Weymouth and Kingston Maurward College Corporation Membership

Kate Wills

Principal and CEO

Steve Webb – Chair of the Corporation

Steve Webb is semi-retired. He has a degree in Applied Science and a Diploma in Management. He joined the Weymouth College Board in 2012 and has recently given support to Outreach International, a business placing gap/career break individuals throughout the world. Steve’s hobbies include music, theatre, rugby and walking, as well as renovating old properties.

Robert Lasseter – Vice Chair of the Corporation

Robert Lasseter is the managing partner of the family business Corton Farm Partnership.  The farm has high welfare pig and arable enterprises.  Business interests currently being developed are renewable energy and carbon sequestration.  The business is on its journey to net zero.

Previously Robert was a partner at Strutt and Parker and then Director of Evershot Farms.  He has held non executive roles at Childhay Manor, Wessex Grain, NFU (Regional Chair, National Governance and Crops,) Oxford Farming Conference and AHDB (Cereals.)  He is currently also on the Dorset AONB Board and a member at the Dorset Studio School.

Robert is married to Holly who runs Holly Lasseter Designs from her studio at Corton.  Their daughter Matilda works as an interior designer in London.  Their son Archie is the sustainability lead for Utilita.

Away from home, these days Robert is happiest in mountains or crossing the UK on foot, which he has done three times to date.

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Richard Barker

A retail professional with extensive senior management experience in sales, marketing and change management.

Richard has been a director of Waterstone’s Booksellers, Managing Director of Blackwell Retail Ltd and General Manager of the Post Office Network.

Other posts held include Chairman of Book Tokens Ltd, and Chair of Governors at Stanchester Academy.

Richard is now owner and Managing Director of Dorset Retail Ltd, with shops in Bridport, Beaminster and Sherborne, and a growing wholesale business covering Dorset and Somerset.

Richard is a season ticket holder at Exeter Chiefs, and fanatical about English cricket.

John Bullen – Chair of the Estate Committee

Having completed a 30 year career in civil engineering and airport management, John ran his own business carrying out project management, interim leadership roles and business/career/leadership mentoring.

He has worked on major projects such as Heathrow Terminal 5 and has led large operational teams, including budgetary accountability.  John acted as a crisis leader at Heathrow at times of operational disruption.

He maintained an active interest in safety and workforce development throughout his career.

John was pro bono chair for the 10 years of its existence of a not-for-profit employment and workforce training intermediary.

More recently, John’s mentoring experience has included working with Dorset SMEs and in the charity sector, as well as with students taking the Chartered Management Apprenticeship at Portsmouth University. He has, in the past, been accredited as a youth coach for both cricket and rugby.

John has distant family connections in farming and now has a keen interest in how KMC can stay ‘ahead of the curve’ in this fast-changing sector.

John and his wife, Dawn, have lived in the New Forest since 1995, where they have brought up their 3 children.

John enjoys golf, gardening and walking the dog.

Geoff Channon

Geoff brings extensive senior leadership experience in a large UK university. He has worked on or led higher education projects in the UK and abroad, including those for the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA). He also has experience as a vice-chair of a city further education college. Geoff has published books and articles on nineteenth UK and US economic and business history.

Hannah Crocker – Staff Governor

Rod Davis

Initially joining the Board in 2017, Rod brings experience in Apprenticeships and he is Chair of the local Training Providers’ Network.

Christopher Evans

Date of Appointment – 12/07/2022 – 11/07/2026

Chris’s last 10 years in Financial Services were spent developing and providing retirement income services for people with health conditions. Before moving to Dorset – Chaired a regional charity supporting young people with learning difficulties.

Jacqui Gerrard

Date of Appointment – 11/07/2017 – 10/07/2021 &  8/10/2022 – 7/10/2026 2nd term

Jacqui was appointed in 2018 as an Associate Member after moving to live in Weymouth, and took up full membership in March 2019. Jacqui has extensive organisational development and strategic HR experience working in executive director and consultancy roles in commercial technology and telecommunications companies and in central government organisations and NHS Trusts. She has previously been a Governor and Chair of a Sixth Form College in Surrey. During her time as Chair, the college merged with an FE college to increase the range of study pathways available to local students.

Tracy Goralczyh

Date of Appointment – November 7th 2023

Student Member

Dawn Harvey

Date of Appointment – 26/02/24

Dawn is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and a graduate of the University of Kent.

She has enjoyed a 30-year career spanning the private and public sector and held senior leadership positions in sales and operations as well as HR and Learning and Organisation Development and is an executive coach and mentor.  She joined the NHS in 2011 and since then has led a range of award-winning staff experience improvements as well as major change and transformation.

Dawn relocated to Dorset in April 2021 and loves to run, walk, cycle and swim, making the most of the fabulous coast and countryside.

Tim Hulme

Date of Appointment – 07/11/23 – 07/1127

Tim’s career includes senior leadership roles in the private, public and charity sectors within the pharmaceutical, education and licensed retail sectors.

Tim has been a senior post-holder in 3 large multi-site Colleges across London and the South-East specialising in the delivery of large capital projects and, as a former adviser to the Learning & Skills Council, Tim’s track record includes the delivery of post-merger College transformation.

Tim’s current role is Head of Assets at Dorset Council leading a large multi-disciplinary team responsible for the management of £400m of assets. Tim divides his time between his home in Kent and his role for Dorset Council and spends his relaxation time as a landscape painter.

Dan Knight – Chair of Audit & Assurance Committee

Having grown up on a dairy farm on the Dorset/Somerset border, Dan spent a number of years working in agriculture before becoming a Chartered Accountant and a Chartered Tax Adviser. Harnessing both his practical and professional experience, Dan has spent the last 15 years advising farming businesses across the region on a wide range of issues.

Passionate about his work, Dan specialises in succession planning and restructuring, helping farming families to implement change, accomplish their ambition and enhance the legacy for future generations.

Dan is a keen shot in the field or facing the trap and thoroughly enjoys supporting his young son on the football field.

Graham Ledden – Chair of Finance & Resources Committee

A retired Chartered Accountant who spent the last ten years of his career in education, nine of which were as Vice Principal Business and Finance and Deputy CEO at Hartpury College.

Graham qualified in the City with what is now Ernst and Young and then spent a major part of his career in the Nat West Group. After 6 years as a Finance Director in the care sector, Graham moved into education in 2008.

Graham and his wife moved to Shaftesbury in 2018.  He enjoys rugby, walking, fly fishing and the countryside in general. He is also Treasurer of England Colleges RFU.

Anne Munro

Date of Appointment – February 2023

Anne is a  Learning Facilitator in the School of Construction.  She joined the College in September after many years working with HE Students, mostly teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) at a university in southwest France and 13 years in Italy as an EFL teacher and including 15 years as an EFL Lecturer & Programme Manager at the University of Plymouth.

Angela Neuberger

Date of Appointment – 01/04/2021 – 31/03/2025

Angela’s professional life was in television – working for many years for the BBC, first in current affairs and later documentaries. Angela ran the BBC’s Crimewatch UK. Angela left the BBC to become an independent executive producer and has produced 75 video biographies of trailblazing women to mark the 100th anniversary of the moment women were first allowed to become lawyers. Angela has edited several books and written a history of women in the 20th century.

Nicola Newman

Nicola has Non-Executive Director, CEO and Executive Director level experience in leadership, governance, strategic communications – including crisis planning and managing – and marketing, for charities, multinationals, small and medium sized enterprises, national governing bodies of sport, and government. Most of her career has been in the education and sport sectors. She has previously owned an executive search consultancy and a public relations and events business. Nicola is currently a Dorset Chamber of Commerce Board Member, a Dorset Local Enterprise Partnership Board Member and a member of the Dorset Skills Advisory Panel and Board – all voluntary. Her paid work includes supporting a Dorset based, UK wide, health and wellbeing business.

Kay Taylor – Chair of Quality & Standards Committee

Retired in 2019 from the post of Executive Principal of the Minerva Learning Trust – a group of primary and secondary schools in Bridport.  She had previously been the Headteacher of the Sir John Colfox Academy in Bridport.

Originally from Northern Ireland, she graduated from the University of Aberdeen and taught History in Gairloch, Scotland, Hemel Hempstead and Milton Keynes before moving to Bridport to take up a Deputy Head post in 1993.

She is also a Lay Member of the Dorset Clinical Commissioning Group Governing Body.

Alison Lydon

Governance Director

Date of Appointment – 01/07/2023

Alison moved down from the Midlands having worked as Director of Governance  at Queen Alexandra College for a number of years and as Company Secretary at SEMTA and Toyota UK prior to that.  She is Chartered Company Secretary and has completed both FE Governance and school governance qualifications in addition to this, as well as spending a time as a governor of her local college.

A Register of Interests covering all board members and key staff is maintained by the Clerk in accordance with the Instrument of Government and is available for inspection on request to  Alison_Lydon@weymouth.ac.uk