President and Trustees

Meet our President and Board of Trustees

A Board of Trustees governs our charity, the Greenwich Foundation. They are responsible for overseeing the management of the Old Royal Naval College, its overarching strategy and the appointment of the Chief Executive.

President

HRH The Duke of Gloucester KG, GVCO
President

The Duke of Gloucester carries out a significant number of public duties, many as Patron, President or Fellow. He is involved in multiple charities related to architecture, construction and conservation. He was elected a corporate member of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) in 1972 and is Royal Patron of the British Museum. The Duke is also President of several architectural preservation societies, including the Victorian Society and the National Churches Trust. He is Patron of the International Council on Monuments and Sites, UK National Committee, as well as of the Global Heritage Fund. He was appointed President of the Greenwich Foundation for the Old Royal Naval College in 2010.

Trustees

Tony Hales CBE
Chair

Tony is currently Chair of The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music and NAAFI Pension Trustees, a director of Capital and Regional PLC and the Services, Sound and Vision Corporation. He was previously Chief Executive of Allied Domecq, Chair of NAAFI, British Waterways, Canal and River Trust, and Workspace plc and a non-exec director of Aston Villa and HSBC Bank. He was awarded a CBE for services to the armed forces.
Vice-Admiral Sir Adrian Johns KCB CBE DL
Trustee

Adrian served for 35 years in the Royal Navy as a helicopter pilot and flying instructor. He commanded five times at sea, ranging from a minesweeper to HMS OCEAN. He was Head of the Fleet Air Arm for five years and retired from the Navy as Second Sea Lord and Commander-in-Chief Naval Home Command in 2008. He was is subsequently appointed Governor and Commander-in-Chief, Gibraltar 2009-2013. He is a member of the Senior Salaries Review Body and a non-executive member of the Civil Service Pensions Board. He is Deputy Lieutenant of Greater London and is Deputy Chairman of the National Museum of the Royal Navy and Patron of a number of Veterans’ Associations.
John Barnes
Trustee

John is a conservation and visitor attraction specialist. He is the Chief Executive of Historic Royal Palaces, having previously been Director of Conservation and Learning since 2001. Prior to this spent ten years in private practice with leading architectural conservation companies before joining English Heritage in 1994 as Head of Architecture and Survey. In 1995 he became English Heritage Director of Professional Services responsible for advice on property conservation and development. From 1998, he was Director of Major Projects, responsible for English Heritage’s largest projects and the national projects programme for their 420 sites.
Will Bax
Trustee

Will is an experienced property investor, developer and urbanist with a track record of leading large urban estates. Most recently he was Executive Director responsible for Grosvenor’s London estate in Mayfair and Belgravia. Prior to this he was a fund manager in Paris, working across European markets. Will has a passion for cities and devising creative approaches to how buildings and neighbourhoods can deliver positive social outcomes.
Nicola Briggs
Trustee

Nicola joined the National Trust as Regional Director for the London and South East in 2014. Before that she held several senior leadership roles in the media, commercial companies and NGOs. She was Head of News at the Press Association before becoming News Editor and Deputy Editor at Express Newspapers. More recently, she worked at Lexis Nexis as Editorial and Publishing Director and then Content and Product Development Director, taking a lead role in the company’s transformation into a leading digital content provider. Her most recent role was Senior Director at Amnesty International.
Andrew Clark
Trustee

Andrew is Chairman of Purcell, a practice of architects, designers and heritage leaders. He has spent most of his professional life working on historic buildings and their settings – repairing, conserving, adapting, and extending places of historic significance. He is currently working on some of the most important historic buildings in London, from Battersea Power Station to the Palace of Westminster. He has worked for a range of clients including private individuals, museum and galleries, charitable organisations and Central Government advising on how they can transform the buildings in their care.
Dr Rupert Evenett FCA
Trustee

Rupert is a social entrepreneur. After a career in investment management and corporate finance, where he advised corporate clients from growth start-ups to multinationals on fundraising, strategy and financial transactions, he was a director in the UK civil service and has since been occupied mostly with the charity, social enterprise and social investment sectors, in parallel with research in political philosophy on citizenship and social justice. He was Chair of The Conservation Volunteers (TCV), a director of The Social Investment Business and on the council of Goldsmiths, University of London. He is a Trustee of Alzheimer’s Research UK and has served on a number of other boards in the social and educational sectors.
Jamaria Kong
Trustee

Jamaria is an independent management consultant. She advises mainly corporate clients in Mergers & Acquisitions, business transformations and operational improvements. She has previously been Associate Director with Ernst & Young’s Transaction Advisory Services and then Strategist / Partner at Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Advisory and Consulting Services. She is a Trustee of Bede House in Southwark.
Desmond Shawe-Taylor
Trustee

Desmond taught for many years at the University of Nottingham and was Director of Dulwich Picture Gallery 1996-2005, when he was appointed Surveyor of The Queen’s Pictures. He has written extensively on English eighteenth-century portraiture. Recently he has curated a series of exhibitions at the Queen’s Gallery in Edinburgh and London, dealing with Dutch and Flemish 17th-century art. He was also lead curator of a Queen’s Gallery exhibition celebrating the tercentenary of the arrival of the Hanoverian dynasty. His most recent project has been co-curating Charles I: King and Collector, at the Royal Academy, the first collaboration of its kind for Royal Collection Trust.
Laura Whyte
Trustee

Laura’s executive career was spent with John Lewis where she served on the Management Board for over ten years, firstly as Registrar and latterly as HR Director. She also founded and, for a number of years, chaired the John Lewis Foundation and was a Trustee of the Ebony Horse Club. Laura is currently a Non-Executive Director of the Defence People and Training Board of the Ministry of Defence, where she is also a member of the People Committee, a Non-Executive Director of the British Horseracing Authority and an Executive Trustee of Women in Retail.