TreeHouse Trustees

Nick Baldwin (Chair of Trustees)

Nick Baldwin became Chairman of TreeHouse Trust in December 2008. He is a Chartered Engineer, a Chartered Director and has a portfolio of Non-Executive Director and Advisory roles in the Utility, Government and Housing sectors. Prior to this he worked in electricity, gas and water utilities, culminating as Chief Executive of Powergen plc until its sale to EON in 2002. He is married with two children and lives in Worcester.

Tristia Clarke (Chair of Remuneration Committee)

Tristia is Group Marketing Director for The Carphone Warehouse and has overall responsibility for all marketing across the company’s 11 markets for both The Carphone Warehouse and TalkTalk brands. This includes 10 markets in Europe (including the UK) as well as the recent expansion of the business into the US, as part of a joint venture with Best Buy. In April 2006, Tristia led the company’s largest ever through the line marketing campaign when the business revolutionised the UK broadband market with free broadband from TalkTalk. Tristia has two children, Stanley 4 and Woody 2.

Clare Coombe-Tennant

Clare's parents were both in the Foreign Office and she was born in Brunei and spent her early years in Asia and the Congo. She went to school in London, got a degree in English Literature, and then went into hardback publishing for two years. She moved to Hong Kong and became a journalist writing about the Far East, largely from an economic viewpoint.

After two years, she became a junior investment manager at Baring Asset Management and loved her job as a fund manager and director there for 12 years, managing a large regional unit trust and institutional pension fund money. She has continued to work as a non-executive director, but motherhood has become her first priority.

Her first son was born in 1996, and she carried on working until the twin pregnancy, when she and her family moved back to the UK. By 2000 they had a family of four boys. Two are at mainstream, one is at Swiss Cottage, and one is at TreeHouse.

Judith Barnard (Chair of Development and Public Affairs Committee)

Judith has over ten years experience as a board director in the voluntary sector, running communications, marketing, policy, information, campaigning and volunteer services for two national disability charities: Leonard Cheshire Disability and the National Autistic Society.

Her achievements include the renaming and re-branding of Leonard Cheshire Disability and the award-winning Creature Discomforts campaign www.CreatureDiscomforts.org to change the way people respond to disability. At the National Autistic Society Judith also established the charity’s policy and campaigns function and its Advocacy for Education service. She has published several reports on autism, special needs and social care.

In her spare time Judith is a governor of a secondary special needs school Garratt Park in Wandsworth, and a director and founder member of CharityComms, the membership body for charity communicators.

Prior to joining the voluntary sector Judith worked in local government communications in London, Cambridgeshire and Surrey, and in publishing, fundraising and marketing roles in the charity and higher and further education sectors.

Kamran Nazeer

Kamran was born of itinerant Pakistani parents and has lived in New York, Jeddah, Islamabad and Glasgow. He studied law but decided not to become a lawyer. By the time he completed his Ph.D. thesis, he had decided not to become an academic. On leaving Cambridge, he was recruited into her Majesty’s Service and now works as a policy adviser in Whitehall. He has published work in newspapers and magazines.

Bruce Fraser (Chair of Scrutiny and Audit Committee)

Bruce is Bursar of Mill Hill School Foundation, a large co-educational independent school in North London with over 1200 pupils. Bruce’s diverse professional career includes senior investment banking roles (corporate finance and capital markets) with major firms in both London and New York, as well as substantial experience in the commercial/industrial sector where he previously was Chief Financial Officer of a number of start-up and early-stage, venture capital-backed entrepreneurial technology companies, as well as Group Treasurer of a major publicly-listed multinational energy services group. Bruce was also previously Finance Director/Bursar of Stowe School in Buckinghamshire. Bruce achieved both a BSc (economics and accounting) degree and an MBA (finance) degree from Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois. Bruce is married to a schoolteacher, has three children and lives in North London.

Jonathan Meth

Jonathan is Executive Director of Theatre Is... making innovative new theatre by, with and for young people across the East of England. Previously he was Director of writernet, a UK based organisation which gave dramatic writers the tools they need to build better careers and change the culture in which they work. He trained as a theatre director at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and has worked as dramaturg, script editor, director and lecturer. He has been Chair of CreativePeople and Vice Chair of the Playwright’s Studio, Scotland. He is also: Visiting Tutor in Residence on the MA in Arts Administration and Cultural Policy at Goldsmiths College, University of London; External Assessor for the MA in Scriptwriting at the University of East Anglia and a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts. Jonathan’s son has been a pupil at Treehouse school since 2003.

Matthew Punshon

Matthew is currently a Partner at EC Harris. He was formally Chief Operating Officer of The Asset Factor, a subsidiary of Helical Bar plc. He was formally Product Development Director for Land Securities Group PLC, Europe’s largest quoted property company, having been one of the founders of LandSecuritiesTrillium. Having started his surveying career at Richard Ellis, Matthew was seconded to Goldman Sachs to oversee the bid for the Department of Social Security (now Work and Pensions) property portfolio. He became Communications Director developing the Trillium brand and establishing the ‘Total Property Outsourcing’ industry. Subsequently he was appointed Operations Director overseeing a large change management programme focusing on customer satisfaction – a concept new in the property industry.

Rowie Shaw (Chair of School Governing Body)

Rowie Shaw worked in 5 inner city, multiracial secondary schools over a 24 year period including as a secondary headteacher in two large schools in Tower Hamlets and Bradford. She then went on to be David Hart’s deputy at NAHT for 4 years, being in charge of all professional services. For the last 6 years of her career, prior to “retirement” in June 2005, she was the first Chief Executive of NASS, the national association for all non-maintained and independent special schools, successfully building the association from scratch to be the main national voice for special schools.

Rowie has also carried out extensive freelance work as an accredited consultant and lead facilitator for the National College for School Leadership, mentor to Headteachers, external adviser to governing bodies, performance management consultant, personal leadership tutor to Fast Track teachers and trainer and assessor of School Improvement Partners (SIPs) for the NCSL. She is also an experienced coach.

Rowie completed her doctoral thesis on leadership development for special schools, at the Institute of Education at the University of London. She has written numerous publications on teacher training and leadership issues.

Richard Townley (Chair of Building Steering Group Committee)

Richard obtained a BSc in Estate Management from the University of London and has practised as a Chartered Surveyor since 1967 specialising in commercial property investment. Whilst a partner of Michael Laurie and Partners in London in the early 70’s, he opened their Paris office and was a vending shareholder during the successful sale of the business to Morgan Grenfell, creating the new business of Morgan Grenfell Laurie. Richard ran the investment department and became Joint Managing Director and a member of the Holding Company Board. He currently acts as a property consultant and jointly runs North Square Properties, a group of family property companies.

Sid Wells

Sid was educated at Southampton and qualified as a Marine Engineer spending several years travelling the globe in the world’s largest oil tankers. Having a keen interest in music and playing in several bands Sid decided to dedicate time to learning the engineering aspects of recording music. One of Sid’s first commissions was to design and build the recording studios for MCA Music in Piccadilly. Sid has now designed and built studios for many companies his latest being the Sound and Video Studios for HomeChoice. As a freelance engineer Sid went on to record music all over Europe and for Sony Music in Australia. Currently working for The Sound Agency, a company dedicated to improving the audio experience of the world we live in.