Our People

In addition to these members of staff and regular contractors, TBIJ also works with experienced freelancers. These have recently included Tamasin Cave and Charlotte Maher. Outside the UK, TBIJ has worked freelancers including Rahul Meesaraganda, a freelance investigative reporter in India.

TBIJ has a board of directors, which meets six times a year. The directors, who act like trustees, have overall responsibility for the finances and strategy of TBIJ. It plays no part in the day-to-day editorial decisions. The board appoints the Managing Editor, who has editorial freedom to pursue investigations and research consistent with the objectives of TBIJ set out here.

Composition of the Board

The board is co-chaired by Isabel Hilton and Richard Sambrook.

Isabel is the founder of China Dialogue. She worked for the Daily Express and the Sunday Times before joining the launch team for the Independent. She later worked on the World Tonight, as a columnist for the Guardian and for the New Yorker as a staff writer.

Richard is emeritus professor of journalism at Cardiff University. He was previously the director of BBC News and worked at the corporation for 30 years. He is a trustee of the International News Safety Institute, for which he led an inquiry into the deaths of journalists around the world, and until 2009 he was vice president of the European Broadcasting Union. He has represented public broadcasters on the advisory group to the UN's Internet Governance Forum; been a member of the leadership committee of the Global Media AIDS Initiative; on the advisory board of the British Council; chaired the BBC’s international charity, the World Service Trust; and been a trustee of the free-speech NGO Article 19. He is a fellow of the Royal Television Society and of the Royal Society of Arts.

The other directors, listed in alphabetical order, are:

Clare Algar was a litigator in private practice and has held leadership positions in human rights organisations for the past 10 years, most recently at Amnesty. Earlier in her career Clare transformed the small charity Reprieve into a sustainable, thriving organisation, growing the team from 13 employees to 35 and making it a leading player in the fight against the death penalty and extrajudicial killings.

Lord Clive Hollick is a British businessman with media interests and a Labour peer. He was chairman of the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee from 2014 –2017 and is a director of Honeywell International and Trafalgar Entertainment Group. He was a Partner at KKR and led the media industry team in Europe. He was chairman of SBS Broadcasting and a director of the Nielsen Company. He is a member of the advisory boards of GP Bullhound, the technology investment bank, and the Royal Society. From 1974 to 2005 he was CEO of United Business Media plc. He was senior independent director of Diageo and a non-executive director of Logica, Havas, TRW and BAE Systems. He was chairman of the SouthBank Centre and founded the IPPR think-tank in 1988. He was appointed a member of the House of Lords in 1991 and has advised the Labour party on business and economic policy, acting as a special adviser at the DTI in 1997 and 1998.

Tara Lajumoke heads up the consulting arm of the FT, which supports global organisations to build sustainable digital businesses. Her leadership of FT Strategies follows 15 years at McKinsey where she specialised in digital transformation. She brings a strong background in digital skills and strategy.

Yasmin Namini is a media executive with leadership success as an industry trailblazer, driving game-changing digital transformation for one of the world's biggest news brands, the New York Times. In her role as senior vice president, chief consumer officer, Yasmin led the NYT's print and digital subscription consumer revenue business, marketing and consumer insights. Yasmin left the Times in March 2015 when consumer revenue represented 53% of the company’s total revenues; a transformative achievement in an industry traditionally dominated by advertising revenue. Yasmin has since worked as an independent consultant and adviser to media and entertainment companies worldwide, specialising in digital transformation, monetisation strategies and marketing. She also serves on Media24 South Africa’s Digital Advisory Forum and has served on a variety of non-profit boards and advisory committees including the International News Media Association (INMA), Oceanic Society, Alliance for Audited Media, Times Square Alliance and the News Literacy Project. She is also an adjunct lecturer at IESE Business School, University of Navarra.

Grzegorz Piechota studies how technology can disrupt industries, including the media, as part of his research for both the University of Oxford and Harvard Business School. His project at Oxford’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism examines the impact of digital platforms on paid content models of news organisations. In 1996 he began his career in reporting at Gazeta Wyborcza, in one of the smallest local offices, rising to a news editor and a vice-president of Agora Foundation. A 2016 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, Piechota explored the transformation of the media business and the future of work in creative industries. Piechota also serves as a digital strategy adviser for Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza (Agora) and consults with media companies worldwide. He is a member of the International News Media Association’s board of directors and is a past president of INMA’s EuropeDivision. He is an active member of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, the Online News Association and the Global Editors Network.

David Potter CBE is an academic, scientist and entrepreneur. He founded Psion in 1980 and led its development in software and the world’s first consumer hand-held computers. Together with Nokia, Sony, Ericsson and Motorola, he created Symbian the first licensed software merging mobile phones and portable computers. In 1999 he was named Britain’s Entrepreneur of the year. David has served on national committees on higher education, science and technology and the Court of the Bank of England. He and his wife Elaine established the David and Elaine Potter Foundation.

Elaine Potter is the co-founder of the David and Elaine Potter Foundation. A former member of the Sunday Times Insight team she co-authored several Sunday Times books, including Suffer the Children: the Story of Thalidomide and Destination Disaster: From the Tri-Motor to the DC10. Born in South Africa, she is a trustee of the University of Cape Town Trust.