Meet our Founding Board of Directors

Carly Wickham — Founding Non-Executive Director
Carly is an entrepreneurial senior leader with board-level governance experience across impact, innovation finance and regulated environments. She brings strengths in portfolio leadership, scaling initiatives, stakeholder engagement and building delivery cultures with integrity. 

David Plumb — Founding Non-Executive Director
David is a senior innovation and digital leader with extensive board experience across major organisations and joint ventures. He brings deep capability in digital growth, partnerships, and building practical innovation strategies that translate from vision to execution across corporate and academic contexts. 

Duncan Steel — Founding Non-Executive Director
Duncan is an executive and non-executive leader with substantial experience delivering complex innovation and research portfolios, transformation programmes, and engineering-led operating models. He brings particular strength in governance, assurance and delivery in high-consequence environments. 

Joanne Hickson — Founding Non-Executive Director

Joanne is a strategic innovation leader with extensive experience building innovation portfolios, innovation labs, and emerging technology initiatives. She brings a strong focus on value creation, modern innovation practice, and building high-performing teams in complex organisations. 

John Castledine — Founding Non-Executive Director
John is a learning and organisational development leader with deep experience designing learning systems, qualifications and leadership development across corporate, professional and public-sector environments. He brings strength in professional pathways, competency thinking and scalable learning delivery. 

Susan Watson — Founding Non-Executive Director
Susan is a board member and consultant specialising in digital transformation, cybersecurity, AI governance, data protection and risk management. She brings strong capability in bridging technical specialists and board-level decision-making to support credible, resilient operating models.