Trustees

Robert Ashby - Chair

Robert studied at Oxford, York and Manchester Universities (BA Chemistry, MBA Finance). Since then he has had over 30 years experience of building fast-growing venture capital backed technology businesses, as Chair, Managing, Finance or Non-Executive Director. Currently he is Director of Challenge Coaching, providing business development consultancy, business coaching and mentoring for high growth companies and entrepreneurs, and life coaching for parents of children with special needs.

He is now a Patron, previously Chair and then Festival Director of Hereford Photography Festival, which he set up as a charity.

I am passionate about humanism, photography and books.

Robert lives in Swannington, Leicestershire, where he is a member of Leicester Secular Society and plays squash.

Patricia Rogers - Vice Chair

With an MA from Cambridge University, a PGCE and a Diploma of Management Studies, Patricia is an educator and internationalist, and has lived, taught and written in the UK, Nigeria, Pakistan the Philippines and South Korea.  She also has strong working links with India, Nepal, Tibet, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

I have seen both devastations and transformations resulting from religious convictions. I was a committed Christian, but have been a humanist for about 40 years.

Patricia has been Chief Executive of the Council for Education in World Citizenship, as well as the Jubilee Debt Campaign and Pestalozzi International Village. She is aware of the effectiveness of international collaboration and attended the 2011 IHEU meeting in Norway. She hopes her experience of running educational, international and campaigning charities will be useful to the BHA.

John Woolhouse - Treasurer

John has been a member of the BHA and its earlier incarnations all his adult life. He is a graduate of The Queen’s College Oxford and a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries. He is married with three adult children.

John's business career has been in financial services with a range of senior executive director and latterly non-executive director appointments in both small and larger actuarial and insurance organisations and he has carried out various pro bono assignments in the charitable sector.

John Catt

John was born in 1950. He worked in banking before retiring as a Business Analysis manager in the card transaction processing business, Streamline, after 37 years.

John joined the BHA in 1990 and is a Local Development Project volunteer on Leicestershire SACRE. He is also a member of Leicester Secular Society, SPES and the NSS. John is married with two children and is a trustee governor of Woodbrook Vale High School in Loughborough: www.woodbrookvale.leics.sch.uk.

John enjoys cycling, sailing and in his spare time he maintains several simple websites and discussion fora. Cycling is more than a hobby, as John is also a local cycle campaigner and a trustee of the Cyclist Touring Club www.ctc.org.uk, the UK's national cyclists' organisation.

Blaise Egan

Blaise works for a well-known telecommunications company, where he has been for over 30 years in a variety of management roles. He has been a traffic forecaster, a computer programmer, a database administrator, a management science consultant and a researcher developing telecare technololgy for the frail and elderly. His current role involves data analysis in support of planning the rollout of fast and superfast broadband. He has degrees in mathematics, Statistical Applications in Business and Government, a research degree in Bayesian statistics and he is a Chartered Statistician.  In his spare time he is the treasurer of Essex Humanists.

Alice Fuller

Alice’s interest in Humanism emerged whilst at university, where she found a name for the beliefs she’d held for most of her life. She now lives in North London where she sits on Camden SACRE and helps to run the Central London Humanist Group, one of the fastest growing local groups in the country. She has experience of policy and public affairs through her day job at a national health charity and of fundraising for the Emitos Girls Humanist Football Team in Uganda.

I believe passionately in the promotion of humanism as an intellectually and historically rich tradition of free thought, which can change people’s lives for the better. 

Her other interests include jazz, illustration and Tottenham Hotspur. 

Allan Hayes

Allan studied mathematics at Trinity College Cambridge (BA, PhD).  Retired from an academic career, he is now a director of  Leicester Secular Society and a Trustee of the Sea of Faith Network.

I live in one of the most diverse cities in the country and have been active for many years in promoting humanism and secularism, encouraging dialogue, and opposing faith schools. Last year I was Chaplain to the Lord Mayor. I am working to change religious education into education in humanity.

Allan is also member of Leicester SACRE, the NSS, SPES,  SAPERE, and Antidote.

Michael Imison

Michael Imison lives near the Suffolk/Norfolk border. As a student theatre producer he founded the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society. He was a BBC TV drama director and then ran his own literary agency. He chaired a number of committees for the Personal Managers Association and was founder chair of the Noel Coward Society.

Micahel is a Humanist celebrant and has trained celebrants. In 2006 he chaired the celebrants’ conference committee. He is an active member of both Suffolk and Norfolk Humanist groups. He enjoys speaking to BHA affiliated Groups about Humanist ethics.

He also enjoys talking in schools about Humanism generally.

Iain Paterson

Until his recent retirement, Iain Paterson was for 30 years one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Schools. He has an honours degree in history. Before becoming an HMI, he taught in schools and colleges in London and Windsor, was for six years editor of the journal Trends in Education and a speechwriter on education for all the secretaries and ministers of state from Margaret Thatcher to Shirley Williams.

Other than Humanism, his main interests are jazz, the music of Haydn, Scottish nationalism and contemporary American politics.

David Pollock

Actively involved in the humanist movement since 1961, David Pollock was a trustee of the British Humanist Association from 1965-75 including a stint as Chair from 1970-72. He was re-elected to the board in 1997.

In addition David is a board member and former Chair of the Rationalist Association and has been President of the European Humanist Federation since 2006. He takes a special interest in policy and campaigning on the place of religion and belief in society and other questions of public policy.

An Oxford classics graduate, after 25 years in management with the National Coal Board, he was Director of Action on Smoking and Health (1991-95) and then of the Continence Foundation (1996-2001) before retiring to (almost) full-time Humanism.

Mary Porter

Mary was a senior manager in a sexual health charity for a number of years. She then worked internationally as a consultant, mostly with health and third sector organisations,   designing, supporting and evaluating national projects.   This brought her into contact with an  organisation that supported  charities in the UK, for whom Mary became a consultant in the UK , undertaking governance review s of charities and project evaluation and

In recent years Mary has been a non-executive director and a mediator in the NHS and is currently a governor of a mental health trust.  She is also involved as a lay person in the regulation of the nursing profession and in reviews of services in the NHS for a national medical body.  Mary chairs panels that review decisions to detain patients under the Mental Health Act and is a member of a university ethics committee.  

David Savage

David was the first chair of Farnham Humanists, a thriving new local humanist group.

We aim to bring Humanism into the community, for example, through education, chaplaincy, ceremonies and public events.

David was a founder member of Labour Humanists and is a member the NSS and SPES.  After gaining a BSc and PhD in Chemical Engineering he joined multinational company and for some years worked as a Strategic Planning Manager. Following a period working overseas he was appointed Technical Director of their international soft drinks business, with operations in over 30 countries. He is  a Governor of a special needs school and works to protect river catchment environments.