FoundationGre

Board of Trustees

Professor John Mellor (Founder, Chair and Seminar Director)

John has wide-ranging banking experience as a vice-president of Citibank, heading a team of global corporate bankers; and, as an executive director of the Scandinavian Unibank plc, as head of corporate finance. He has over 25 years’ experience of governance working at board level, including as head of the NED and governance advisory practice of a boutique firm of management consultants. He has worked with notable pioneers of effective governance practice, such as the late Sir Adrian Cadbury, has been an adviser to a number of Government agencies, was a major contributor to the Higgs Review on NEDs, an NED of the Insolvency Service, and a co-founder and policy adviser to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Corporate Governance.

John's teaching background includes lecturing in governance to post-graduates and extensive experience of directing bespoke seminars for groups of NEDs. John pioneered professional development and education for NEDs as NatWest Senior Fellow in Corporate Leadership at the University of Exeter, and, whilst there, founded the Non-Executive Director’s Forum. He has held Visiting Professorships in Governance at Bristol Business School and the University of Leicester, and subsequently held the chair in Governance in Banking and Finance at the University’s Business School before stepping down in 2017 to focus on FGRE.

He is the author of various articles on governance and the role of the non-executive director. His book “Practical Corporate Governance” was released by Jordans in a second edition in 2013.

John holds a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Bristol, and an MBA from Cranfield Business School specialising in corporate finance. Before embarking on his banking career he served a 3 year short service commission as a Lieutenant in the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy.

Chris Leslie

Chris spent the first 18 years of his career in banking with Citibank in London, Dublin, and New York. For the last 25 years Chris was in executive search and part of a small team that built Whitehead Mann into the leading executive search firm in the UK. At Whitehead Mann and then at The Zygos Partnership he focused almost exclusively on chairman and non-executive director appointments in financial services.

Chris holds an MA in French and Economics from St Andrews University.

Ian Donald Cormack

Ian Cormack spent 30 years with Citibank where he held a number of senior positions including UK Country Head, Head of European Training, and Co-Head of the Global Financial Institutions Business. He has extensive PLC and private company boardroom experience. He is a former non-executive director on the board of NatWest Holdings Ltd, the RBS ‘ring-fenced’ bank which includes NatWest Bank plc and other entities.

Ian has a PPE degree from Oxford .

May 2024