Nigel has been in the top tier of the UK property industry for more than two decades, after becoming one of the youngest ever chief executives of a FTSE 250 company when Chelsfield plc was listed in 1993.

He went on to chair the European operations of Australian giant, Lend Lease Corporation, was a Special Advisor to Sir Bob Kerslake at the Homes and Communities Agency before founding the brownfield development company Urban&Civic in 2009, where he is Chief Executive.

He is Chair of urban think tank, Centre for Cities, Council member of the London School of Economics  and Chair of the Committee for the Redevelopment of Tate Britain on Millbank

Nigel is perhaps best known as instigator of the Stratford City project and for his early advocacy that the previously derelict rail lands in East London could prove a viable Olympic contender. Those development proposals formed the basis of the successful London 2012 bid and what has become the largest regeneration project in Europe.

His thumb print also runs across many other defining major metropolitan schemes, including  Bankside, Paddington Basin, Westfield at White City, Greenwich Pensinula, Elephant and Castle, and Brierley Hill in the West Midlands.

Urban&Civic are now responsible for some of the largest housing and employment sites in the country, in high growth areas in and around Cambridge and Rugby.

He lives in Putney with Christine, his wife of 25 years and their four children.

Born in Jamaica, Sir William moved to Britain at the age of seven. His first teaching appointment was in Portsmouth and he came to Phoenix High School in Shepherds Bush as Headteacher in 1995, having previously held headships at Cranford Community School, Hounslow, and Copland Community School, Brent.

In September 2010 he became Executive Headteacher of The Phoenix Canberra Schools Federation. His excellent leadership at Phoenix, overcoming low results and bad behaviour, was reported to have been the inspiration for the head teacher character in the BBC's school drama,Hope and Glory.

In 2008, Ofsted inspectors praised Sir William's role in the school's continuing improvement: 'The school is exceptionally well led by a charismatic, indefatigable head teacher who receives excellent support and challenge from a fully committed governing body,' said the inspectors.

Sir William was a member of the DfEE Standards Task Force between 1997 and 2001. He also sat on the Home Office Justice Task Force and the Home Office London Youth Crime Reduction Task Force. Until 2006 Sir William was a member of the London Black and Minority Ethnic Cracking Crime Partnership Board and until December 2009 was Deputy Chair of the UK Judging Panel for The Teaching Awards. He was also a member of the British Board of Film Classification advisory panel on children's viewing until the summer of 2010.

He is currently a trustee for Research Autism, a commissioner for The Family Commission, a national inquiry into the extended family and the support it needs in the 21st century and on the Board of Directors of the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith.

In January 2010 the National College for Leadership of Schools and Children's Services selected Sir William as a National Leader of Education and designated Phoenix High School as a National Support School.

Sir William has also been widely featured in the media, including the Channel 4 documentary series 'The Unteachables'. He has also contributed to a range of television and radio programmes, including Newsnight, Panorama, BBC Question Time, Breakfast Television, The One Show and Inside Out and Radio 4's The House I Grew Up In and Saturday Live.

Sir William was made a knight in June 2008 in the Queen's birthday honours, for his services to education and community.

Miranda worked for over 20 years in the international broadband cable industry with John Malone at Liberty Global. In that time Miranda negotiated and managed joint ventures on Liberty's behalf across Europe and Asia Pacific, most notably in Japan. Having successfully negotiated the multi-billion dollar sale of Liberty's Japanese interests in early 2010, Miranda retired from her executive role and was invited by Dr Malone to join the Board of Liberty Global as a non-executive director. In January 2018 Miranda also joined the board of Liberty Latin America.

Since retirement Miranda has built a UK-based portfolio. She was Chairman of  Waterstones from 2011-2016, and served as a non-executive director of Marks & Spencer plc 2012-2018. She is also Chair of Camfed, the leading charity delivering programmes at scale to educate girls and empower young women in Africa.

Miranda is a Trustee of The Institute for Government, and from March 2017 to June 2020 was Lead Non-Executive Director on the Board of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Genista (Jenny) McIntosh held a number of senior positions in major arts organisations before becoming an independent consultant.

She was Principal of Guildhall School of Music and Drama (2002/2003). She was Executive Director of the Royal National Theatre between 1990 and 1996 and again between 1997 and 2002, and was briefly Chief Executive of the Royal Opera House in 1997.

Between 1972 and 1990 she held a number of posts at the Royal Shakespeare Company.

She was a founder Trustee of NESTA (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) from 1998 until 2005 and currently serves on the Boards of the Foundation for Sport and the Arts, Artis Education, National Opera Studio, Southbank Sinfonia and Roundhouse Trust.

Genista holds honorary doctorates from the University of York (1998), the University of Middlesex (2002) and City University (2002) and received an Honorary Fellowship from Goldsmiths College, University of London in 2003.

She is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. In 1999 she was created a Life Peer taking the title Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall.

Andrew is a cultural consultant and broadcaster, recognised as one of the most influential disability advocates in the UK, transforming perceptions throughout his 30-year career in the creative industries. Andrew belongs to the first generation of disabled presenters of British television, becoming a BAFTA nominated producer and director of arts and music documentaries. Later he was the first wheelchair user to run a major UK arts venue at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, where he created the Russia’17 festival of Russian culture in Wales. As a consultant his clients have included the University of Oxford Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities, the British Council and Coventry City of Culture.

A prolific writer and public speaker, Andrew is the UK Government’s first Disability Champion for Arts and Culture, establishing the role as a powerful campaigning platform for greater inclusion across the arts, museums and film. Uniquely he is a National Council member of both Arts Council England and The Arts Council of Wales. He is a trustee of Welsh National Opera, served on the board of digital arts agency The Space 2016-19, and is chair of the BFI Disability Screen Advisory Forum. In 2020 he co-founded the UK Disability Arts Alliance and its campaign #WeShallNotBeRemoved to support creative disabled people through and after Covid-19.

Amanda is the Founder Director of Inc Arts UK, which advocates for the creative, contractual and economic rights of the UK’s ethnically diverse arts sector workforce.  Previous Equalities, Diversity and Inclusion roles include her leadership of the BBC’s recruitment and awareness campaign for the launch of BBC Radio 1Xtra, and as Head of Communications for Directors UK, Amanda was responsible for overseeing the UK’s first industry-wide research into gender diversity in TV directing.

A former broadcaster in BBC news and current affairs teams, Amanda’s previous roles include Development Producer for BBC Arts (TV) and BBC Radio and Music, as well as Campaigns management for BBC Education.  Recognition for her work in EDI advocacy and campaigns include CRE Race in the Media, Royal Television Society, MIND Mental Health in the Media and the Stephen Lawrence Foundation awards.

Amanda’s advocacy includes representations to UK and European Parliaments on behalf of cultural and creative sector workers, and UK-wide campaigns on anti-racist action in the arts and cultural sector.  Amanda is on the Arts and Culture Strategy Group for the COVID-19 London Government Task Force, the advisory board for the UK Coalition for Cultural Diversity, and the advisory board for Sheffield University’s COVID-19 culture and arts recovery project.

Amanda has been a trustee of Film London since 2016, serving on the FLAMIN visual arts committee, as well as the communications and public affairs and audience development working groups; she is a trustee of Intermission Youth and was the inaugural chair of Parents and Carers in Performance Arts in 2017. Amanda is Director of London Short Film Festival, is an RSA Fellow, and a Clore Fellow.

Winsome’s stage plays include Rockets and Blue Lights (Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre), Glutathione (Young Vic Theatre), The Principles of Cartography (The Bush Theatre), Tituba (Hampstead Theatre), Cleaning Up (For Clean Break at Oval House Theatre), Taken (For Clean Break at Oval House Theatre), IDP (Tricycle Theatre), The Stowaway (Play for young people, Plymouth Theatre), One Under (Tricycle Theatre), Beg Borrow or Steal (Kuumba Community Arts Centre), Water (Tricycle Theatre), Mules (Royal Court Theatre Upstairs and Clean Break Theatre), Can you Keep a Secret? (Connections at Royal National Theatre), A Rock in Water (Royal Court Theatre), Leave Taking (Liverpool Playhouse Theatre, National Theatre, Belgrade Theatre Coventry and Lyric theatre, Hammersmith), A Heroes Welcome (Royal Court Theatre Upstairs), The Wind of Change (Half Moon Theatre) and Picture Palace (Womens Theatre Group). Radio plays include Leave Taking (Radio 4), Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas (Adapted from autobiography by Maya Angelou for Radio 4), Clean Trade (Radio 4), Lazarus (Radio 3), Her Father’s Daughter (Radio 4), Let Them Call it Jazz (adapted from Jean Rhys’ short story, Radio 4), Indiana (adapted from novel by George Sand), The Dinner Party (Radio 4), Something Borrowed (Radio 4) and Water (Radio 4). She co-wrote the screenplay Bitter Harvest.

Clare is Creative Director for Bristol’s Watershed and leads their creative technology, engagement and cinema teams, working with industry, academic and creative partners to support talent and champion new ideas. She joined Watershed in 2004 and leads the Pervasive Media Studio and Playable City.

She has worked with HP Labs on a utility computing animation project SE3D, and then set up iShed (now renamed Watershed Ventures) in 2007 to initiate and support creative technology R&D. In 2008 she established The Pervasive Media Studio as a research lab exploring and producing media content, applications and services. 

She is Executive Producer of REACT hub which is a collaboration between the UWE, Watershed and the Universities of Bath, Bristol, Cardiff and Exeter; and is a Visiting Professor at University of the West of England. She is also on the Advisory Board of the Research Councils UK’s Digital Economy Theme, and Arts & Humanities Research Council’s Digital Transformation Theme. She is an international speaker and writer on collaborative innovation and digital technologies. She was previously Producer of the Cheltenham Festival of Science. 

Clare sits on the Board of Theatre Bristol and has also just has been confirmed as Chair of Wise Children, the new theatre company led by Emma Rice (outgoing Globe AD and former RSC Director). 

Clare is a passionate supporter of live theatre, and worked with us on the recent production of The Tempest. 

James is a Shakespeare scholar and author; as well as being The Larry Miller Professor of English within the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where he has taught since 1985, although is currently on sabbatical.

He specialises in Shakespeare, medieval and early modern drama, Jewish studies and British poetry.

He is the author of numerous books including 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (2005), which was awarded the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for the best non-fiction book published in Britain, andContested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? (2010) which was awarded the Theater Library Association's George Freedley Memorial Award.

He is currently at work on another book, The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606, drawing on some of his recent experiences in the rehearsal room with the RSC.

He has co-edited the Columbia Anthology of British Poetry and served as the Associate Editor of the Columbia History of British Poetry.

He has also taught as a Fulbright lecturer at Bar Ilan and Tel Aviv Universities and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, The New York Public Library Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, and the Huntingdon Library. His essays and reviews have been widely published.

James serves on the Board of Governors of the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the Advisory Council for the Authors Guild. In 2011 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Mark is a Senior Partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Birmingham and was the Chairman of their business in the Midlands from 2008 to 2015. He joined Price Waterhouse in 1985 before qualifying as a chartered accountant in 1988. He holds a first class degree in Economics from the University of Manchester.

Mark was Chairman of the Development Trust and a member of the Board of the Birmingham Hippodrome from 2009 to 2016 and in recent years he has been a member of their Audit and Nominations committees. Mark is also a Director of Marketing Birmingham where he has also been chair of the Audit Committee for the last six years.

Mark is a patron of a number of arts organisations including the RSC, the Old Vic and the CBSO.

Ian joined our board in November 2013. He also sits on the board of the Birmingham Royal Ballet and of the Belarus Free Theatre based in London.

He spent his professional life in broadcasting. From  2011 to 2015 Ian was Controller of Current Affairs and News Operations, part of the network team at the commercial broadcaster ITV. Before that he was responsible for current affairs and ITV's regional news output.

He joined the BBC in his early career, and Carlton Studios from 1994-2000, where he became Managing Director. Then he joined ITV Central and was Director of Regional Production before becoming Controller of ITV Regions and Current Affairs, 2009-2011.

He has held numerous key regional appointments including President of Birmingham Chamber of Commerce and Industry 2004-2005 (Vice President, 2002-2004); Chairman of Birmingham Repertory Theatre 2005-2013, Director of Birmingham Hippodrome Theatre 2005-2009, Chairman, Marketing Birmingham 2004-2009, and Chairman, Birmingham City Pride 2001-2004.

His directorships have included West Midlands Life 1999-2003, Director of Birmingham City University 2005-2009, Fair Cities Birmingham 2005-2007 and Midland Heart Housing Associations 2007-2009.

In 1987 he won a BAFTA Award for Best Arts Programme for A Simple Man, a TV ballet on life of LS Lowry. More recent programmes he has commissioned have received Royal Television Society and Broadcasting Press Guild awards, and in 2013 the Peabody Award in the United States together with an International Emmy.

Justine is a Theatre Director and Change Maker, committed to placing creative engagement with communities at the beating heart of contemporary theatre.  She is currently Deputy Artistic Director of the Belgrade Theatre and Co-Artistic Director for its City of Culture 2021 programme.

During her time at the Belgrade, she has built a small participatory programme into a broad-reaching ethos across the work of the building. The programme provides access to arts activity to some of the city's least arts-engaged communities, shapes talent development opportunities that strongly promote diversity across the sector and creates new work for the Theatre’s stages. The work provided a strong foundation for the Theatre’s winning of the UK Theatre’s Creative Case for Diversity Award (2016) and for its City of Culture organisational change programme.

Prior to working at the Belgrade, she worked for six years in Suriname (the country her grandfather left for England in the late 1920s), co-creating theatre and using the Arts as a tool in Development and Cultural Diplomacy. She delivered projects for the Ministry of Education (Directorate of Culture), the Dutch Embassy and Arts Council and various UN organisations, as well as working closely with grass roots voluntary organisations, particularly in the rain-forested interior of the country.

She has a strong interest in the diversity of cultural forms that shape her own background, and in the legacy of post-colonial relations. This is reflected in her directing work that spans a broad range of forms/ contexts - including new writing (Under the Umbrella [Amy Ng]), innovative work with young people (Like There’s No Tomorrow [Belgrade Young Company/ NT Connections commission]), Theatre in Development (Hia Maun, [Stiching Botopasi]) and documentary shorts (Abigail [VPRO]).

Justine played a key role in Coventry winning its bid to become UK City of Culture 2021, and is Director of its Opening Event. She is also a Fellow of the Clore Leadership Programme and sits on the Board of the Birmingham Opera Company.

Ayanna is a Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University, and the Director of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (ACMRS). She is the author of Blackface (Bloomsbury, 2021), Shakespeare in the Theatre: Peter Sellars (Arden Bloomsbury, 2018), Teaching Shakespeare with Purpose: A Student-Centred Approach, co-authored with Laura Turchi (Arden Bloomsbury, 2016), Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America (Oxford University Press, 2011), and Performing Race and Torture on the Early Modern Stage (Routledge, 2008). She wrote the new introduction for the revised Arden3 Othello (Arden, 2016), and is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race (Cambridge University Press, 2021), Weyward Macbeth: Intersections of Race and Performance (Palgrave, 2010), and Colorblind Shakespeare: New Perspectives on Race and Performance (Routledge, 2006). She is currently collaborating with Curtis Perry on the Arden4 edition of Titus Andronicus.

Thompson is a Shakespeare Scholar in Residence at The Public Theatre in New York. She currently chairs the Council of Scholars at Theatre for a New Audience in Brooklyn, NY, serves on the Board of Play On Shakespeare, and previously served on the Board for Woolly Mammoth Theatre in Washington, DC.

She was the 2018-19 President of the Shakespeare Association of America and was one of Phi Beta Kappa’s Visiting Scholars for 2017-2018. From 2015-2017, Thompson served as a member of the Board of Directors for the Association of Marshall Scholars.

Mark became President and Chief Executive Officer of The New York Times Company in November 2012. Since that time, he has directed the Company’s strategy and presided over an expansion of its digital and global operations.

Prior to that, he served as Director-General of the BBC from 2004, where he ensured that it remained a leading innovator with the launch of services like the BBC iPlayer.  Mark first joined the BBC in 1979 as a production trainee. He left for two years in 2002 to become Chief Executive Officer of Channel 4 Television before returning in 2004 as Director-General.

In autumn 2012, he was Visiting Professor of Rhetoric and the Art of Public Persuasion at the University of Oxford.

His book, Enough Said: What’s Gone Wrong with the Language of Politics? is based on the lectures he gave there and was published in both the UK and US in September 2016.

Mark Thompson was educated at Stonyhurst College and Merton College Oxford.  In his teens, he lived near Stratford-upon-Avon and has since been a regular visitor to the RSC.

Liz qualified as a solicitor in 1989 and became a partner at Mishcon de Reya in 1998, before moving to Clintons and leading the firm’s Family practice, with over 23 years’ experience in dealing with both financial cases (including pre and post-nuptial agreements) and work relating to children. Liz acts for clients from all walks of life, with a particular expertise in dealing with high net worth complex financial cases involving businesses and trusts, often with an international dimension.

Liz was part of the original team that acted for Diana, Princess of Wales in her divorce. She has an established reputation for dealing with high profile clients from the sports, entertainment and media fields and their spouses. Liz also acted for both Karen Parlour in respect of the widely reported landmark case, and for Slavica Ecclestone.

Liz is a collaboratively trained lawyer and member of the Central London Collaborative Forum. She has a wide range of alternative dispute resolution skills to assist in the resolution of difficult family disputes without involving the courts.

Liz is also a fellow of the International Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers.

Lucy is 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. In that role, she was the first senior executive to relocate from London to Birmingham in 2015, ahead of the opening of the bank’s new head office there.  She still lives locally with her family and is a strong advocate for the region.

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. 

She has been a Trustee of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra since May 2016 and serves on their audit and finance committee.  She is an outgoing Trustee of the Institute of Business Ethics, having served on its Board since 2015.

Lucy has been a committed attendee at the RSC since childhood – something she now passionately shares with her own family – and has been a Full Member since 2013 and an Associate Member from 2005.

Lucy is joining the RSC Board, having been a governor since 2017.  She will also serve on the Audit Committee.

Lord Andrew Adonis
George Alagiah OBE
Sir David Bell
Anita Bhalla OBE
Elizabeth Boissevain
Lord Carrington DL
Michael Clasper CBE
Bruce Kovner 
Professor Ruru Li
Dame Hilary Mantel DBE
Paul Morrell OBE
Sandie Okoro
Patsy Rodenburg OBE
Sir Anthony Seldon
Sue Stapely
David Tennant
Dame Harriet Walter DBE
Mike Wright

Sir Geoffrey Cass

Lady Anderson 
Charles Flower 
Sir Stanley Wells

Neil Benson OBE 
Philip Bermingham
David Burbidge CBE
Michael Crystal QC 
Tony Hales CBE 
Sara Harrity MBE 
Martin Iredale
Ian Laing
Dr Douglas McPherson
Charlotte Heber Percy 
Roger Pringle
Telfer Saywell 
Lord Willoughby de Broke  
Stratford Town Mayor 
Chairman, Stratford-on-Avon District Council 
The Director, Shakespeare Institute 
The Chief Executive, Shakespeare Birthplace Trust

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Chairman)
George Alagiah
Miranda Curtis
Gregory Doran
Nigel Hugill (ex officio)
Catherine Mallyon
Sir Anthony Seldon
Mike Wright

Mark Smith (Chairman)
Andrew Clayton
Jane Whitlock
Lucy Williams