Our Trustees

ZOË ASHCROFT

ZOË ASHCROFT

Zoë Ashcroft is an industry recognised lawyer and one of the founding partners of the London office of global law firm Winston & Strawn LLP. She has more than 30 years of experience as an English qualified lawyer handling complex cross-border corporate and finance transactions for a broad range of clients in the US, the UK, Europe and sub-Saharan Africa. &nbsp Zoë has led the Winston London corporate transactional and finance team since co-founding the London office in 2003. Zoë served on Winston’s global Executive Committee for three years, from 2015 to 2018 and serves as a member of the charitable Winston Foundation. Prior to joining Winston, Zoë spent ten years in the London office of global law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP. She was the first English qualified assistant solicitor to move to an American firm in London, having started her career with international law firm Turner Kenneth Brown, working in their London and Hong Kong offices. Zoë is passionate about using her legal experience to effect change for good and devotes a significant amount of time as a trustee for charitable organisations promoting equality and diversity, human rights, sustainability and addressing the climate change emergency, including Sponsors for Educational Opportunity London and The Climate Group.

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LYDIA CARLSTON

LYDIA CARLSTON

Midsummer in Oxford '01

Lydia Carlston is a BADA alum (MIO ‘01) and president of the American Friends of BADA (AFBADA). Ms. Carlston is a model and actress whose body of work ranges from theatre to television, national and international commercials, print ads and fashion runways between Paris, London, New York, Cote D’Ivoire and Tokyo. On the opposite side of the camera, Ms. Carlston has worked as a boom operator for movies, TV shows and commercials, with notable sound mixers, including two time Academy Award winner, Russell Williams. Ms. Carlston’s work includes national print ads and commercials for the Exelon Patch, Post Shredded Wheat, Corcoran, Gardasil, SAP, Bank of America, Coca-Cola and Scholastic. Television credits include Sex and the City and Star Trek: DS9. Ms. Carlston has been featured in fashion magazines: Vogue (Mexico), Le Jardin de Mode (France), Donna (Italy), Elle (France), and U.S. publications, Family Life, Heart and Soul, Redbook, Self, Women’s Day and Essence. Ms. Carlston majored in dance at the Philadelphia School for the Creative and Performing Arts. While working, she continued studies at NYU in the area of marketing music and entertainment and Theatre Arts. Ms. Carlston is an active member of the Screen Actor’s Guild and the Actor’s Equity Association.

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MALCOLM JOHN

MALCOLM JOHN

Malcolm John is the founder of the campaign, Action for Trustee Racial Diversity, which aims to address the significant under-representation of individuals from Black and Asian backgrounds on charity Boards. He is a trustee of the Association of Chairs, (the infrastructure support body for chairs of charities in England and Wales), an independent member of the Ministry of Justice Public Appointments Panel, a Companion of the Chartered Management Institute, and a Fellow of the the Royal Society of Arts. He has been a trustee of eight charitable organisations of all sizes. This has included being Chair of the Young Harrow Foundation and Vice-Chair of both Nacro and Anti-Slavery International.

His professional career has included a broad range of jobs primarily on social justice and economic regeneration issues in the public and private sectors. He is passionate about the arts and theatre and also about playing and watching sport.

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RICHARD JOHNSON

CHAIR

RICHARD JOHNSON

CHAIR

Richard has extensive senior leadership experience in global education, and currently serves as Faculty Operating Officer for the Imperial College Business School, where his primary responsibility is to enable the Business School to develop, implement and deliver its vision, strategy, and business plan by offering leadership, and oversight for all professional services and support functions in the Business School.

Prior to joining Imperial, Richard spent 15 years at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where he served as Chief Operating Office for Europe, and Associate Dean for Booth’s top-ranked Executive MBA Programs in Europe and Asia. He had overall responsibility for the strategy, management and marketing of the Programs, as well as overseeing the management of the London and Hong Kong campuses. Richard spent nearly 8 years in Asia, during which time he oversaw the relocation of the Booth campus and the Executive MBA Program from Singapore to a new campus location in Hong Kong.

Before joining Booth, Richard had a long career in international education, specifically study abroad programs, both in the private sector and in academia. He was responsible for opening and developing the London operation for Accent Global Learning (formerly Accent International), a private study abroad program provider. He has a bachelor’s degree in French Language and Literature from Washington University in St. Louis, a master’s degree in Film Studies from the University of London, University College, and an MBA from Chicago Booth.

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SAMIR JOSHI

SAMIR JOSHI

Mr. Joshi is the Head of International Investment Specialists for both EMEA and APAC regions for J.P. Morgan Alternative Asset Management Hedge Fund & Alternative Credit Solutions. Before joining JPMorgan Asset Management, Sam worked at Hong Kong-based Maso Capital in a Strategy, IR & BD capacity. Formerly, he ran Delta-1, ETF, and Prime Sales in Singapore & Hong Kong for Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Prior to this Sam was the Global Head of Emerging Market Sales Trading & Trading for equities & derivatives at BNP Paribas. Sam previously was the co-head of Asia at Millennium Management with responsibilities for Trading, Risk, and PM hiring. Previously he worked at Cheyne Capital in London and Hong Kong running Asian trading across various funds. Sam began his career at JPMorgan rotating through Trading, ECM, and Investment Banking. Sam completed his Masters in Chemistry from King’s College London.

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PETER KESSLER

PETER KESSLER

Peter Kessler is a retired TV producer. He won the BAFTA comedy award for 'The Mrs Merton Show' (BBC1) as well as making award-winning history documentaries such as 'I Met Adolf Eichmann' (BBC2), and talk shows including the first series of 'The Graham Norton Show'. More recently Peter founded a State primary school in London, Eden Primary, and also taught English in secondary schools. He was awarded an MBE for services to education. For twelve years Peter was the Chair of the Lakes International Comic Arts Festival, and he is the author of 'The Complete Guide to Asterix'. Peter is now based at Oxford University, where he has initiated research programmes in Comics Studies and Film Studies. In 2025 he created the university's first dedicated comics library. He runs Magdalen Monday Movies, a free film club open to both the general public and university members. He also works as a theatre reviewer for both professional and student drama. In 2022 Peter set up an outreach programme for schools with no history of sending students to Oxford, bringing them to one of the colleges to perform Shakespeare plays. Peter teaches woodturning, gives lectures on film history, builds furniture and enjoys mountain biking.

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WENDY LU

WENDY LU

Wendy Lu is a Director of Corporate Development at Liberty Blume in London. Her current project focuses on growing scale-up companies through acquisitions. Before London Business School, Wendy studied at Duke University in the US and worked in the tech, media and telecom industries for three years in San Francisco; first in strategy consulting and later in tech sales. She also studied and interned in China, Guatemala and Argentina, mainly in the tech and non-profit sectors. She decided to move to London long-term after spending a few months studying films and going to the theatre at King’s College London when she was 18 and finally completed the move in the beginning of the pandemic. Given her own experience, Wendy is passionate about equal access to liberal arts education and encouraging young people to study abroad. She is still very much involved with her alma maters as an alumni interview for Duke and an alumni ambassador for London Business School.

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MATT TRUEMAN

MATT TRUEMAN

Since 2019, Matt Trueman has been Creative Associate at Sonia Friedman Productions, where he is responsible for discovering and developing new work for stages in the West End and on Broadway. He joined the company after a decade as a freelance theatre critic, writing for publications including the New York Times, the Guardian and the Financial Times among others. In this guise, he taught theatre criticism at BADA for a year, joining the board in 2022.

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MATTHEW TURNBULL

MATTHEW TURNBULL

Matthew Turnbull is Director of Marketing, Communications and Audiences at the Royal Academy of Music, responsible for developing the brand of this 200-year-old conservatoire, encouraging student recruitment, growing public audiences for its concerts and events and advancing alumni relations. Previously he worked at Mountview, where alongside professionalising the drama school’s marketing, he was integral in a capital project to create a purpose-built home in Peckham in south London. Earlier work includes Senior Marketing Manager for the Caprice group of restaurants and members’ clubs and Development Officer at the Almeida Theatre.

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