed Poultney | Vicki Sellick
John Coughlan CBE (Chair)
John was previously Chief Executive of Hampshire County Council and has many years experience in local government and especially leading children's services and education. As Director of Children's Services for Hampshire County Council, he achieved a unique record nationally of good and outstanding Ofsted judgments over a decade; he also led a schools system of 540 schools with an established reputation as a sustained and supportive local education authority with particular success in narrowing the gap for pre-school and primary children. John is a Past President of the Association of Directors of Children's Services (ADCS). He currently works with Government supporting local authorities in various forms of intervention. He was awarded a CBE in 2009.
Radha Chakraborty (Vice-Chair)
Radha Chakraborty is Creative Director at Development Media International, an NGO that focuses on improving child health and cognitive development through TV, radio and mobile campaigns. She oversees DMI’s creative content in London and across 14 countries in Sub Saharan Africa. Radha is the producer and writer of a number of award-winning feature films, commercials and short films. After a mathematics degree at Imperial College Radha qualified as a Chartered Accountant and Chartered Tax Advisor at PwC and worked at Shell before becoming a partner at Towers Perrin (now Willis Towers Watson), where she led one of their GB lines of business. She was also Operations Director at Comic Relief. Radha is married with one child. In her spare time she enjoys reading with her son, yoga and scriptwriting.
Ellen Broomé
Ellen is Chief Executive of the British Dyslexia Association. She was previously Managing Director of CoramBAAF, the UK's largest membership organisation for professionals involved with children and young people in their journey through the care system, and Coram Family and Childcare, the UK's leading childcare charity.
Ellen has also been Director of Children and Families at NatCen, the UK's leading social research organisation, and Chief Executive of Family and Childcare Trust, where she worked for five years, and led the merger into Coram in 2018. She brings 20 years of experience of strategic leadership, research, policy, advocacy and communications from previous roles including at the Children's Society, the National Autistic Society and Parliament. Ellen is also a trustee of Leukemia UK.
Professor Matthew Cripps
Matthew is Director of Behaviour Change at NHS England and NHS Improvement. Matthew created and embedded NHS RightCare as a national improvement programme in England. He now leads on spreading the concepts of behaviour change, population healthcare improvement and optimal value in health.
Matthew is a Professor at Warwick Business School, with a focus on sustainable health systems, Honorary Professor of Population Healthcare Improvement at the University of Salford and was previously Professor of Business Processing and Knowledge Transfer at the Manchester Metropolitan University Business School. Matthew has held several director positions across local and national NHS bodies, including in Finance, Transformation and Improvement. He has written seven publications on sustainable healthcare improvement, finance and business process engineering.
Gautam Dalal (Treasurer)
Gautam is a chartered accountant and a former senior audit partner at KPMG London. From 2000 to 2003 he was chairman and chief executive of KPMG's practice in India, which he helped to establish. Gautam is a non-executive director of Moxico Resources plc, Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS FT and Hoptroff London Ltd. He is a member of the finance and audit committees of the National Gallery, having previously been a trustee and chair of these committees, and a Governor of The Purcell School.
Gautam was also a non-executive director of Barts Health NHS Trust from April 2012 to March 2022 as well as the Board's vice-chairman and senior independent director. He was formerly a non-executive director of Barts and The London NHS Trust from September 2010 to March 2012.He has also been a founder board member of the UK India business council and the international board of AMREF Health Africa, the chair of the audit committee of The Law Society, and a member of the Governing Body of the School of Oriental and African Studies.
Professor Tim Hobbs
Tim is Chief Executive of Dartington Service Design Lab, an independent social research and design charity. He has spent more than two decades working with numerous public systems, charities and foundations to help shape a series of bold investments and experiments designed to improve child outcomes. Underpinning all his work is a deep commitment to generating and using evidence, fused with human-centred and systemic design approaches.
Tim is also a Visiting Professor at University College (in the School of Psychology and Language Sciences) and was a 2021 Fellow of Practice at the Government Outcomes Lab (in the Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford University). Tim is an avid reader of literacy fiction and sci-fi.
Hilary Murray Hill
Hilary is CEO of Hachette Children's Group, a role she has held since 2014. She has significant experience in publishing, including in senior roles for children's publishers Egmont, Usborne and Scholastic Children's Books. Whilst at Scholastic, as Managing Director, they were awarded the Bookseller Children's Publisher of the Year. Hilary chaired the Children's Group of the Publishers' Association between 2018- 2021 and has been a school governor. In her spare time, she enjoys music, contemporary fiction and travelling.
Professor Anthony Kessel
Anthony is a public health physician, academic, GP and author. Anthony is currently Deputy National Medical Director (Specialised Services) at NHS England & Improvement. Prior to that, Anthony worked for a decade as Director of Global Public Health at Public Health England and National Director of Public Health Strategy, Director of R&D and Medical Director at the Health Protection Agency. In parallel, Anthony holds a university position as Honorary Professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, where he co-established the International Programme for Ethics, Public Health and Human Rights, where has an active research portfolio and has written over 100 publications.
Anthony is a Trustee (non-executive) Director of a mental health charity, Innate Health, a Council member of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), and advises other charities working in global health and mental health. Anthony also writes children’s fiction with an approach threaded through his books to support psychological wellbeing and resilience for his readers.
Nigel Langstaff
Nigel spent 18 years with Carphone Warehouse Group until its merger with Dixons Retail in 2014. As a chartered accountant, he held a number of senior finance roles within the group, including as UK and then Group Finance Director before becoming Chief Financial Officer. He was also on the board of Virgin Mobile France. In addition, he was a non-executive director at TalkTalk Telecom Group plc from 2017 to 2021.
Nigel is a trustee for a number of charities, including the David Ross Education Trust, Renaissance Foundation and Ensemble Pour La Difference. He is also an investor in several social impact businesses. He has an MA in modern history from Oxford University. Nigel is married with one daughter and in his spare time enjoys reading, collecting records and cooking.
June O’Sullivan MBE
June has more than 30 years hands on experience gained from within the Early Years, Social Services, Social Enterprise and Learning and Development sectors with specific skills in Business and Stakeholder Performance, Business Growth and Development. She has an excellent record of initiating and leading innovation and award-winning growth, not least creating the first Social Enterprise Childcare Group in the UK.
Ed Poultney
Ed joined the Prince's Trust in April 2023 as Director of Communications. Prior to joining the Trust, he worked at the United Nations as Global Chief of Strategic Communications & Brand for the world's largest humanitarian agency, the World Food Programme. Having started his career as a journalist, Ed has over 20 years of experience in leadership positions in media, at global agencies and in-house, covering consumer, government and charity communications and campaigns, both in the UK and internationally.
Vicki Sellick MBE
Vicki is Chief Experience Officer at St. John Ambulance, England’s first aid charity. She’s charged with ensuring every interaction with St. John is a positive one for patients, customers, donors and the charity’s 25,000 volunteers. Previously Vicki was Chief Partnership Officer at innovation foundation Nesta where she built long term experimentation partnerships with government and NHS partners and to test new ideas to big challenges. This included new approaches to early years, to ensure all children in the UK have a fair start to life. She was also responsible for grant funding across the foundation, distributing £10-20m p/a to support charities and social enterprises to bring new ideas to life, with a big focus on volunteering.
Vicki was awarded MBE in 2021 for services to social action and loves to volunteer as a youth worker and children’s sailing instructor.