Our Board

Lord Boateng has a long-standing commitment to development in Africa. As the UK Prime Minister’s Special Representative he was instrumental in Gordon Brown’s work to deliver the Africa Commission report in 2005, which included advocating increased support for Africa’s development. He was High Commissioner to South Africa from 2005-2009 and is today involved in a wide range of charitable and business organisations working to realise the potential of Africa.

Lord Boateng was born in London but spent much of his childhood in Ghana. He read law at the University of Bristol and began his career in civil rights. He was a member of UK Parliament from 1987-2005, Minister of State for the Home Office (1998-2001) and became the UK’s first black Cabinet Minister in May 2002, when he was appointed as Chief Secretary to the Treasury (2002-2005). He became Chair of Book Aid International in June 2014.

Nick Allen is a geographer and Fellow of Sidney Sussex College at the University of Cambridge. He has extensive experience of the corporate and the charity sectors and has worked in both Africa and Latin America. From 2008 to 2018, he was the Bursar of Sidney Sussex College. While there he was also a Director at the Royal Society Ltd and the Cambridge Business Improvement District. Prior to this, Nick worked for Unilever in roles in finance, risk management and general management. During this time he spent 10 years working with businesses is Africa. In his last two roles at Unilever, he was the UK’s Chief Finance Officer and the Managing Director of Unilever’s Corporate Venturing & Innovation Group. Nick is a member of the Finance, Risk & Audit Committee of Farm Africa.

Pam is a professional librarian and has been a lifelong champion of school libraries and librarians. For 23 years she managed the London Borough of Islington’s Education Library Service and Pam currently teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses on children’s literature at London Metropolitan University. She is Chair of the Akili Trust, a small charity supporting educational development in rural Kenya and also Chair of IBBY UK (International Board on Books for Young People). Pam joined the Book Aid International Board of Trustees in September 2015.

Rosie is currently a Civil Service Commissioner and Chair, Publisher Licensing Services and co-Chair of the Copyright Licensing Agency. She also chairs a Research Ethics Committee (NHS Health Research Authority) and is Council Member, General Optical Council, and previously held board roles at the Food Standards Agency, Public Health England and in NHS bodies. Rosie has a background in publishing, sales and marketing and worked for Dr Foster (health data), News UK (The Times and The Sunday Times), Macmillan and Oxford University Press. She has travelled and worked in Africa and Asia.

Charly has over 40 years’ experience of warehousing, supply chain, systems and inventory management in the publishing industry. He spent 15 years at Cambridge University Press as Distribution Director working predominantly in the UK but also spent considerable time working at their other operations in the US, South Africa, Brazil and Australia. Most recently Charly was with John Wiley & Sons where he was appointed Vice President, Global Supply Chain. In this role he was responsible for over 300 staff involved in the global warehousing, distribution and inventory management of all book and journal products in print. Today, Charly heads up an independent global consultancy focussing on supply chain optimisation where he uses his extensive experience of delivering significant and sustainable improvements across local, regional and global supply chains to help clients understand their particular issues and develop and agree practical, cost-effective and sustainable solutions.

Currently International Director at Hodder Education, Robert has 30 years’ experience of the publishing industry, over 25 of which have been in international educational publishing with a particular focus on African markets. This has included stints at publishing houses in Botswana and South Africa, where he helped develop a list of titles for South Africa’s first post-apartheid school curriculum. Robert is a Member of the International Board of the UK Publishers’ Association and served a three year term as an elected councillor at Reading Borough Council between 1992 and 1995. Robert joined the Book Aid International Board of Trustees in May 2015.