We are delighted to see the OpenUK Board, building its strength with 8 new Board members joining it,as it enters its 6th year, this Thanksgiving. Our new OpenUK Board members were recruited via a public application process led by existing Board Members Rebecca Rumbul and Terence Eden. With 73 valid applications to review, the process was a heavy lift and we are grateful to Rebecca and Terence for all the hard work in bringing the new directors on board.
We are delighted to share that the selected Board candidates who have accepted the Board positions as Non Executive Board members are:
Alex Chircop,
Ashley Ward,
Clare Schramm,
Justin Cormack,
Margherita Di Cerbo,
Maria Lema,
Mathew Lodge, and
Mike McQuaid.
You can see the bios of each of our new joiners with our existing Board on our site.
The new members are a broad group and very much merit their places with us. The selection process was designed using a skills matrix that identified key skills requirements and gaps in our existing Board. Over the almost 6 years since we began with our first Board meeting in January 2020, we have lost a number of great board members through natural attrition and we also want to express our thanks to them.
The recruitment process was aimed to strengthen our existing OpenUK Board and will now join our existing OpenUK Board members:
Amanda Brock,
Dawn Foster,
Hiren Parekh,
Ian Burgess,
Lorna Mitchell,
Martin Woodward (Chair),
Rebecca Rumbul, and
Terence Eden.
The Board is supplemented by a pro bono Company Secretary, Jim Davies and a new pro bono General Counsel, Chris Eastwood, who also attend Board meetings in and advisory capacity and do not vote. Our past board members are also available to view on our website in the Emeritus Board section of the Board page and we will always be grateful to them for their past service.
We are delighted by the response to the Board Applications and are very grateful to all who took the time to apply. If you applied for the Board but were not successful, please don’t lose heart. It was an extraordinarily competitive pool, but we also wanted to ensure we brought key skills like finance and marketing on board. The fact that you were unsuccessful in this recruitment round does not mean that we were not impressed by you. We might well love to have you join us in the next recruitment round which will take place in 2-3 years time. So, please don’t be put off.
If you want to be involved over the coming weeks and months, we are currently actively recruiting for ambassadors and apprentice ambassadors for OpenUK, who like the Board must have been UK resident for tax purposes in the preceding 12 months.
We are also recruiting for our international sister organisation, OpenHQ, which will grow from its soft launch in 2025 to a more substantial international organisation in 2026. The same application process is being used for these international ambassadors with the difference that anyone applying for these roles should not be UK-based.
The new Board members join us as the first time Board appointees from an open application process for Board members. We will track the Board’s progress with updates and share abbreviated Board minutes on our GitHub repo. Our first meeting of 2025 will be a strategy day to be held on 14th January and you can look forward to an update afterwards.
As a final expression of our gratitude to the volunteers who make OpenUK and now OpenHQ tick, we wish to thank all of those who volunteer for us in one of the many different ways people do – from being staff at our conference, through to being an ambassador, speaking at an event, writing a blogpost, or being on our Board. This is a fabulous community and our strength as an organisation stems entirely from this community.
