Barbara, Baroness Young of Old Scone

Barbara Young was appointed as a Member and Chair of the RVC Council from 1st August 2019.

She has had wide experience as chief executive or chairman in leading large complex public sector, charitable and educational organisations in environment, media, education and health.

Her chief executive positions have included leading NHS healthcare groups in Scotland and London, and as Chief Executive of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the Environment Agency and the charity, Diabetes UK. She has also been Chairman of English Nature and the Care Quality Commission, Vice-Chairman of the BBC and is currently Chairman of the Woodland Trust, which is growing in its role of protecting, promoting, restoring and increasing woodland cover in the UK.   For ten years she was Chancellor and member of the Council of Cranfield University, during which it grew further in reputation and funding with a substantial academic, research and campus development programme.

Internationally she helped found Birdlife International, the global species and habitat conservation partnership and is still Vice-President. She is President of the South Georgia Heritage Trust which has completed a ten year programme to eradicate rats from South Georgia in the South Atlantic to protect the unique assemblage of albatrosses and other birds.

She has honorary degrees from a range of universities and is an Honorary Fellow of Sydney Sussex College, Cambridge and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

A Labour life Peer since 1997, Baroness Young sits on the House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee and is an officer of the Agroecology, Game and Wildlife and Water All Party Groups.

She lives in rural Bedfordshire and competes unsuccessfully at dressage. Her aged Irish Sports Horse has a close relationship with his equine vet practice!

Roger Bright was appointed to the RVC Council in 2013. He was appointed Honorary Treasurer from 1st August 2016 and is the Chair of the F&GP Committee and the Major Strategic Projects Oversight Sub-Committee (MSPOSC). In 2019, Roger was appointed as Vice Chair of RVC Council.

Roger's career spans some 40 years at the public/private sector interface, with a particular focus on the property sector. He began his career as a Whitehall civil servant in the Department of the Environment, where he held a number of senior positions, before becoming Deputy Chief Executive at the Housing Corporation in 1991. After a stint in financial services regulation at the Financial Services Authority, he was appointed Chief Executive and Board member of The Crown Estate in 2001, a position he held until his retirement in 2011. Roger was awarded the Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2009.

Between 2012 and January 2019, Roger was the Chairman of the Advisory Board at public affairs specialist Curtin & Co. He continues in a number of non-executive roles including Chairman of Private Rented Sector Operations Ltd and Chairman of the West and North West Cambridge Development Project.

Jane Alexander was appointed to Council in 2017 and also joined the Finance & General Purposes Committee.  

Jane has over 20 years’ experience as a corporate finance lawyer with Norton Rose and then 3i, a FTSE 100 investment business, where she was responsible for legal strategy, deal risk management and legal outsourcing across its European investment business.  

In 2011 Jane joined The Royal College of Art, the world’s leading postgraduate art and design university, as Pro-Rector (Operations) with responsibility for strategic planning, financial and estate issues, governance and risk management. She was Chair of the RCA’s Equality & Diversity Committee and a member of the Advisory Board of InnovationRCA, the student business incubator.  

Between 2010 and 2014 Jane was a trustee of The National Association of Youth Theatres, the sector development agency for youth theatre in England.  

She is currently a Governor and the Vice Chair of the Board of the Contemporary Dance Trust (The Place), home to the London Contemporary Dance School, a founding affiliate of the Conservatoire for Dance & Drama.

Robin Hargreaves was appointed as an Independent Member of RVC Council in August 2017

Robin was born and grew up on a Yorkshire Dales hill farm and following graduation from Liverpool university school of veterinary medicine he entered mixed, predominantly farm animal practice. A switch to exclusively companion animals came in 1987. Robin was a partner director of a large mixed practice in Lancashire for 32 years where he does some part time work having retired from full time practice in Autumn 2022.

Robin is a past President of the Lancashire Veterinary Association and was President of the British Veterinary Association in 2013-14.

Robin has chaired the Liverpool University Veterinary School alumni association.

Alongside part time clinical practice, Robin works as a consultant to a pet insurance company and is deputy head vet for the UK operation of Agriavetguide, a 24/7 on line advice line for pet owners.

Amanda Pearce Higgins was appointed to the RVC Council and as a Member of the Audit Committee from 1st August 2019. She was appointed Chair of Audit Committee from August 2020.

Amanda is a Chartered Accountant by training and has had a long and successful career with professional services firm PwC. In recent years, her primary focus has been advising organisations on risk management and Internal Audit. Her experience at PwC has provided her with a strong independent voice and the ability to deal with difficult issues at a senior level.

Since retiring from PwC in 2015, Amanda has held a number of Trustee and Non-Executive Director roles. She has also worked with RVC in an advisory capacity on a variety of distinct projects, including a governance review and the gender equality (Athena Swan) award

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Zahid Latif PhD MBA MRPharmS

Zahid initially qualified as a pharmacist and after pre-registration training at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, he went on to study for a PhD in natural product chemistry aimed at the discovery and identification of insecticidal compounds from tropical plants.

After graduating Zahid worked for Xenova Discovery and MNLPharma focused on drug discovery and then for Integrin in Oban, one of the first marine biotech companies in the UK, heading up operations.

Zahid joined the Technology Strategy Board (later renamed Innovate UK) in 2007 becoming Head of Healthcare in 2010. Here he established key funding schemes and programmes which have had a significant impact on the UK life sciences sector. This included the award-winning Biomedical Catalyst programme and establishing world leading research and technology organisations, the Cell and Gene Therapy and Medicines Discovery Catapults.

Zahid joined Cancer Research UK in 2016 as Director for Population and Early Detection Research and then in 2017 established his own consultancy providing support to clients such as the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult and the Department for International Trade where he was Innovation Specialist for life sciences helping UK companies explore overseas markets and overseas companies to invest in the UK. In August 2021, Zahid joined Japanese pharmaceutical company Shionogi as their Vice President for Global Innovation.

Key interests

Lubna Nasir was appointed to Council in March 2023.  

Lubna gained her PhD in Molecular Biology at the University of Liverpool in 1991. Since then, she has engaged in research in the field of comparative oncology at the University of Glasgow, School of Biodiversity, One Health and Veterinary Medicine, focusing on the role of viruses in the pathogenesis of animal cancers. Following many years of a successful research career with a demonstrated track record of grant acquisition, publications, and PhD supervision, her focus and interests moved towards learning and teaching and she has been heavily engaged in course design, development and evaluation in the disciplines of veterinary medicine and biosciences. For over a decade, Lubna has also been intimately engaged in Equity Inclusion and Diversity (EDI) work within Higher Education to help foster inclusive and supportive communities for both staff and students. Her passion and drive for equity is at the forefront of her numerous EDI roles and her day-to-day practice.

Andrew Scott was appointed to Council in August 2023.  

Andrew is a Chartered Accountant and has over 35 years commercial experience in a wide variety of industries. He was most recently Chief Financial Officer of Meininger Hotels and has held senior finance positions in companies such as Travelex, Ladbrokes, De La Rue, The Resort Group, Grand Metropolitan and Arthur Andersen. His involvement has covered public, private and joint ventures companies, including significant international experience and regulated industries.  He later focused on fast-growing private companies which required careful management through challenging commercial and ownership situations. He is particularly proud of having developed some outstanding finance leaders.

Between 2015 and 2022 Andrew served as a Lay Member of the Finance Committee of Kings College London, latterly as the senior independent member.  He is also a Trustee of the Tunnell Trust for Young Musicians, established to support young classical musicians at the onset of their careers. He has an Honours Degree in Geography from the University of Aberdeen. Andrew holds other volunteering roles and lives in the Chilterns with his family and three cats. 

Ezrie Prideaux is the elected RVC Students' Union President for 2023-2024. 

Professor Jill Maddison was elected in June 2016 by members of the Academic Board to represent the Board on Council. Her term of office as an Academic Board Member of Council will be from 1^st August 2016 until 31^st July 2020.

Jill is a graduate of the University of Sydney. She completed an internship at the University of Sydney, spent 18 months in full time private practice in Sydney then completed a residency in small animal medicine at the University of Guelph, Canada. She returned to Australia and completed a PhD entitled Neurochemistry of Hepatic Encephalopathy at The University of Sydney. She was a senior tutor and clinician in the Department of Veterinary Clinical Sciences at the University of Sydney from 1987 and from 1990-2000 was a senior lecturer in the Department of Pharmacology. During this time, she also worked in general and specialist veterinary practice and was a consultant for a veterinary clinical pathology lab. In 2000 she became the Director of the Veterinary Science Foundation at the University of Sydney.

Jill moved to the UK with her family in April 2001. From 2002 she was a veterinary clinician and lecturer at the Royal Veterinary College, based at the college’s first opinion practice and was appointed a Fellow at Girton College, Cambridge where she tutored in pharmacology. She is currently Professor of General Practice, Director of Professional Development and Director of Extramural Studies at the Royal Veterinary College. She is actively involved in undergraduate teaching and CPD at the RVC in the areas of small animal medicine, clinical problem-solving and clinical pharmacology.

Andrew Pitsillides was elected to his first term on RVC Council in 2015 as representative of RVC’s Academic Board.

His international scientist/researcher career has spanned 34 years and he is a recognized teacher with Higher Education Academy Fellowship status for 20 years. He gained an Applied Biology BSc degree (1984) and was awarded a Wellcome Trust Research Assistantship for his PhD studies, conducted jointly at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology and National Institute for Medical Research (London, 1988).

He successfully secured Arthritis Research-UK Post-doctoral Research Fellow and Research Associate positions, joining University College London Medical School (1990), a Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) funded Post-Doctoral Research Scientist position (1993) and then Lectureship at the Royal Veterinary College (1994). His research is currently funded by Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), Wellcome Trust, Leverhulme Trust and Arthritis Research UK. He previously acted as a consultant for Smith & Nephew, for Hopsteiner (S.S. Steiner, Research and Development) and for CellAct Pharma. Andrew is currently a consultant for Haoma Medica (venture capital backed biotech company).

Andrew has sat on British Society for Matrix Biology (BSMB) and Bone Research Society (BRS) Executive Committees. He has been elected Member of the Biosciences Federation and with Life Membership to the International Society for Hyaluronan Sciences and, most recently, elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology (FRSB, 2014) and Fellow of the Anatomical Society (FAS, 2016).

Prof Pitsillides is currently an external appointee on the William Harvey Research Foundation Grants Review Committee. He is also an Independent expert for Science & Technology proposals to the Ministry of Education, Greek Governmental Agency, and Recognized Expert Reviewer for the National Fund for Scientific Research Belgium (FNRS), Platform SEMAPHORE Fund for National Research (France) and for European Commission Research Framework Program and ERC Starting Grants.

He has published ~115 scientific articles, recently received the Harold Hyam Wingate Foundation Award (2012) and a Development award from the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (2013), regularly gives many plenary lectures at major International Research Conferences, has received the RVC’s Jim Bee Educator Award, been appointed as External examiner advising UCL, Imperial Collage and Queen Mary’s Colleges, London and has been Chairman of RVC’s Teaching Quality Committee (2007-2013).

Stuart Reid 

Stuart Reid is Principal of the Royal Veterinary College, London.

With research interests in the application of quantitative epidemiological techniques to diseases of both animals and humans he has worked in Africa, Australia and the USA and has published over 130 papers and won over £15M in competitive grants. His most recent work, with others, on the One Health aspects of antimicrobial resistance in Salmonella appeared in Science and the Proceedings of the Royal Society and challenged some of the basic tenets of the origin and transmission of resistance.

He is a Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons Recognised Specialist in veterinary epidemiology and a diplomate of the European College of Veterinary Public Health, of which he was the first elected president. He has served on numerous committees including the Scottish Science Advisory Committee and the Veterinary Products Committee.

He has been a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh since 2001 and was a member of the RSE inquiries into Infectious Salmon Anaemia, Foot and Mouth Disease and Avian Influenza. He has been recognised by his peers with the award of the Petplan Charitable Trust Scientific Award (2010), the Wooldridge Memorial Lecture and Medal (BVA, 2010), the McCall Lecture (2012) and is the 2016 recipient of the Dalrymple-Champneys Cup and Medal for the advancement of veterinary science.

A veterinarian who has worked in both the private and public sector, Reid has served on the executive committees of the professional regulatory bodies in Europe and the UK; he currently chairs the European Committee on Veterinary Education and he served as President of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons in 2014-2015, the governing body for the veterinary profession in the United Kingdom.

Ian Darker - Secretary to Council and Chief Operating Officer

As Secretary to Council, Ian advises the Chairman and Principal on governance issues, helping to ensure the College remains compliant with relevant legal and professional frameworks. He also assists Council in setting the strategic objectives of the College.

Ian graduated from the University of Hull in 1986 and has a postgraduate diploma in HR Management from Sheffield Hallam University.

After a period in administration at the University of Hertfordshire, he began his career in HR in the retail sector before moving back into higher education in 1998. He worked at the London School of Economics before returning to the University of Hertfordshire in 2004. He joined the RVC as Director of HR and became COO in 2014.

As COO, Ian supports the Principal in the operational management of the College and works with the Vice-Principals to help deliver the strategic aims of the three Mission Groups: Learning & the Student Experience; Research & Innovation; Clinical Services. He provides leadership to the Professional Services Management Team and works closely with the Director of Finance.