The Board

Sian is a senior management consultant in the arts. From 2015 to 2021 she was Executive Director of the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre. She was Executive Director of the Bush Theatre from 2012 to 2014 and Associate Director of Julie’s Bicycle from 2010 to 2013 where she established a national programme to support the UK theatre industry to become environmentally sustainable.

As a consultant she has worked with organisations such as Wiltshire Creative, The Place, Nuffield Southampton Theatres, Creative Industry Finance, Kiln Theatre (then Tricycle) and the World Stages Consortium among others. Prior to this Sian was Head of Theatre in London at Arts Council England for 10 years until 2010. She is a board member of Julie’s Bicycle, the Gate Theatre and the Rose Theatre, Kingston and was previously Chair of Trustees for Frantic Assembly 2010-2020, Vice Chair of the London Theatre Consortium, and on the advisory board of non zero one. Sian became a Clore Fellow in 2006 and in 2019 she was appointed Chair of Hammersmith & Fulham’s Women’s Equality Commission. She served as an LBHF Climate & Ecological Emergency Commissioner throughout 2020.

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Prior to this Jan was an Account Director at AKA, the global marketing and advertising agency and lead the strategy across a wide range of theatre projects that included commercial transfers from the National Theatre (One Man, Two Guvnors, People, Places and Things, Oslo, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, and War Horse), the Theatre Royal Haymarket and many more. Her background includes leading the marketing for Ticketmaster, See Tickets, and for the Cameron Mackintosh owned venue chain Delfont Mackintosh Theatres.

She is a huge advocate of new writing and emerging producers, running workshops regularly with Stage One, the charity that supports and trains commercial producers.

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Shami Chakrabarti (Baroness Chakrabarti CBE PC) is a human rights lawyer and campaigner, Labour Peer and was Shadow Attorney General for England and Wales from September 2016 to April 2020. She was the Director of Liberty (the National Council for Civil Liberties), from 2003 to 2016 and its In House Counsel from 2001 to 2003. Prior to that she was at the bar and then a Home Office lawyer (1996-2001). She was a panellist on the Leveson Inquiry into media culture, ethics and practice after the phone-hacking scandal in 2011/12 and one of an international group who carried the Olympic flag at the opening of the London games in 2012. She was the Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University and the University of Essex and has been an Honorary Professor at the Universities of Bristol and Manchester and the London School of Economics. She served on the Board of the British Film Institute (BFI) for many years and on the Members Council of the Tate. She is a Master of the Bench of Middle Temple. She has written and broadcast widely and is the author of two books, On Liberty (2014) and Of Women (2017). Both are published by Penguin, Allen Lane.

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Jonathan is Head of Investments at Guardian Media Group. He has overall responsibility for the Scott Trust Endowment which provides support to The Guardian newspaper. He has over thirty years of experience in fund management.

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Jason is the Head of Financial Planning & Analysis at Britvic Soft Drinks.  He has 12 years experience as a chartered accountant working mainly in commercially focussed roles for a number of global beverage companies including Heineken.  More recently Jason has held a number of senior finance management positions within Britvic.  As a freelance consultant he has also helped lead major change projects for clients such as British Airways and it’s parent company IAG.

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After working as a drama teacher in the East End, Sarah works as a Theatre Director and Dramaturg with a range of artists and playwrights. She originally joined the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester as Literary Manager and Associate Director  establishing the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting and becoming sole Artistic Director from 2013 – 2019 winning Stage Regional Theatre of the Year in 2016.

Her productions include: The Nico Project, (co-created with Maxine Peake for MIF 2019), West Side Story, Death of a Salesman, Happy Days, Our Town (winner of Best Director at the UK Theatre Awards), The Last Testament of Lillian Bilocca (Hull City of Culture), A Streetcar Named Desire, All I Want is One Night, The Skriker (MIF15 and BBC Radio 3), Hamlet, Blindsided, That Day We Sang, The Masque of Anarchy (produced at the Albert Hall for MIF and BBC Radio 3), Black Roses, Three Birds, Orpheus Descending, Miss Julie (a new version by David Eldridge), Beautiful Thing, A View from the Bridge, Winterlong (by Andrew Sheridan, winner of the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting), Punk Rock (by Simon Stephens, winner of the MEN Award for Best Production), Three Sisters, On the Shore of the Wide World (by Simon Stephens, winner of the Olivier Award for Best Play) and KES.

Her work has also been seen at the National Theatre, Bush Theatre, Lyric Hammersmith, Soho Theatre and the Crucible.

Current Projects in 2022/23 include Macbeth for Shakespeare’s Globe, The Breach for Hampstead Theatre, BETTY! a Christmas Musical for the Royal Exchange and developing a new commission for The Factory. She is currently Trustee of The GateTheatre and RTYDS (Regional Theatre Young Director Scheme).

She received a Special Recognition Award for Outstanding Contribution to Theatre in Manchester at the 2021 Manchester Culture Awards.

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David, an international lawyer, has been a partner in the firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison since 1992.  He was based initially in New York City, then in Tokyo, and since 2002 has been resident in London.  He is also a director of Human Rights Watch, Inc. and Chair of its Asia Advisory Committee, and the Chair of the Board of Trustees of the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

A graduate of Harvard College and the Harvard Law School, he has served as a pro bono advisor to theatre, dance and other arts organizations, in both New York and London, for over 25 years.

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Rahul Sinha is an economist as well as a monitoring and evaluation expert, working in the international development and education sectors. He serves on the boards of the Gate Theatre, the Gerald Coke Handel Foundation, and London Plus, and previously was an Ambassador for the Woolly Mammoth Theatre in Washington DC. He also serves on the Policy Council for Liberty.

Before moving to London, he has worked for a prominent think tank in Washington DC, as well as several boutique consultancies that support NGOs including the World Bank, and the UK and US governments. Since arriving in London, he has supported the Overseas Development Institute in its research into the causes and levels of land tenure insecurity around the world.

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