Our Board

Alistair has been a governor of Bohunt School since 2008 was Chair for 6 years and is Vice Chair of Bohunt Educational Trust.

He joined RFEA as Chief Executive in January 2019 and became Chief Executive of the Forces Employment Charity following the combination with the Officers’ Association employment services in May 2022. The charity supports over 22,000 Service leavers, veterans reservists and spouses each year.

A veteran of the Royal Navy, Alistair has worked in corporate business, government and the voluntary sectors, with extensive experience in media communications, strategy, change and business development. He has had high-level Corporate Communications experience in government, advised many charities, ran Raytheon’s training business, and commanded three warships. At BFBS he set up and ran the acclaimed Forces Media Academy.

He is Vice Chair of Cobseo and chairs the Cobseo Employment Cluster of 25 employment charities and sits on the Veterans Employer Group and Veterans Advisory Board.

Prior to Raytheon, Alistair served in the Royal Navy for over 32 years where he commanded 3 warships. He was Military Assistant to the Chief of Defence Logistics before becoming Director Defence Public Relations, managing RN, Army, RAF and Defence media communications. His final MOD post was Head of Reserve Forces and Cadets, responsible for tri-service policy for all Reservists, implementing the Reserves Review.

He is a graduate of Reading University, Manchester Business School and the Joint Service Defence College at Greenwich

Jean Sanderson has been a Trustee at BET for over 6 years.  In addition to the full Board, she sits on the Finance Committee and Audit and Risk Committee. Her background in holding senior positions in public, private and government roles, coupled with a deep understanding of regulation, risk, finance, governance and strategy, allows her to be a full and effective member of the Trust.  Passionate about giving back to the community, since retirement, she has taken an additional Trustee role in another large, complex Trust.

Ray is a founder Trustee and Member of Bohunt Education Trust, of which he has been Chair since its foundation as a Single Academy Trust in 2011, converting to a Multi-Academy Trust in 2014. He has been a Governor at Bohunt School, Liphook since 1992, becoming Chair of Governors on his retirement in 2003. In that time, Liphook has grown from around 1150 pupils to its current 1900+ students, now including a highly-successful over-subscribed Sixth Form which opened in 2017.  Inter alia, the school was one of the first State schools to teach Mandarin, also taught now in five of the other BET schools.

Under his guidance, Bohunt Education Trust has developed into 10 schools, one of which is a Primary, working across four local authorities.  Responsible for the education of nearly 12,000 pupils, with an annual budget of ~ £90 million, BET has two Sixth Forms with a third due to open in 2026, and includes a large State Boarding School. Three of these schools were new builds, to meet the needs of large housing developments, and one of which provides education for 4 to 16 year-olds with a recently-opened Reception class.

A native of Liverpool, he holds a PhD, MSc and BSc in Chemical Engineering, all from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Following an initial period in university research, he joined BOC Ltd, an international company supplying basic chemicals to a diverse range of industries (chemicals, steel, glass, food, pharmaceuticals, electronics, etc). Initially working in production, subsequently he moved into sales and marketing for the majority of his career, travelling extensively across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.

Since retirement, Ray has worked at non-executive level in the NHS, in a local Housing Association, as well as being a Chair and Panel Member of the Schools Admission and Exclusion Appeals service for Hampshire.   In addition to being a governor at Liphook, he was a governor of a Pupil Referral Unit for several years, as well as being a governor of another BET academy, Priory School in Portsmouth.

A resident of Liss, all three of his children attended Bohunt Liphook, progressing to a local Sixth Form College and then to University.

A commercially astute, strategic senior HR leader with extensive international experience, including living and working in the US.  Accomplished at working in global, highly matrixed organizations. Skilled at translating business goals into formulation and delivery of human resource strategies.  Highly effective at operating in growth organizations and managing multiple projects to meet the changing needs of such businesses. Significant change management experience, resulting in improved efficiencies and increased profitability.

Simon has been a Trustee of the Bohunt Education Trust since December 2024. Simon initially trained as an external auditor with Ernst and Young, before moving into internal audit and then compliance when at INVESCO. He progressed his investment compliance career at Perpetual, F&C, FRM, Lazard, Legg Mason, and Wells Fargo. His most recent professional role was as EMEA Head of Compliance at Allspring Global Investments. He holds a BSc (Hons) in Business Economics and Accounting from Southampton University, is a Fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants and a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment. Simon was the Deputy Chair of the CISI International Regulation Forum and is a committee member of the CISI Compliance Forum.

A qualified chartered accountant, Malcolm established his accountancy practice 1989.    Prior to this he worked in industry holding both financial and general management positions.

Throughout his life, Malcolm has been on various committees and acted as a charity trustee, including as treasurer, trustee of Haslemere Educational Museum (HEM).  In addition to supporting the trust board, Malcolm is currently chair of a local charity with four shops generating £60,000pa.  The funds help those suffering financial hardship in the local community. Examples are helping families fleeing domestic violence and pupils to go on school trips or requiring therapy.

Malcolm was involved in a two top UK swimming clubs being chosen as a new regional performance centre.  He was director of the Centre and charity along with being  chair of the swimming club.

Malcom was appointed to the board in 2024.

Professor Steve Wood has been Deputy Pro Vice Chancellor and Dean of University of Exeter Business School since January 2025 where he is responsible for 400 staff and 10,000 students.  In 2024, Steve concluded a five-year term as Dean of Surrey Business School, University of Surrey where he led significant improvement in teaching, research, and staff engagement metrics as well as driving performance in international rankings. This followed terms as Surrey Business School’s Director of Research and as a Head of Department as well as a period as Reader of Strategy at University of Southampton.  Prior to 2005, Steve spent three years at Tesco plc in its marketing and property departments advising on UK and international store development strategy and has experience as a Retail Analyst for Verdict Research, a London-based retail consultancy.  An experienced examiner, he was most recently external examiner for undergraduate management programmes at University of Bristol (2017-2022), having fulfilled the same role at the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford (2011-2014) amongst others.  Outside of work, Steve has been a Trustee of Bohunt Education Trust since 2018, where he Chairs the overall Trust’s Education Committee. Earlier, between 2012-15, he sat on the governing body of Ash Manor School where he was Chair of its Curriculum Committee.  He is a leader at his local village Cub Scout pack in Hampshire and Assistant Manager of the Under 15s Liphook Pumas football team.

Julie has been a trustee at Bohunt Educational Trust for the last ten years. Prior to this she was a governor at The Petersfield School for over 25 years. As well as being a trustee, Julie also sits as a governor on the Local Governing board at Bohunt Farnborough.

Julie is retired, but prior to retirement had a background in finance mainly in the leisure and the car finance industry. Along with this, she was a local District Councillor for sixteen years, where she held the role of Deputy Leader and the Portfolio for Communities, Housing and Customer Services.

Since stepping away from these roles, Julie volunteers for her local community radio as a presenter, reporter and newsreader. She spends time helping out with local dementia groups, co-ordinates SpeedWatch and playing a big part in another Community Trust.

her passion is ballroom dancing and nothing gets in the way of this, She has been lucky to compete at Blackpool several times.

James is a private client solicitor with over 20 years’ experience in regional, national and high street firms. He has been a managing director and the Head of a private client team for over 10 years. He is a full member of the Society of Trusts and Estates Practitioners and The Association of Lifetime Lawyers. He regularly presents and writes articles in relation to private client issues.

In his spare time James loves sport, particularly 5-aside football, reading and long dog walks.

James is approachable, pro-active and pragmatic in his approach and has been with the trust board since 2018.

Ben has over 30 years professional services consulting experience.  He guides Boards and senior executives on developing and executing growth strategies, typically prompted by the need to deliver integration, consolidation or efficiency benefits.  Ben has significant skills in the design and delivery of significant change programmes covering operating model design, technology enablement and workforce transformation.

Alex Wingham has been working in education for over 30 years and has worked in a wide variety of settings. He started his career working and leading courses in community arts and music and quickly found a passion for working in primary education. He worked in a wide range of school including maintained schools, private schools and faith schools.  During his career he has worked closely with universities developing trainee teachers as well ECT teachers while also being a lead teacher in Mathematics across the local authority. During this time, he did various mathematical research projects and developed the “12 Big ideas” curriculum with Dr Jenni Back published by the Mathematics Association.

Alex then went on to become a headteacher of a school in Brighton and Hove where he represented schools as part of the Chichester Board of Education and took at active part in working the teaching School Alliance developing networks and training for teachers and trainees. Since leaving his role as headteacher Alex has been working as a School Effectiveness Officer for the Diocese of Chichester supporting and advising school across the diocese.