Martyn Lewis CBE - Chair of Judges

After 32 years as a TV journalist and newscaster, Martyn now divides his time between charitable and business interests. He is Chairman and Co-Founder of Teliris, whose “GlobalTable” system pioneered high-quality, real-time video links around the world. He also chairs NICE TV, which provides high quality TV news programmes for major conferences, and YouthNet, a charity he founded in 1995 to create a comprehensive internet site signposting young people to every conceivable opportunity of form of help they might need. Martyn has been closely involved with the Hospice movement for over 20 years and is now a Vice-President of the three major national hospice charities - Help The Hospices, Marie Curie Cancer Cure and Macmillan Cancer Relief - as well as many individual hospices. Other charitable involvement includes President of United Response, a patron of For Dementia, and a Trustee of the Windsor Leadership Trust, helping develop the leaders of tomorrow.

In 1994 Martyn made two controversial and widely-debated speeches arguing for a shift in the agenda of TV news programmes to achieve a fairer balance between the positive and the negative, and report and analyse achievement just as much as failure. He still debates the issue in forums around the world.

The six books he has authored include the first layman's guide to the Hospice movement 'Tears and Smiles - The Hospice Handbook', and 'Reflections on Success', for which he interviewed 67 prominent achievers from many walks of life. Martyn was awarded a CBE in the 1997 New Year Honours List. He accepted the position of Chair of Beacon's Trustees in May 2005.

Sarah Benioff

Sarah Benioff is the Deputy Director of the Participation Team in The Office of the Third Sector at The Cabinet Office. She is formally the Chief Executive of The Community Development Foundation (CDF) which she joined in May 2003.

Sarah's previous experience includes several posts relating to community development including work in New York City with a large community–based youth and family services agency. She then worked for Crime Concern in the UK, first setting up and running the award winning Dalston Youth Project, targeting young offenders in Hackney, and then replicating the successful project around the UK. She followed this experience running a national public health programme in the US, based at Children's Hospital Boston (Harvard University.) Sarah has a BA in English Literature and a Masters Degree in Public Policy and Public Administration (MPA).

Lord Bhatia

Amir has been working in the charitable sector and for social causes in the UK for more than 30 years. His philanthropic endeavours have been astonishingly wide-ranging and have informed many different aspects of his life since he first came to the UK.
An Ismaili Muslim, he has been involved in a wide range of initiatives focused on ethnic minorities. These have included helping Ugandan students in 1972 to secure university places and find jobs and overseeing the fair trade of third world products through Oxfam as Chairman of Oxfam Trading.

In 1985 Amir established The Forbes Trust which funds innovative and groundbreaking projects in the UK and abroad, including the establishment of the Charities Evaluation Services, The Hospice Arts and a micro-credit NGO in Gambia.

He gives freely of his time, experience and business acumen in financial and project management. He chairs a number of charities and committees, including the Local Investment Fund and The British Muslim Research Centre.

Recently he was responsible for the establishment of The Ethnic Minority Foundation (EMF) and the Council of Ethnic Minority Voluntary Sector Organisations (CEMVO). These aim to bring marginalised ethnic minority communities into the mainstream and to champion ethnic minorities as a major source of achievement and innovation in the UK. Under his direction the Millennium Commission provided a grant of £2.4 million to the EMF, which so far has made 350 awards of up to £6,000 to individuals and organizations.

Matthew Brumsen

Matthew Brumsen is Head of UBS Wealth Management UK, Northern and Eastern Europe. Matthew joined UBS in 2001 from Goldman Sachs and was appointed Business Sector Head UK Domestic in October 2004. Prior to that time, Matthew worked at the Bank of England. Under Matthew's leadership UBS business has expanded significantly both in size and profitability. He is a member of the group managing board at UBS and head of wealth management for UK, North and Eastern Europe.

Charles Jacob MBE

Charles William Jacob MBE who became known as ‘The Father of Ethical Investment in the U.K.’ initially worked in the City as a Partner in Stockbrokers Nathan & Rosselli and James Capel & Co. He retired in 1969 due to ill-health but returned three years later at the request of the Methodist Church to become the first Investment Manager of the Central Finance Board of the Methodist Church. During the next 15 years the Funds under his management multiplied over 100 times and the Methodist Ethics of Investment Committee was founded, believed to be the first so established. Subsequently, the Church Investors Advisory Group on Ethics was formed and opened to all denominational investors.

Charles was appointed a Director of the Methodist Insurance Company and subsequently to the Central Finance Board of the Methodist Church. He was appointed as Investment Manager to various colleges and charities and in 1988 was awarded the MBE for his services to educational and charitable organisations in Wales.

For many years Jacob endeavoured to establish the first Ethical Unit Trust in this country, which he named ‘Stewardship’, but the proposal was refused on three separate occasions by the Dept. of Trade. Finally in 1979, with the help of Sir Nicholas Goodison (then Chairman of the Stock Exchange) the barriers were overcome and after many difficulties the Trust was finally launched in its' original form by Friends Provident in 1984. Charles became a member of Stewardship’s first Committee of Reference, and Investment Sub-Committee, served as a Director of the quoted FP Ethical Investment Trust and Chaired the Environmental Funds Committee before retiring in the year 2000.

A former Director of UKSIF he remains a Patron and continues to lecture on matters concerning the Ethics of Investment.

Despite the Dept. of Trade early doubts that the demand for Ethical Trusts would not meet the obligatory £2 million, in the 20th Celebratory year the total invested has now reached £4 Billion and over 50 Funds have followed the lead of Stewardship since its’ launch.

Janet Suzman

Janet Suzman is a highly successful actress and Vice President of The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Act.

After graduating from the University of the Witwatersrand and studying for the stage at LAMDA, Janet Suzman started her career in the UK with the RSC’s blockbuster opening season The Wars Of The Roses, at Stratford-on-Avon; followed by Portia, Rosalind, Katharina, Beatrice, Lavinia and Cleopatra - also filmed for TV. In London, and elsewhere over the years, she has played in Goldsmith, Genet, Fugard, Chekhov, Pinter, Harwood, Albee, Brecht, Racine, Marlowe, Wasserstein, Nicholson, Ibsen, et al.

The Singing Detective, The Clayhanger Trilogy, The Draughtsman’s Contract, Nicholas And Alexandra, Fellini’s E La Nave Va, A Dry White Season, Mountbatten Of India, are a few of the many TV and feature films she has appeared in.

Janet is a Patron of The Market Theatre in her native Johannesburg and in 1976 played in its inaugural production The Death Of Bessie Smith with John Kani. A decade later she made her debut as a director with Othello - also filmed for Channel Four TV - which won an AA Vita Best Production Award. Her Death Of A Salesman for Theatr Clwd was awarded the Liverpool Echo Best Production Award. She has written and directed her own versions, radically changed to contemporary South African settings, of Brecht’s Good Person Of Setzuan and Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, renamed The Free State. This opened at The Birmingham Repertory Theatre in association with The Market Theatre and won the Barclays TMA Best Director Award, 1998. She has recently directed Hamlet for The Baxter Theatre, Cape Town and the Grahamstown Arts Festival.

Janet has twice won The Evening Standard Best Actress Award, and had Academy Award and Golden Globe Nominations for Nicholas And Alexandra. She holds Hon. D. Lit. degrees from the Universities of Warwick, Leicester, London (QMW), Southampton, Middlesex and Kingston.