Stephen Cohen, Acting Chair of Trustees - Chair of the Judging Panel
Stephen Cohen has worked in the asset management business for over 25 years in multiple roles, in America, Asia and in Europe. He has worked in both research and fund management, specialising in Japanese equities as well as the business development and business management sides of the industry. He has started two businesses in Japan in 1985 and in 1990. In 1995 he led the creation of Mercury Asset Management's global mutual fund business ahead of the merger with Merrill Lynch. He has also been CEO of Dresdner RCm in the UK, headed up Zurich Scudder Investments European business development and most recently was Head of Putnam Investments for the EMEA Region.
The Rt. Hon. Lord Deedes, KBE, MC, DL
Bill Deedes was educated at Harrow. He joined the Morning Post in 1931 as a journalist at the age of 18, becoming their war correspondent on Abyssinia in 1935 before joining The Daily Telegraph in 1937. Bill Deedes served in The King's Royal Rifle Corps throughout the Second World War, and was awarded the Military Cross in 1944. With the Armistice he returned to the Telegraph.
As a Conservative MP, Bill Deedes represented Ashford in Kent from 1950 until 1974. In 1955 Winston Churchill appointed Bill Deedes as Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Housing and Local Government. He then moved to the Home Office in 1955 as Parliamentary Under-Secretary. In 1957 he retired but five years later returned as Minister without Portfolio in the Cabinet.
Bill Deedes succeeded Maurice Green as Editor of The Daily Telegraph in 1974 and remained in the post for twelve years. Since 1986 he has remained a leader writer and columnist for The Daily Telegraph. In April 2000 Bill Deedes received the Journalist of the Century award at The Oldie Magazine awards and at the press awards in March 2002, he was awarded the Press Gazette Gold Award. Bill Deedes was ennobled in 1986 and in 1999 received a knighthood for services to humanitarian causes, as well as journalism.
His publications include: 'Dear Bill: WF Deedes Reports', his autobiography published in 1997, 'At War with Waugh' in 2003, and 'Brief Lives' in 2004.
Ram Gidoomal, CBE
Ram Gidoomal came to Britain from East Africa as a refugee in 1967. He is an entrepreneur, and former UK Group Chief Executive of the Inlaks Group, a multinational business with seven thousand employees.
Ram Gidoomal is Chairman of Winning Communications, South Asian Development Partnership, London Community Foundation and London Sustainability Exchange and the Employability Forum (helping refugees and asylum seekers into employment). He is a Board Member of the Institute of Employment Studies, Covent Garden Market Authority, English Partnerships, London First Centre and the Companions of the Chartered Management Institute and on the Advisory Board for Ethics in the Workplace of the Institute of Business Ethics. He was a founder trustee and chairman of the Christmas Cracker Charity, which has given thousands of young people direct entrepreneurial experience and which has raised over £5 million for projects in developing countries.
A Trustee of the Institute of Citizenship and Forum for the Future, he is the author of several books including The UK Maharajahs and The British and how to deal with them: Doing Business with Britain's Ethnic Communities. He is a governor of Kings College School, Wimbledon, a Crown Appointee on the Court & Council of Imperial College, a visiting professor of Entrepreneurship & Inner City Regeneration at Middlesex University.
Zac Goldsmith
Zac Goldsmith was born in 1975 and educated in England. In 1994 he joined The International Honours Programme, a global ecology course that took him through Eastern Europe, India, Thailand, New Zealand, Mexico and the United States. Between 1994-95 he worked with the San Francisco-based Redefining Progress (RP), a non-governmental organisation focused on rethinking the misleading indicators with which modern economists measure 'progress'. After leaving RP, he worked for two years with The International Society for Ecology and Culture (ISEC), based in California, Bristol, and Ladakh (India), running for some of that time a tourist education programme in Ladakh. He remains an associate director of ISEC. For seven years he has been the director and editor of The Ecologist Magazine. He regularly appears in radio and television debates, and his writings have been published in newspapers and journals throughout the world.
In 2003 Zac was the recipient of the Beacon Prize for 'Young Philanthropist of the Year'. In 2004, he received the Global Green Award for 'International Environmental Leadership'.
Sir Anthony Kenny
Sir Anthony Kenny was a Fellow and later Master of Balliol College Oxford. On retirement from Balliol he was for ten years chief executive of the Rhodes Trust, a charity that in addition to funding the Rhodes Scholarships has supported many good causes in post-apartheid South Africa. He has been President of the British Academy and Chairman of the Board of the British Library, and has published forty books on philosophical and historical topics.
Maggie Semple, OBE
Maggie Semple joined The Experience Corps with both a strong public sector background and a true sense of the vitality of volunteering through the responsibilities that she undertakes in her spare time. On a voluntary basis, Maggie is Chair of the National Youth Music Theatre, a Trustee and Council Member of the Royal Society of Arts, a governor of De Montfort University and serves on the boards of the Teacher Training Agency, the Roundhouse Camden, The Women's Library, Sadler's Wells Theatre, The Arts Educational Schools and the Rambert Dance Company. Prior to The Experience Corps, Maggie was Director of the Learning Experience for the New Millennium Experience Company and Director of Education and Training at the Arts Council of England. Formerly Deputy Head of North Westminster Community School - a large comprehensive school, Maggie has advised on the National Curriculum, served on the DfEE's National Advisory Group for Continuing Education and Lifelong Learning and currently is a member of the DfES Post 16 e-Learning Task Force. It was through these experiences, and through getting older herself, that Maggie's imagination was fired by the idea of encouraging those with experience of life to teach life skills to their communities through volunteering. Maggie has worked to further the celebration of a culturally diverse society as Director of the National Arts Education for a Multicultural Society Project, supported by the Commission for Racial Equality, with whom she still has links. Maggie is also a Civil Service Commissioner. Maggie was awarded the OBE in 2001 for her services to education in the UK.
Baroness Smith of Gilmorehill
Baroness Smith was created a peer in 1995 following the death of her husband, the Rt. Hon John Smith, M.P who was the leader of the Labour Party at the time of his early death at the age of 55.
She is on the board of several organisations with interests in Russia and FSU countries. She also has interests in culture and the arts and is President of Scotland's national opera company, Scottish Opera. She is a member of many boards and trusts including:
British Chamber of Commerce - Executive Council Member All-party Parliamentary Group for Russia - Vice Chairman Mariinsky Theatre Trust - Trustee John Smith Memorial Trust - Trustee Press Complaints Commission - Member of Appointments Board Edinburgh Festival Fringe - Chairman Scottish Opera - President English Speaking Union - Governor 21st Century Trust - Trustee
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