Appointment Panel

Dame Julia Unwin has extensive experience as a non-executive director at both commercial and third-sector organisations. She chairs the Board of Governors at York St John University and the Board of the Smart Data Foundry. She is a non-executive director at Yorkshire Water.

She chaired “Civil Society Futures”, an independent inquiry that ran from 2017-2019 as a national conversation about how English civil society can flourish in a fast-changing world. Before that she was Chief Executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, a charity that conducts and funds research aimed at solving poverty in the UK (2007-2016).

Among her many public and private appointments, she has served as a non-executive director of Mears Group Plc (2015-2024); Deputy Chair of the Food Standards Agency (2003-2006); Lead Member of the Department for Communities and Local Government Capability Review (2007); a member of the Department for Trade and Industry Fair Markets Board and Audit Committee (2001-2006); Board Member of the National Consumer Council (2002-2006); Charity Commissioner (1998-2003); and Independent Adjudicator of the Audit Commission (2000-2003).

Catherine Steele is Group Director of Marketing and Communications at Brooks Macdonald, a UK focused wealth management firm. She has held senior communications and corporate affairs global and country roles including with Vodafone Group, Biogen, Novartis and Roche. Her expertise includes external and internal communications, media strategy, digital and social media, content creation, executive communications and issues and crisis management.

Chris Evans has been editor of The Telegraph since 2014. He was head of news at The Telegraph from 2007 to 2014. Before The Telegraph, he worked at The Daily Mail (1995 – 2007) and at South West News Service in Bristol (1992 – 1995). He is a graduate of Brasenose College, Oxford.

Geraldine Allinson is a steadfast supporter of trustworthy journalism in the UK. For thirteen years she was executive Chairman of the KM Media Group, a long standing, innovative family company which became the country’s first integrated multimedia organisation providing news through online, TV, radio, newspapers and other products. She is currently a non executive director for Baylis Community Media CIC, the PA Media Group, a Kent Ambassador, Trustee of Canterbury Cathedral, Patron for the Heart of Kent Hospice and a Deputy Lieutenant for Kent. She has also been president of the Newspaper Society (the second female to ever do this) as well as a director for the NMA, the RadioCentre and Iliffe Media Group. In 2020 she was awarded the OBE for services to local media in Kent.

Lord Faulks is the Chairman of IPSO and sits on the IPSO Appointment Panel. Lord Faulks joined IPSO in 2020 following a long career as a barrister and having served as Justice Minister from 2013-2016.

Victor Olowe is a governance consultant, board reviewer and a former Chief Executive of the Council for Licensed Conveyancers with expertise in professional regulation, consumer protection, risk management and board governance.
Victor is currently a Non-Executive Director/Member in a number of organisations related to regulation and raising professional standards, including:
• Chair of the CGMA Examination Board at CIMA/AICPA
• Chair of Water UK’s Independent Sewerage and Water Adoption Panels
• Chair of the Quality Assurance Scheme Committee at the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.