The Impetus board is composed of nine highly experienced trustees, who have backgrounds in the private and voluntary sectors. Trustees include the co-founders of Impetus Trust, Stephen Dawson & Nat Sloane. In addition there are a number of committees that serve the board.
Louis G. Elson, Chairman
Louis G. Elson is the Managing Partner of Palamon Capital Partners, a private equity firm he co-founded in 1999. He has been an active member of the European private equity industry for almost twenty years, previously as a Partner of Warburg Pincus. He is a member of the Research Advisory Board of the British Venture Capital Association. He serves on the Development Board of The Prince's Trust and is a Trustee of the Hobson Foundation for Classical Studies.
Nat Sloane, Vice Chair
Nat Sloane is the co-founder and Vice Chair of Impetus Trust. A successful entrepreneur, venture capitalist, management consultant and social investor, he brings a wealth of experience to the role. Prior to Impetus, Nat was a partner in Accenture, where he also chaired their UK charitable foundation, and was vice chairman of Crime Concern. He is currently the England Committee Chair of the Big Lottery Fund, an independent member of the Bridges Social Enterprise Fund investment Committee and a member of the Social Finance Social Impact Advisory Board. Nat has established three private businesses in the UK and the US.
Marc Boughton
Marc is a Managing Partner and Board Director of CVC Capital Partners Group, and CEO and founder of CVC Credit Partners: an affiliated global credit manager with assets under management of $7.9bn. Marc has been a Board member of CVC's portfolio companies including Wavin, Acordis, Flint, Trench, Amatek and Building & Property. Marc is also Vice Chairman of CVC's Charitable Foundation and responsible for CVC's Philanthropy programme "Connecting CVC and the Community". Prior to CVC, Marc spent five years at both Electra Partners and Deloitte Haskins & Sells (now PricewaterhouseCoopers) where, as a chartered accountant, he specialised in corporate recovery and investigations.
Stephen Dawson OBE
One of the first venture capitalists in the UK with 30 years' board level experience as chairman, chief executive and director, Stephen has been involved for 25 years with ECI, a venture capital company specialising in mid-market buy-outs, where he is now non-executive chairman. He was until recently chairman of Ovum PLC. Stephen co-founded Impetus and was a founder trustee of the European Venture Philanthropy Association (EVPA). He is co-founder and chairman of Jacana Venture Partnership which aims to tackle poverty in Africa by helping build a venture capital industry. Stephen was named the Personality of the Year at the Private Equity Awards in April 2007. Stephen was awarded an OBE "for services to the Voluntary Sector" in 2010. In February 2013, Stephen received the Beacon Award for Pioneering Philanthropy.
Craig Dearden-Phillips MBE
Craig is the Founding CEO of Stepping Out, a new venture helping public services to become a social enterprise. A serial social entrepreneur, Craig is the Founding Chair of the UK disability social enterprise Speaking Up (now VoiceAbility) and is co-founder of five smaller civil society organisations. Craig is the author of a best-selling business book for social entrepreneurs and is a regularly columnist for The Guardian and Third Sector magazine. Craig has an MBA and is a Fellow of the Centre for Welfare Reform and a Visiting Fellow of Ashcroft International Business School. He is also a School Governor, a Committee member of Communitybuilders and a Founding Trustee of the new Southgate Partnership Development Trust in his community. An elected Councillor, Craig serves as the Liberal Democrat Spokesman for Communities on Suffolk County Council.
Amelia Fitzalan Howard
Amelia Fitzalan Howard spent the first part of her career in the art world at Christie's where she worked for nine years. She then left Christie's to move to the voluntary sector and started work with School-Home Support in 1995, becoming CEO in 1998. In 2005, Amelia moved to The Henry Smith Charity, a UK grant maker which distributes c £25m per annum, where she is Head of Grants. Amelia also sits as a Magistrate in East London and is a Trustee of Andrews Charitable Trust.
Andy Hinton
Andy is co-founder of Ailsa3 Ventures Ltd, a small privately funded, private equity investment vehicle set up in 2003. He led the management buy-in of White Rose Environmental Ltd and prior to that Andy held a variety of senior corporate roles in the environment sector, including Board Director of Yorkshire Water. Andy is the Chairman of the Impetus - Sutton Early Years Initiative Steering Group.
Ian Meakins
Ian Meakins is Group Chief Executive of Wolseley. Prior to this he was Chief Executive Officer at Travelex and before this Chief Executive Officer of Alliance UniChem plc until its merger with Boots in July 2006. He was previously President, European Major Markets and Global Supply for Diageo plc.
Chris Underhill MBE
Chris is Founding Director of the charity BasicNeeds, which works with mentally ill people in eight countries in the third world. Prior to this he founded and directed two other charities, Thrive (formerly Horticulture Therapy) and Action on Disability and Development (ADD). In 2000 he was awarded an MBE for his work in disability. In 2012 he was elected as a Senior Ashoka Fellow.
Our thanks go to past Impetus trustees for their contributions: Adrian Beecroft, Nicholas Colloff, Guy Dawson, Stephen Lambert, Chris Mathias, Julia Middleton, Doug Miller, Shaks Ghosh and Michael Webber.
Read more about the Impetus committees.
The engagement with Impetus is very rewarding on a number of levels. It has helped to broaden our awareness and understanding of critical social issues and the impact that organisations such as Impetus can make.
Wol Kolade
Managing Partner, ISIS Equity Partners, Impetus corporate donor
