Board of Trustees


Kimberly Gire - Chair of Trustees

Kimberly Gire

Kimberly Gire is a Special Advisor – Innovative Finance and the Founder of Global Women Leaders Strategic Philanthropy. A career banking and finance senior executive and private investor, she was previously the CFO for the retail, business and private banking divisions of Westpac Banking Corporation and has worked extensively in the international capital markets with Citi.  As a strategic philanthropist, Kimberly donates her professional skills and experience in capital markets, treasury, structured finance and philanthropy to support humanitarian, development and conservation organisations, including as a pro bono Special Advisor to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), The World Bank, UNICEF, Swisscross Foundation, The Centre for Disaster Protection, the Luc Hoffmann Institute and the Education Outcomes Fund for Middle East and Africa. A native Southern Californian and dual American-Australian citizen, she received a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology with a specialisation in Business Administration from the University of California at Los Angeles, and a Graduate Diploma in Japanese from Macquarie University in Sydney. Kimberly has served as Chair of the Board of Trustees for CGE since June 2020.


Shelley Gregory-Jones - Vice Chair of Trustees

Shelley Gregory-Jones

Shelley has spent most of her career in the not for profit and education sectors in the UK. Before joining the Sixteen as Development Director, she held a similar role at the PHG Foundation which brings together public health and genomics. Her previous experience also includes several years as the CEO of CamSight – the local charity for visually impaired people living in Cambridge, and Strategy Director of London-based environmental charity Global Action Plan. She has an MBA from the Judge Business School and a degree in Philosophy from Girton College, Cambridge. Shelley has been the Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees for the Centre for Global Equality since September 2014.


Sadia Cuthbert - Treasurer

Sadia Cuthbert

Sadia Cuthbert is the Head of MBA Business Development & Projects at the University of Cambridge's Judge Business School (CJBS) since 2014.  She works closely with external business partners to develop meaningful collaborations for the MBA programme. Prior to joining CJBS, Sadia worked in the City as a stockbroker with HSBC and Merrill Lynch for ten years. She also has development management experience from her initial years as a development consultant in South Asia. She has an MSc in Econometrics from the London School of Economics and a degree in Economics and Mathematics from the University of Sussex.


Alex Patto

Alex Patto

Alex Patto is the Member representative for the CGE Board of Trustees. Alex is a Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Fellow, and Borysiewicz Biomedical Sciences Fellow in Jeremy Baumberg’s lab in the department of physics, at the University of Cambridge. His research focuses on developing low-cost methods of identifying bacterial contamination for use in low-resource settings. Alex is also the CEO of WaterScope, a not-for-profit company through which his research has a clear route to impact. To date, WaterScope has raised over £130,000 and completed their first field trial in one of the largest refugee camps in the modern world.


Howard Griffiths

Howard Griffiths

Prof Howard Griffiths is Professor of Plant Ecology in the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Cambridge.  A Fellow of Clare College, he serves as Co-Chair of Cambridge Global Food Security Interdisciplinary Research Centre and with the Strategic Advisory Group for the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF), as well as the advisor to the Vice Chancellor on the University’s strategic relationship with India. Howard is the Principal Investigator of two consortium research projects in which CGE is a delivery partner, TIGR2ESS and MillNET_i, that are investigating challenges relating to sustainable agriculture and food security in India, Ethiopia, and The Gambia.


Ian Steed

Ian Steed

Ian is a consultant in the international humanitarian sector, focusing on supporting organisations to move beyond top-down aid to localise humanitarian and development action. He specialises in working with volunteer-based organisations overseas and in the UK, working regularly with the world Red Cross Red Crescent Movement. Ian has been a trustee of two charities, and was Director of the Humanitarian Centre from 2006 - 2011.