Baroness Valerie Amos
The Right Honourable The Baroness Amos CH PC commenced her tenure as Master of University College Oxford in September 2020. Prior to taking up the Mastership, Baroness Amos was Director of SOAS University of London. Before that she served as Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator at the UN from 2010 2015, and held senior roles in government and the public sector.

Baroness Amos has been a Labour Life Peer since 1997, and served in the Cabinet from 2003 to 2007 as Secretary of State for International Development, and subsequently also served in the Cabinet as Leader of the House of Lords and Lord President of the Council. She was an advisor to the Mandela Government on leadership and change management issues and UK High Commissioner to Australia before joining the UN in 2010.

Lucy Fisher (2007, Classics)
Lucy Fisher is an award-winning journalist. She is currently defence editor at The Times, where she was previously chief political correspondent. Later this year she will return to cover Westminster as deputy political editor at The Daily Telegraph. She has reported from London, Washington and Brussels, as well as Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine and the Arctic Circle. She has also written for the New Statesman, Observer and Times Literary Supplement, and is a past winner of the Anthony Howard Award. Her first book, the biography Emily Wilding Davison: The Martyr Suffragette, was published in 2013.

Chair – Minesh Shah (2004, Physics)
Minesh Shah is a member of InfraRed’s listed infrastructure funds management team, which has day-to-day responsibility for The Renewables Infrastructure Group Limited (“TRIG”) and HICL Infrastructure PLC (“HICL”). Minesh’s experience at InfraRed includes investing across the renewable energy and core infrastructure equity markets, in greenfield and brownfield sectors.

Prior to joining InfraRed, Minesh spent a year at Credit Suisse in the Asset Finance Capital Markets team, and then six years at Deloitte where he was a Manager working across infrastructure, utilities and energy sectors and trained as a chartered accountant. Minesh has been a member of the College’s Audit Committee since 2015 and the Young Univ committee since 2014.

The Panel

Alexandra Wilson (2013, PPE)
Alexandra Wilson is a barrister specialising in criminal and family law. After studying PPE at Univ she did a graduate diploma and Master’s in Law at BPP University. She received the first ever Queen’s scholarship at Middle Temple. She published her debut book, In Black and White: A Young Barrister’s Story of Race and Class in a Broken Justice System, on 17 September. Alexandra regularly writes about her experiences as a trainee barrister and her passion for access work on her blog, Essex to Oxford. During lockdown she has been running virtual access sessions. She is currently offering her services pro bono to Black Lives Matter UK protestors. She was recently featured as “Barrister of the Week” by The Lawyer.

Univ In The City Photo: Ian Wallman

John Crompton (1991, PPE)
John Crompton has spent his career in banking and government. He joined HM Treasury as a graduate entrant in 1984, working on privatisation policy under the Thatcher government. In 1986 he joined US investment bank Morgan Stanley in London, moving to New York in 1990 and Hong Kong in 1997 before returning to London in 2000. In 2008 he returned to the Treasury’s new UKFI investment unit, where he was responsible for managing the government’s newly-acquired stakes in RBS and Lloyds Banking Group. From 2010-2016 John worked for HSBC in London, running its global equity capital markets and corporate finance groups.

Today John chairs a small working capital-focused bank and is an independent director of a financial benchmark administrator. He is a governor of Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, a mentor of postgraduate students at the Blavatnik School of Government, chairs Univ’s Development Board and is a Foundation Fellow of the College.

Jonathan Black
Jonathan Black has been director of the University of Oxford Careers Service since 2008. Prior to this he held a number of senior commercial roles at Booz & Co, Harcourt Brace, and Times Mirror and was co-founder of an internet start-up successfully sold to Elsevier. Jonathan is a Professorial Fellow and Tutor for Welfare at New College, Chair of Oxford Hub, and he writes the regular “Dear Jonathan” careers column for the Financial Times.

Sian Fisher (1981, Law)
Sian Fisher became CEO of the Chartered Insurance Institute in February 2016, following a distinguished career in the Insurance sector. After graduating from Univ, she obtained an Executive MBA from Harvard. Sian is a strong advocate for equality. She is a founding member of the Insuring Women’s Futures initiative, a Committee Member of the Insurance Supper Club and Board Member of Insurance United Against Dementia (IUAD). She is also a Non-Executive Director at Asta Underwriting Management and a Vice President of the Insurance Institute of London.

William Reeve (1991, Engineering, Economics and Management)
William Reeve is a serial entrepreneur and internet investor, based in London. He is currently CEO of Goodlord, a software platform for the lettings industry. He also serves as a non-exec Director at Dunelm PLC, the UK’s leading homewares retailer, and is non-exec Chair of Nutmeg, Europe’s leading digital wealth management business. William has previously served as non-exec Chairman or Director of Graze.com, Evi (formerly True Knowledge), Paddy Power PLC, Secret Escapes (as co-founder), and Zoopla.co.uk, and has been a “business angel” in over 50 technology investments.  Prior to that, William co-founded and built two businesses into leaders in their fields: Fletcher Research became the UK’s leading internet research firm before being bought by Forrester Research in 1999, and LOVEFiLM.com became Europe’s leading online film business before its acquisition by Amazon.com in 2011.