Trustees

The National Literacy Trust is governed by trustees, an advisory committee and a council. Our president is Sir Simon Hornby.

Our trustees come from diverse backgrounds and have more recently been assisting with the strategic development of the organisation. See below for short biographies on each of our trustees.

Amanda Jordan OBE (Chair of NLT Board)

As well as chairing the NLT’s Board, Amanda is joint Chair of Corporate Citizenship formerly known as The SMART Company, which she founded in 2001 after a successful career spanning the voluntary and private sectors. In the 1990s she spent 10 years developing and managing an award-winning CSR programme for NatWest. She was also an Adviser to the Social Exclusion Unit in the Cabinet Office and a Non-Executive Director of the ODPM. 

Amanda has a particular interest in the role that business plays in public policy development and has written and edited a number of publications focusing on the boundaries of ‘corporate responsibility’. As well as advising clients on the importance of focused, relevant and measurable CSR and sustainability programmes Amanda presents on these issues at conferences in the UK and abroad.

Amanda’s interest in responsible business behaviour extends into the field of self-regulation. She currently chairs a working party for DCSF on regulating internet content and has also been a Non-Executive Director of the Banking Code Standards Board. In addition she is a member of the ICAEW CSR Committee and the ICC CSR Advisory Board at Nottingham University Business School. Amanda’s other not-for-profit work includes chairing the Baring Foundation. Amanda was a founding member of the National Lottery Charities Board 1994 – 2000 and was awarded her OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to the voluntary sector.

Robert Lee Smith C.B. (Deputy Chair of NLT board)

Rob Smith was a career civil servant between 1974 and 2005. He worked in various Departments including nearly 20 years at the Department for Education. During that period he took a leading part in the establishment of the cross-cutting Sure Start and Connexions programmes. His final civil service post was as Director General for Regional Development in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. In this capacity he ran the Government Office Network and was responsible for 2,500 people working on Government programmes across the country. He chaired the Regional Directors’ Management Board and was a member of the main boards in three different Departments. He was made a Companion of the Order of the Bath in 2004. He is now Deputy Chair of The Place2Be and a member of Cancer Research UK.  He also provides mentoring, seminar and consultancy services on Government and Whitehall.

Richard Lewis (Treasurer of NLT board)

Richard Lewis has had a varied career in Higher Education. Following a period as Professor of Accountancy at the University of Wales, he occupied senior management positions in a number of institutions during which time the focus of his interest moved from resources to quality assurance.  He was the Deputy Chief Executive of the Council for National Academic Awards (CNAA), which was the awarding and quality assurance body for academic degrees at polytechnics, and other non-university institutions such as colleges of Higher Education. 

With the ending of the binary system in the UK in 1992, and the subsequent demise of the CNAA, his career took another turn when he joined the Open University (OU). He served as Pro-Vice-Chancellor with special responsibility for services, both academic and administrative, provided to students. Early in his career he was a visiting Professor at the University of Washington, Seattle, later spending two years in the United States as Interim and then Associate Chancellor of the United States Open University.

He has coauthored four books relating to accountancy and has also written a number of articles and papers on various aspects of Higher Education.

Following his retirement from the OU he is actively engaged as a Higher Education consultant. He has extensive international experience and has served as a consultant in over 20 countries. He has also worked with a number of international agencies including the World Bank and UNESCO. He has been closely involved with the work of the International Network of Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education (INQAAHE) since its establishment in 1991and served as its President from 2003 – 2007.

In addition to his role at the National Literacy Trust he is the Treasurer of ActionAid UK and the UK Council for International Student Affairs.

Kamini Gadhok MBE

Kamini is Chief Executive of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists. Her primary role is to help deliver service change by building strong partnerships with key stakeholders across government, charities, other professional bodies and the regulator.

Qualifying as a Speech and Language Therapist in 1983, Kamini was Ethnic Projects Coordinator for the NHS from 1997 – 1999, when she was seconded to the Department of Health to set up the Race Equality Unit. She was Section Head in the Race Equality Unit at the Department of Health from July 1999 – December 2000. Prior to her move to London in 1997, Kamini had three roles at Nottingham Community Health (NHS Trust): Locality Manager, Locality Coordinator SLT and Specialist Advisor (for bilingualism).

As a therapist, Kamini had direct patient care responsibilities for 14 years and has had experience of working with a range of client groups (children, older people, people with learning difficulties) in hospitals, community health centres, special schools and mainstream schools.

George Mackintosh

George is a business and economics graduate from the University of Edinburgh who had a corporate career with Ford, Motorola and Cable & Wireless. Since 1992 he has owned and managed several ventures in the telecommunications industry. He is considered an experienced serial entrepreneur having both raised venture capital and sold successful businesses over a 15-year period. Living in central London, he lists his interests as family, reading, gardening and motor racing.

Gail Rebuck DBE

Dame Gail Rebuck, DBE, is Chair and Chief Executive of The Random House Group, one of the largest general book publishers in the UK.  She is also a Non-Executive Director of BSkyB, a Director of Skillset and on the Council of the Royal College of Art. 

Gail chairs the Quick Reads adult literacy initiative, part of the World Book Day Charity, which she launched in 1998. 

Early in 2009 she sat on the Government's Panel: Fair Access to the Professions. Gail was voted Veuve Clicquot Business Woman of the Year in April 2009 and awarded a DBE in the 2009 Queen’s Birthday Honours List.