Board of Trustees

Chair 

Professor Khalid Aziz LVO DL FRSA

Khalid joined Gilbert White's as Chairman of Trustees in early 2020 having chaired several charities ranging from The Prince’s Trust (for young people) to Enham Trust (adults with disabilities) to Naomi House and Jack’splace Children’s hospices.  His day job is Chairing Aziz Corporate which delivers communications and business coaching across the world.

Says Khalid, “I am so pleased to be leading this remarkable charity.  There is so much potential.  Gilbert’s philosophy is as relevant today as it ever was and the remarkable achievements of Frank and Lawrence Oates remain an inspiration to us all.”

Vice-Chair

Mark Patterson

Mark Patterson is a senior boardroom advisor with a banking and legal background and holds a number of non-executive directorships and trustee roles. He started his career as a solicitor with Slaughter and May before moving into banking with Deutsche Bank and Standard Chartered Bank. Mark graduated from Oxford University. He is a Trustee of Safe Child Thailand where he chairs the finance committee and is a former Trustee of Article 25, the humanitarian architecture charity.

Chris Carter CMLI  DipLA

Chris Carter is a landscape architect, garden designer and plantsman, a lifelong disciple of Gilbert White and since 2013 a trustee of Gilbert White’s House and Garden. His work has covered a very wide range of landscape design, mostly in a rural context, from the largest scale such as power stations and reservoirs to complex historic landscapes and intimate garden spaces; from masterplan strategies to detailed design and construction proposals.  Chris sees our fundamental purpose to be to inspire and encourage our visitors of all ages to ‘watch narrowly’ their immediate surroundings and understand the interdependency of all parts of our environment.

Paul Cluett

After a Shell career of over 40 years in the UK, Middle East and Russia mainly in the Aviation business Paul retired 5 years ago. He is currently District Chairman of Bramshill Scouts in N.E. Hampshire, Treasurer of Hook Local History Group and an active member of his local Odiham and Hook Rotary Club. His interests are history, walking, cricket, travel and theatre. He has been a Trustee of the unique Gilbert White's House & Gardens for 3 years and is keen to help it develop, sustainably grow and continue to be a centre of education.

Yinnon Ezra MBE MA FRSA

After working in local Government and the voluntary sector for 37 years, 23 of which have been at Chief Officer Level in three local authorities, Yinnon Ezra MBE MA FRSA has completed over a year as National Advisor on Public Libraries with the Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS), in February 2014 he finished a six-year term as a National Trustee for the Heritage Memorial Fund/Heritage Lottery Fund. He is Chair of the Test Valley Arts Foundation and has just stepped down after ten years as a Trustee & Vice-Chair of the Hampshire Cultural Trust. The Trust delivers Hampshire County Council and Winchester City Councils Museums & Arts Service. He has also served as a member of the Theatre Royal Winchester Board and was the South East Regional Ambassador for the Princes Trust. Through the Chief Officer posts, he has held in the London Borough of Ealing, Kent County Council and as Director of Culture, Communities and Rural Affairs for Hampshire County Council he has always been at the forefront of local government advocating the transformational power of Culture in re-generating communities. In Kent this was expressed through his early leadership of the Turner Centre project in Margate (now Turner Contemporary) and latterly in Hampshire re-invigorated libraries through the pioneering “Discovery Centre” programme. His energetic, innovative, radical and inspiring solutions to delivering Cultural Services with a strong customer focus are seen as best practice. He was an Advisor to the Local Government Association (LGA) throughout his Chief Officer local government career. He was a Member of the Board of the Museums Libraries and Archives Council, the South East Regional Board of the Arts Council and the South East Cultural Consortium, he is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts & Business. As a member of The Society of Local Government Chief Executives He Chaired a national “Master Class” on the Future of Cultural Services. He started his career in a voluntary organisation as a Community Worker in Race Equality and has always been an advocate of the innovative power of the sector. He continues to write extensively on these and other issues. In the New Year Honours of 2008, he was awarded the MBE for services to local government. He is married to Ruth an Artist; they have two children and a granddaughter of thirteen. They live in Broughton near Stockbridge in Hampshire.

Philip Geddes

Philip Geddes has been a Trustee of Gilbert White's House & Gardens since 2010. A writer, broadcaster and journalist, his particular interest has been in the marketing and promotion of the Museum and its messages. He has also been closely involved in writing and producing  new exhibitions and displays at the Museum, in particular the new displays on Captain Oates (2012) and Frank Oates (2017).  He has also been involved in organising preparations to celebrate the 300^th anniversary of the birth of Rev Gilbert White in 2020

Dominic Jones

Dominic is currently the Chief Executive of the Mary Rose Trust and prior to that was its Chief Operating Office. He is also a Director of Portsmouth Historic Dockyard and prior to that has worked at various roles for Merlin Entertainments including Divisional Director Thorpe Park and Regional General Manager for Merlin Midway across Europe. He worked for Aspro as a Park Director of Oakwood Theme Park and also spent a decade in various role at Virgin Atlantic including Vice President EMEA  and Regional Vice President APAC and began his career at Disney working at Walt Disney World Florida. He is Chair of Christchurch Round Table and Vice Chair of the Governors of the Priory School Christchurch he enjoys nothing more than bringing his young family to Selbourne and to Gilbert Whites and challenges them to “Be More Gilbert” whenever they can.

Lizi Moorcraft

Lizi is the Director of Finance at Winchester Science Centre, an educational charity looking to spark curiosity in STEM for young people. Her background is in charity and not for profit finance, having previously worked for The Society of St James and the University of Southampton. Outside of work she is a keen runner and gardener and enjoys volunteering for Girlguiding UK.

Rupert Nabarro

Rupert is an economist known extensively for his work in real estate, investment analysis, urban renewal and economic development. In 1985 he founded the Investment Property Databank (IPD), which is the major provider of property information, indexes, and benchmarks round the world. Prior to this he worked in the areas of urban renewal and local economic development. A keen gardener and supporter of the arts, commissioning early works from Andy Goldsworthy and others, he was founding Chair of Common Ground and a Trustee of Winchester Poetry Festival. Rupert was a long-standing trustee of Common Ground and has organised arts exhibitions and festivals in his local area

Professor Paul Rodhouse BSc (Hons), MSc, PhD, DSc, FLS, FMBA

Paul Rodhouse lived in Hampshire as a youngster and there he developed his interests in natural history and art. After completing a PhD in biological oceanography he held scientific positions in Ireland and New York, and then joined the British Antarctic Survey as a research scientist and later head of biological sciences and board member. He is now a BAS emeritus fellow and a member of the South Georgia Association executive committee. He is president of the Cambridge Drawing Society and he paints the Antarctic and other marine subjects in his Cambridge studio. As a Trustee at Gilbert White’s House and Gardens he has worked to build the Oates Collection and associated interpretation material. He is currently planning a garden display of ‘living fossil’ plants, descendants of Antarctic Cretaceous flora, from a time when the Antarctic was much warmer than it is today.

Liz Wallace

Liz Wallace has a particular interest in talent and leadership development, ensuring people have the opportunity to achieve their potential across both the commercial and charity sectors. She was Director of Talent & Leadership for the BT Group and Head of Talent for Vodafone’s emerging markets where she worked in Africa, Asia and the Middle East to identify and develop the future leaders of the business.

She has extensive experience as a Trustee of charity boards which she has developed over the last 14 years. She is currently Deputy Chair of Enham Trust, a disability charity that provides services to over 6,500 disabled people each year. She was previously Vice Chair of the Board of Naomi House and Jacks Place, a hospice for children and young adults and Chair of their Remuneration Committee and a Trustee at Winchester Science Centre, as well as Chair of the Remuneration Committee, in both cases completing the maximum term allowed under Charity Commission rules.  In addition she is Chair of Newbury Choral Society which she has led for the last 10 years. Apart from singing she loves spending time in her garden and is a keen walker.