Mayor's Cultural Leadership Board

Chair – Moira Sinclair OBE

Moira Sinclair is Chief Executive of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, an independent grant maker whose vision is for a just society in which everyone can realise their full potential and enjoy fulfilling and creative lives. Moira is also Chair of Clore Leadership and former Chair of East London Dance. She is also a member of the British Library Advisory Council and the Investment Committee for the Arts & Culture Impact Fund. In late 2021, she became a Visiting Leadership Fellow at Exeter University Centre for Leadership. 

Previously Moira was Executive Director for London and the South East at Arts Council England and Director of Vital Arts, an arts and health charity. She has also worked in local government, and in theatre and production management.

Vice Chair - Amanda Parker

Amanda Parker's career spans screen, broadcast, arts and culture - including Director, London Short Film Festival and Editor of Arts Professional magazine. Parker founded Inc Arts UK, which from 2019 – 2022 led national advocacy representing the UK’s ethnically diverse arts sector workforce, producing sector-leading research and EDI solutions for creative and cultural organisations. A former BBC programme maker and arts campaigns manager, Amanda served on the London Government Task Force Covid-19 Arts and Culture Strategy Group, and was a London advisor for the Government Arts Collection Committee. She’s a Trustee of the RSC, and advisor to the UK Coalition for Cultural Diversity 

Justine Simons OBE

Justine Simons is Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries. She has played a central role in the cultural transformation of London for two decades. She was awarded an OBE in 2015 by HRH Queen Elizabeth II for Services to Culture in London.

Justine founded and is Chair of the World Cities Culture Forum – the principle leadership network on culture and the future of cities, now grown to over 40 global cities reaching across six continents. She led the capital’s biggest ever festival for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games and is now overseeing its legacy, East Bank, in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

Justine shapes London’s Investment Strategy for culture and the creative industries.  She has designed new policy innovations including the world’s first Creative Enterprise Zones, established a new Culture and Community Spaces at Risk Office, the London Borough of Culture and hardwired culture into London’s planning system with the first Cultural Infrastructure Plan. 

Justine established the Fourth Plinth as the UK’s biggest public sculpture prize, is co-chair of London’s Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm and chaired the Mayor’s Suffrage Statue Commission placing the first statue of a woman in Parliament Square, suffrage campaigner Millicent Fawcett. She positioned culture at the heart of the Let’s Do London recovery campaign, attracting 800,000 visitors and bringing London back to life post pandemic.

Amaarah Roze

Amaarah Roze is an international facilitator, performer, producer and public speaker. At 22 years old, she has supported over 1000 young people to develop their skills and celebrate their talents - on stage and off. She started producing and hosting Standards, an evening of art, conversation and celebration, that brings artists and community together when she was 18 years old. Starting at The Albany, it has gone on to be programmed by Fuel and the Wellcome Collection.

Amaarah creates work that explores identity, honesty and empowerment and is an associate artist with theatre company Sounds Like Chaos. 

Ajay Chhabra

Ajay Chhabra is an actor and co-founder of award winning Nutkhut, an arts, technology and environmental company. He regularly appears on television, radio, film, theatre and in major outdoor live productions. Prior to working in the arts sector, he worked in senior management positions in the Hospitality and Tourism Sector. 

Alice Black

Prior to founding ArtULTRA, an online platform enabling emerging artists to thrive, Alice led the Design Museum in London for 12 years. She oversaw the project to renovate the former Commonwealth Institute in Kensington into an award-winning new home for the museum. Alice is a member of the British Library Advisory Committee and now a Governor of the Museum of London, having been put forward as a candidate by the Mayor last year.   

Amy Lamé

Amy Lamé, originally from New Jersey, arrived in London in 1992. Her first job was in a late night café-bar on the edge of Soho. She is now London’s first Night Czar. She is co-founder of the Olivier Award winning arts company and club night Duckie, and has hosted the club every Saturday at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern for 21 years. She also DJs at various club nights across the capital.

Bernard Donoghue OBE

Bernard Donoghue is the Director and CEO of the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions of the UK (ALVA).  He is Co-Chair of the London Tourism Recovery Board, which commissioned the award-winning 'Let's Do London' tourism campaign, and is Co-Chair of the Tourism Advisory Board of London and Partners. He was Chair of LIFT, the award-winning London International Festival of Theatre between 2010 and 2021, and was a board member from 2005. In 2020 he was named by Blooloop as one of the world’s 50 most influential people in museums, and in July 2021 won the public vote for the COVID Special Recognition Award from the UK Museums and Heritage Awards for his service to, and leadership of the museums and heritage sector in the UK during the pandemic. 

Claire Whitaker OBE

Claire Whitaker CBE is CEO of Southampton Culture Trust and a former Director of live music producers, Serious and the EFG London Jazz Festival. Her track record as a cultural producer, having created work all over the UK, as well as Africa, the Caribbean and Europe, is matched by her skills in strategy, business planning, finance, governance, communications, entrepreneurship, diversity, and partnership working. She was an independent board member of DCMS Culture Recovery Fund.

Deborah Williams 

Since 2016, Deborah has been the Chief Executive of Creative Diversity Network, the membership body funded by the UK’s major broadcasters and production community. Its aims are to support the UK television industry to promote, celebrate and share good practice around the diversity agenda. With over 30 years’ experience working above and below the line in television, film and theatre, as well as policy development across the wider creative and cultural industries. She is the architect and designer of the BFI Diversity standards that were adopted by The Oscars and BAFTA in 2020. In 2019 she was awarded the Lifetime Achievement award from Inclusive Companies for her body of work in the area of diversity and culture. She is a Disabled Powerlister 2018, 2019 & 2022.  

Cllr Elizabeth Campbell

Cllr Elizabeth Campbell was elected Leader of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in July 2017, in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tragedy. She has been a councillor since 2006 and previously served as Cabinet Member for Family & Children’s Services and Education & Libraries. Elizabeth was London Councils’ portfolio holder for Schools & Children’s Services from 2020 to 2021 and now serves as the Lead for Business, Economy & Culture. Elizabeth has taken a leading role in a number of local government networks, identifying strategic actions to support the capital’s economic recovery and future growth. She was Chair of Central London Forward 2020-2022.

Jennifer Crook

Jennifer was Director of the UK-India Year of Culture 2017 for British Council. For the past 15 years, she has produced high profile and critically acclaimed projects in public spaces world-wide for organisations including Burning Man, Artichoke, Glastonbury Festival, London 2012 Festival, 14-18 NOW and the National Theatre, working with artists including Luke Jerram, Tim Etchells and Krzysztof Wodiczko.

Dr. Jo Twist OBE

Jo is CEO of Ukie, the trade body for UK games and interactive entertainment, making the UK the best place in the world to make games. Previously, Jo was Channel 4 Education Commissioning Editor where she commissioned Digital Emmy-winning Battlefront II, free to play browser and iOS games and social media projects.

John Newbigin OBE

John Newbigin OBE, is a member of the LEAP Board. He is the co-founder and Chair of Creative England and chairs the ‘Regions and Clusters’ working group of the Creative Industries Council. He was a youth worker in Brixton and East London for 10 years before working in the film industry and at Channel 4.

Madani Younis

Madani is Executive Producer at The Shed, New York, and was previously the Artistic Director of the Bush Theatre from 2012 to 2018. He programmed the company’s most successful season to date and oversaw the successful £4.3 million redevelopment of the Bush Theatre.

Nigel Twumasi

Nigel Twumasi is the co-founder of Mayamada, an independent brand that operates across comics, video games and youth engagement. A keen advocate for diversity within the creative industries, Nigel has spoken at events, on radio and on television about the subject as he delivers creative workshops with young people across the country.

Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, he worked in the tech sector as a software engineer. 

Sade Banks-Tubi

Sade Banks-Tubi is a Disrupter, a Dreamer and a Doer who believes that power can and should be dismantled with kindness and radical generosity. Sade is currently the co-director of the social justice consultancy, The What If Experiment, where she creates strategies that build cultures of belonging across the creative and cultural sectors.  
What If... is an evolution of Sour Lemons, the award winning charity that Sade founded in 2016 to address the lack of diversity in creative leadership based on her own experiences of exclusion and othering within the industry. 

Stuart Hobley

Stuart Hobley is the Director of The Linbury Trust, an independent grantmaking foundation supporting not-for-profit organisations across the UK and overseas. The Trust funds public engagement in culture, as well as work to support people experiencing disadvantage and inequality, including homelessness, refugees, and asylum seekers. Stuart previously worked for the National Lottery Heritage Fund, most recently as the Area Director for London and the South of England. He has been on the judging panel for the BAFTA Video Games Awards as well as helping to decide the Kids in Museums prestigious Family Friendly Museum of the Year award. 

Sharon Ament

Sharon Ament is Director of the Museum of London, and is currently leading the process of creating a new museum for London in West Smithfield due to open in 2026. Sharon joined the Museum of London in 2012 steering the next phase of the organisation’s development to reflect the energy and dynamism of London itself. Sharon teaches, advises and presents internationally; and together with partners including the Barbican Centre, Guildhall School of Music and Drama and City of London Corporation is nurturing the development of Smithfield as a new cultural destination. She is the Chair of the London Screen Archives and Co-Chair of the Women Leaders in Museums Network, a member of the Worshipful Company of Bakers, a Noyce Leadership Fellow, and on the Conseil Scientifique of Universcience in Paris and the International Advisory Board of the ArtScience Museum in Singapore. In 2021, Sharon was awarded the Freedom of the City of London.

Pam Alexander OBE (1954 – 2023)

With great sadness we share the news of the passing of our Board member Pam Alexander OBE.  A member of the Mayor’s Cultural Leadership Board since 2018, Pam was a brilliant human being and offered great counsel on how best to use places and spaces. Her insights on the importance of heritage and the positive impact planning can have on culture and the creative industries helped shape the Mayor’s Culture Strategy. She will be missed. 

Pam was a board member of London Legacy Development Corporation, the Connected Places Catapult and Chair of Commonplace. She was on the Advisory board of the London Festival of Architecture. Pam previously chaired Covent Garden Market Authority and the Nine Elms Cultural Steering Group, was a Trustee of the Design Council and a non-executive Director of Crest Nicholson Plc and Crossrail Ltd.