Trustees’ Conference

Tony Bloom is the founder of the Bloom Foundation and Chairman of Brighton and Hove Albion football club.

Zoe Amar is widely regarded as one of the charity sector’s leading digital experts. She founded digital agency and social enterprise Zoe Amar Digital in 2013. Their clients have included NSPCC, Anglia Ruskin University and The School for Social Entrepreneurs. Zoe is Chair of The Charity Digital Code of Practice. She writes for Third Sector about charities and digital issues and co-founded the Social CEOs awards . Zoe and her team produce an annual barometer of how charities across the UK are using digital, The Charity Digital Skills Report. She also co-authored The Charity Commission’s digital guidance for trustees, ‘Making Digital Work.’ Zoe has eleven years’ experience as a charity trustee. She currently sits on the board of Charity Digital Trust (formerly known as Tech Trust). Previously, she was on the Board Audit and Risk SubCommittee at the Samaritans as their digital expert. Before founding Zoe Amar Digital she worked for 5 years as part of the leadership team at a national charity which advised nonprofits about technology. She is the winner of an Inspiring Communicator award from Charity comms. She was recently voted one of the 25 most influential charity leaders by Charity Times.

Penny Wilson started her career at the Association of Charity Shops and Barnet Voluntary Service Council. She was then Head of Community Affairs at the University of Cambridge for several years, overseeing large public events like the Cambridge Science Festival and promoting volunteering by university students and staff. Most recently, she was Director of Partnerships for national charity The Brilliant Club and CEO of disability charity, Styleability. Penny is a trustee of Cambridge Student Community Action and the National Migraine Centre. Penny is passionate about working with partners to reduce the 90,000 trustee vacancies in the UK.

Stuart Roden is Chairman of Lansdowne Partners. Prior to joining Lansdowne in 2001, Stuart was a Managing Director of Merrill Lynch Investment Managers (MLIM). Stuart started his career in the City in 1984, joining SG Warburg & Co. Stuart is Chairman of Unlocking Potential, the NonExecutive Chairman of the Investment Committee of Marylebone Partners LLP and Chairman of The Jewish Care and Oxford Centre of Jewish and Hebrew Studies investment committees. Stuart received a first class honours degree in Economics (BSc) from the London School of Economics.

Trustee of Jewish Care

Debra has worked in the charitable and voluntary sector for over 30 years. Amongst numerous other roles, she is Vice President of the Soldiering On Through Life Trust Awards and co-chairs the judging panel with the General the Lord Dannatt. She is a Trustee of In Kind Direct, one of the Prince's Foundation Charities, and a trustee of the Berkshire Community Foundation. She is also an Africa Advocacy Foundation Ambassador for women and girls at risk of or affected by Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). She has served as a trustee of several charities including being the co-founder of the Small Charities Coalition and was its first Chair. She served on the Charity Commission's SORP committee for over 7 years and was the Vice-Chair of Governors of Whiteknights primary school for 6 years.

She is a renowned public speaker with many years' experience of training and coaching and internationally published author of several books on management and leadership including It's Tough at the Top; The Pleasure and the Pain; It's Murder in Management and It's a Battle on the Board. Debra has a regular monthly column in Third Sector magazine and has appeared on Radio 4's The Moral Maze.

Paula Sussex joined the Student Loans Company (SLC) in September 2018. Paula has extensive leadership experience, particularly in delivering large-scale transformation and change programmes and services in the public, private and voluntary sectors.

A graduate of the London Business School, she originally trained as a barrister before working in the private sector. Her 25 year career has been primarily in consultancy, but also in the service delivery of large scale IT, latterly working as Senior Vice President with Logica.

In 2021, on behalf of SLC, Paula was recognised as CEO of year by the National Centre for Diversity at the annual Fairness, Respect, Equality, Diversity, Inclusion and Engagement (FREDIE) Awards.

In June 2016, Fountain were delighted to welcome Sir Martyn Lewis as Adviser to the Board, reinforcing our connection to the charitable sector and our commitment to making digital marketing an accessible and effective solution for nonprofit organisations.

Eminent broadcaster Sir Martyn Lewis’s career blends 32 years as a television journalist and news anchor with extensive experience in the charitable and business sectors. He joins Fountain with the aim of leveraging our expertise to help volunteer organisations benefit from digital marketing.

He was awarded a CBE for services to young people and the hospice movement in the Prime Minister’s Honours list of 1997, and a knighthood for services to the voluntary sector “especially the hospice movement” in 2016.

An Extensive Contribution to the Charitable Sector Currently, Sir Martyn is approaching he end of his second term as Chairman of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO), and is Chairman of The Awards Committee of the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service (the equivalent of an MBE for groups), President of United Response, Vice-President of Macmillan Cancer Support, Marie Curie, Hospice UK, East Anglia Children’s Hospices (EACH) and Demelza Children’s Hospice. He is also Patron of The Patchwork Foundation, the quarterly broadsheet Positive News¬¨√π and Dementia UK. He recently chaired an Inquiry into executive pay in the voluntary sector and its recommendations were welcomed by politicians of all main parties. A long-standing judge of the Lord Mayor of London’s Dragon Awards, he is now its permanent Deputy Chair.

He founded YouthNet, the award-winning charity which, since 1995, has been providing a comprehensive website (thesite.org) helping 16-25 year-olds, and which also created Do-It.org, the national volunteering database instantly linking people who want to volunteer with the right volunteering opportunity. He retired after 20 years as YouthNet’s Chairman in 2015, and remains an adviser to the charity (now merged with Get Connected under the new name The Mix).

He campaigns regularly for more coverage of the achievements of the voluntary sector in the national media, and, more generally, for “solutions-driven journalism” or Constructive Journalism. In 2014 he became a Director of IPSO (The Independent Press Standards Organisation which replaced the Press Complaints Commission).

Sir Martyn is a Director of PL Education Ltd, pioneering new techniques for helping pupils to learn. From 2000 to 2012 he was Co-Founder and European Chairman of Teliris, an Anglo-American company which created and sold the very first commercial versions of Telepresence high definition, life-size, real-time global video-conferencing, to companies including GSK and Vodafone.