Colonel Hamon Massey – Chairman
Colonel Hamon Massey was educated at Harrow and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst from where he was commissioned into The Blues and Royals in 1970. After serving in Norway, Northern Ireland, Berlin and West Germany, he attended the Army Staff College at Camberley in 1982. After further service in Germany and Windsor, and on promotion to Lieutenant Colonel, he took command of the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment in 1992. Then from 1994 to 1997 he worked from the Ministry of Defence in conjunction with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office into 14 countries from Mexico through Central America down to Peru and Bolivia.
Promoted to Colonel, he was Defence Attaché in Buenos Aires and also cross-accredited to Asuncion in Paraguay from 1997 to 2000. On return to the UK, he became Commander Household Cavalry (the professional head of the Household Cavalry) and Silver Stick-in-Waiting to HM The Queen. On retiring in 2005 he became the Clerk (CEO) of the Worshipful Company of Ironmongers, one of the Great XII Livery Companies in the City of London. After 13 years he retired in 2018 and now lives on the Isle of South Uist in the Outer Hebrides while overseeing the Foundation for Liver Research as Chairman of the Board of Trustees.
Professor Alan McGregor – Vice Chairman
Alan, having grown up in Southern Africa, qualified in Medicine from Cambridge University and completed postgraduate training in Newcastle upon Tyne and at the NIH in Bethesda, USA with Tony Fauci. He became Professor of Medicine at King’s College London in 1986, where he held Deanery positions in the University and senior positions in the Medical Research Council. Alan also held senior positions with the Wellcome Trust, British Heart Foundation and internationally at the Universities of Geneva and the West Indies.
He was President of the European Society of Clinical Investigation, and after retirement, he re-trained at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in HIV/AIDS, going on to spend 5 years as a Visiting Professor of Medicine in Harare at the University of Zimbabwe. Professor Roger Williams, a long-standing colleague at King’s, invited Alan to join the Foundation for Liver Research as a Trustee, to help both raise academic activity and find a successor to Roger as Director of the Institute. Alan now supports the Foundation as Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees.
Anna Bennett
Anna is the Director of Finance, IT and Facilities at London’s Air Ambulance Charity. With more than 20 years' experience in financial leadership, Anna is a Chartered Accountant (FCA) and holds the ICAEW Diploma in Charity Accounting. She has worked for several national charities, including as Finance Director for Hospice UK and as Director of Finance and Operations for BBC Children in Need.
Anna joined haysmacintyre’s not-for-profit audit team in 2013 and was promoted to be a Partner with the firm, advising a wide range of charity clients. In 2019 she moved into an internal role on the firm’s Management Board, leading all operational teams.
Anna is a volunteer Emergency Responder for St John Ambulance and sits on the Board of Trustees of the Charity Finance Group as well as the Foundation for Liver Research.
Charles Hopkinson-Woolley
Charles is Head of Global Product Management - Private Markets at Invesco Ltd. After graduating from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, where he was awarded the Sword of Honour, Charles spent four years in the British Army as a subaltern in the 4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards, serving in Germany, Cyprus and Canada. On retirement, he joined the graduate programme at Cazenove & Co and has since worked at several major financial firms, including NatWest Securities, BT Alex Brown, Deutsche Bank and Schroders.
Charles has previously served as a Trustee of the Officers’ Association, as a board member of various Schroder group entities and as a committee member of the City University Club. Charles is a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Ironmongers which he has served as a member of the Finance and General Purposes Committee and the Investment Sub-committee. Charles is also a member of the Grand Master’s Council of the United Grand Lodge of England and is a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment.
Professor Chris Day CBE
Professor Chris Day has been Vice-Chancellor and President of Newcastle University since January 2017. A former Consultant Hepatologist, he has an international reputation in medical research and was awarded a CBE for Services to Health Research and Treatment in the 2023 New Year Honours. He has held key leadership roles, including serving on the Medical Research Council, the Executive of the Medical Schools Council, and chairing the Clinical Medicine Sub-Panel for the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF).
For REF 2021, he chaired the Institutional Environment Pilot Panel, assessing research environments at the institutional level. As well as sitting on the Foundations Board, Professor Day is Chair of the Russell Group, President of the Association of Physicians of Great Britain and Ireland, a member of the Council of the All-Party Parliamentary University Group and serves on the Advisory Board of the UPP Foundation. He is also a Deputy Lieutenant of Tyne and Wear, reflecting his contributions to higher education and research.
Professor Sir Ian Gilmore DL
Professor Sir Ian Gilmore is an honorary consultant physician at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital and holds an honorary chair at the University of Liverpool. After training in Cambridge, London and the USA, he moved to Liverpool as a consultant in 1980.
He is past president of the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) and the British Society of Gastroenterology, and chaired Liverpool Health Partners, created to promote an Academic Health Science System in Liverpool, for six years.
He was Director of the Liverpool Centre for Alcohol Research and currently chairs the UK Alcohol Health Alliance. As well as sitting on the Board of Trustees of the Foundation for Liver Research, Alan is a Trustee of the Lord Leonard and Lady Estelle Wolfson Foundation and holds an Adjunct Chair at Curtin University, Perth Western Australia.
Iain Purvis KC
Iain graduated from Clare College Cambridge in law in 1984, moving to Oxford to take the post-graduate BCL degree at St Edmund Hall. He qualified as a barrister in 1986 and joined Chambers at 11 South Square, 1986, practising in intellectual property, primarily specialising in technical disputes involving patent law - representing a spectrum of clients from individuals through to multinational corporations. He took silk in 2006 and became Head of Chambers in 2014.
Significant cases in which he has successfully acted as lead advocate include Regeneron v Kymab in the Supreme Court (patentability of transgenic mice) and Illumina v Latvia (reversible chain terminators in DNA sequencing technology). Iain has been voted IP/IT silk of the year on two occasions. He is also a Deputy High Court Judge of the Chancery Division including the Patents Court, a Civil Court Recorder and Judge of the Intellectual Property and Enterprise Court. In his spare time he is a keen amateur clarinettist and pianist.
Sir Jeremy Elwes CBE
Jeremy Elwes was educated at Wirral & Bromley Grammar schools and the City of London College. After National Service in Medical Corps, he qualified as a Chartered Secretary and moved into financial and company-secretarial positions. He retired in 1994, having been a Director of the Periodicals Training Council, Sutton Enterprise Agency and a Trustee of the Printers’ Charitable Corporation. Jeremy was Chairman of St Helier NHS Trust, one of the first Trust hospitals, and is currently Vice-President of the Hospice in the Weald.
He has been a member of St John Ambulance since 2000 and is Deputy President of Kent and a member of the County Priory Group of the Order of St John. In Education, Jeremy served as Governor of Walthamstow Hall, a Member of the Executive Committee of GBGSA and a Director and Trustee of the European School of Osteopathy. As well as supporting the FLR, he is a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers and a member of the City Livery Club. He was appointed CBE in 1984, a Knight Bachelor for Political and Public Service in 1994, and a Knight of the Habsburg-Lorraine Order of St George in 2016.
Professor Rebecca Fitzgerald OBE FRS
Rebecca Fitzgerald OBE MD FRS FMedSci HonFREng EMBO is Professor of Cancer Prevention and Founding Director of the Early Cancer Institute at the University of Cambridge and practices medicine as Hon. Consultant in Gastroenterology at Addenbrooke's Hospital. After training in Cambridge, Stanford and London, she moved to Cambridge to focus on research to understand how tissues become cancerous and whether identifying pre-cancer at scale can reduce morbidity and mortality from cancer of the oesophagus.
Interdisciplinary research is key to her approach, especially with bioengineering and public health, which forms the philosophy underpinning the Early Cancer Institute. Rebecca has been awarded several prizes including the Westminster Medal, an NHS Innovation prize, The Croonian Medal from the Royal College of Physicians, the Cancer Research UK Horizons Impact and Entrepreneurship Ward Award and the Don Listwin Early Detection Prize. In 2022 she was awarded an OBE for services to cancer research.
Simon Wainwright
Simon Wainwright is a Chartered Surveyor and the Managing Director and Founder of JPW Real Estate, based in the City of London. Having founded J Peiser Wainwright in 1993, over the last 20 years he has established an enviable reputation for providing independent professional advice on properties throughout Central London. He includes Canary Wharf, Land Securities and a large number of charities as his clients.
Simon is a past Chairman of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors Commercial Markets Board and is currently a Fellow. He is a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Chartered Surveyors, an Expert Witness and a Court Appointed Manager. Simon has a degree in Estate Management from Reading University and an accredited Expert Witness from Cardiff Law School. He is also a Trustee of the Victoria League for Commonwealth Friendship.