Board Members

John was appointed as an independent Non-Executive Director and Deputy Chairman of Standard Chartered PLC with effect from 1 August 2007. He is also Senior Independent Director.

He is Chairman of Experian Group Limited and Burberry Group plc.

John joined GUS in 1970 where he held senior IT positions within the retail and home shopping divisions. In 1980, he co-founded CCN, a trading company formed by GUS that marketed information services to retailers and other lending organizations. CCN went on to become one of Europe's largest information services businesses and following the acquisition of other major information services in the US and Europe, it became Experian and John became Chief Executive.

He was appointed to the Board of GUS plc in 1997 and became their Group Chief Executive in January 2000. During his tenure the group concentrated on three major businesses: Home Retail Group, Experian and Burberry and shareholder value more than trebled.

In 2002, John was appointed Chairman of Burberry in advance of its successful flotation. GUS demerged its remaining businesses in 2004 and he became Chairman of Experian.

John is also Chairman of the board of Governors of Nottingham Trent University, Deputy Lieutenant for the County of Nottinghamshire and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Kay is the assistant general secretary of the TUC. She has served on a number of government advisory bodies on equality, education, training and employment and is currently a commissioner of the Equal Opportunities Commission. She is a trustee of the National Council for One Parent Families and of the People's History Museum; and a member of the Franco-British Council.

Peter is Permanent Secretary at the Department for Communities and Local Government, the new department created in May 2006, with responsibilities for housing, planning, local government, fire and civil resilience, regional policy, tackling disadvantage and social exclusion, community cohesion and equality. Peter was previously Permanent Secretary at the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. Between 2001-2005 Peter was Director-General for Schools for the Department for Education and Skills.

Professor Gareth Jones is visiting professor of organisational behaviour at INSEAD and Fellow of the Centre for Management Development at London Business School. His key interests lie with organisational design, culture, leadership and change about which he has published several books.

Archie has worked for Hess Corporation - an independent US-based oil and gas company - since 1991. Before joining Hess, he served for 13 years in the Royal Tank Regiment.

Geoff has been the director of the Young Foundation since 2004, whose main work is developing new organisations to meet social needs in fields as diverse as schooling, health and technology. Between 1997 and 2004 Geoff had various roles in the UK government including director the Government's Strategy Unit and head of policy in the Prime Minister's office. He is a visiting professor at LSE, UCL and Melbourne University.

Dona was previously director of Human Resources, UK Business Banking, at Barclays Bank, responsible for people strategy, reward, performance, training and development and governance.

Previously, Dona was a senior partner at Heidrick & Struggles based in New York. During her tenure she made significant contributions to the firm as managing partner of the Communications Practice in North America, and Head of telecommunications in the UK and as managing director of the Stamford CT office.

Ed has recently retired from a 30 year career with PricewaterhouseCoopers where he was a Senior partner and Global COO and Strategy Chairman for the Assurance business as well as a member of its Global Leadership Team. He is a Board member for the Higher Education Funding Council where he chairs the Leadership,Governance and Management Committee, Chairman of UK University Sport, Deputy Chairman of the Managing Partners Forum and a member of Advisory Board of Opportunity Now.