Sir Gerald Acher CBE LVO, Chairman

Sir Gerald Acher is also Deputy Chairman of the Imperial College NHS Healthcare Trust.

He was President of Young Epilepsy and Vice Chairman of Motability until 2019 and Chair of the Royal Society of Arts until 2009. He was a Board member of KPMG and its London office Senior Partner until 2001. He was deputy chairman of Camelot UK Lotteries Ltd until 2015. Sir Gerald is chairman of Chatterbus CIO, a social enterprise which runs a scheduled bus service in and around Cobham and he is also chairman of the Cobham Heritage Trust.

Sir Gerald was awarded the CBE in the 1999 and a Knighthood in 2012. In 2017 he was recognised by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales with the Award for Outstanding Lifetime Achievement.

Sir Gerald enjoys rallying pre-war and classic cars, opera, mountain and hill walking and gardening.

Captain Mike Bannister, Vice Chairman

A Trustee of the Museum since July 2007, Captain Mike Bannister was British Airways’ Chief Concorde pilot from 1995-2003, playing a leading role in her return to service following the Air France Paris accident, flying her in formation with the Red Arrows over Buckingham Palace for the Queen's Golden Jubilee and commanding her final commercial flight in October 2003.

Mike was also General Manager for BA’s Airbus, Boeing 737 / 757 / 767, Gatwick and Concorde Fleets, responsible for Flight Operations, technical performance, business performance and Flight Crew management. His Aviation Awards include the ‘Le Prix Réussite’ from L'Association Aéronautique et Astronautique de France.

Since ‘retirement’ he has been a very active charity fundraiser, helping to raise over £350,000 for good causes through lectures and other personal contributions, as well as an aviation consultant, Chair of School Governors, Lay PCC Chair, Foodbank Chair and property company Chair.

Neil Austin

Neil is a chartered accountant and was a partner at KPMG in London for over twenty years, mainly in corporate finance so he has extensive experience advising clients on strategy, mergers and acquisitions, IPOs and other public and private market transactions.

During the latter part of his KPMG career he was a member of the Global Executive Board and as Global Head of Markets had responsibility for the firm’s major global clients together with global marketing, sales and industry groups. He also had a leading role in developing the firm’s global strategy.

Since his retirement from KPMG he has been a senior strategic and financial adviser to private companies and professional services firms and he is also a Non-Executive Director of Risk Advisory Group Ltd, a global risk management consultancy.

Apart from his family, his main interests are classic cars, sports, fine wine and cooking.

Graham Chisnall

A trained Aeronautical Engineer, Graham has worked in the Aerospace, Defence and Automotive sectors for over 40 years.

At BAe/BAE Systems he progressed to Group Head of Strategy, having had involvement in the Eurofighter programme and responsibility for development of the new Hawk 100/200 aircraft. From 2000, Graham held senior executive positions in GKN’s Aerospace Group, before becoming responsible for GKN’s strategy across all sectors, including Automotive.

Graham became deputy CEO and MD (Aerospace and Operations) at aerospace trade association ADS in 2010, where he played leading roles in a number of industry/government programmes .

Graham is an experienced public- and private sector NED, including roles with the Engineering Development Trust (as Chair), the Solicitors Regulatory Authority and Farnborough Airshow International, and is deputy chairman of RLC Aerospace.

Graham is a Chartered Engineer, Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society and chair of the Cross and Cockade Society (WW1 Aviation Historians).

Rob Halloway

Appointed as Marketing Director, Mercedes-Benz Cars in April 2016, Rob Halloway added responsibility for Mercedes-Benz World in July 2019. Before that he spent 18 years in PR, mostly but not entirely at Mercedes-Benz.

Although a qualified automotive engineer, Rob spent the early part of his career in used truck sales, as an advertising and brochure copywriter, promotions and advertising executive, and industry spokesperson. Way before all that, he visited Brooklands as a boy, with his Dad.

During his time at Mercedes-Benz, Rob has developed a knack of explaining the company’s incredibly complex technical systems in an engaging, entertaining way.

He maintains close relations with the Mercedes-Benz Club and became its Honorary President in 2017.

He holds a full HGV truck driving licence, and when not doing that is a double-screening digital immigrant and prolific tweeter.

Simon Michaelides

Simon is the Chief Customer Officer at Riviera Travel, a private equity owned cruise & curated tour specialist, operating in the UK, Europe and across the world. As Chief Customer Officer, Simon is responsible for overseeing all aspects of the customer journey, including Marketing & PR, Research, Insight & Analytics, and Direct Sales.

Simon is a classically trained, blue-chip marketer by background, clocking up 15 years at Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo and Kantar Consulting, before making a leap into the television industry, where he spent a decade in a number of C-Suite roles at BAFTA award winning UKTV & BBC Studios; most latterly as Chief Marketing & Innovation Officer for BBC Studios UK.

A prominent figure within the Marketing community, Simon is a Fellow of both The Marketing Academy & The Marketing Society. He is also a Non-Executive Director of Murphy Cobb & Associates - a marketing communications, production consultancy.

Simon lives locally in Weybridge with his wife, two sons & family dog. His passion for Brooklands stems from a family connection to the site, combined with a love for all things automotive and his academic background as a historian.

Marilyn Scott MBE

Marilyn has worked in museums, galleries and heritage attractions for over 30 years. She is currently Director of the award winning Lightbox in Woking Surrey, winner of The Art Fund Prize in 2008. She led The Lightbox from feasibility study to opening of the building in 2007, having raised £7.2m for the construction and fit out. Marilyn has worked in national museums, at the V&A and Science Museum and for The National Trust. Marilyn has wide experience in the consulting field and her areas of specialism include fundraising, income generation and sustainability, strategic and business planning. She has extensive experience of managing organisations within a Trust framework and works with Trustees to improve and enhance governance.

Marilyn also has international experience and works as a consultant for The British Council advising museums and galleries on business planning and staff development. She has recently worked in China, Slovenia, Taiwan and Georgia.

 

 

Mark Seligman

Mark is the Senior Independent Director at NatWest Group plc and a Board member of Smiths Group plc - as of speedometer fame in English classic cars. He is a former Chairman of Credit Suisse’s UK investment bank, and before that was with SG Warburg. He is a qualified accountant, and has also served on the boards of Kingfisher, BG Group and G4S.

Having been born in a taxi, motoring is in his blood (or at least up his nostrils). He competed with his son in the Peking Paris Centenary rally, where he was proud to raise funds for his wife’s charity, Breadline Africa. He chaired Credit Suisse’s EMEA charity for many years, is a former Chairman of the Government’s Industrial Development Advisory Board, a Past Master of the Worshipful Company of International Bankers and a member of the Rector’s Council at Lincoln College, Oxford.

He divides his time between Surrey, London and the Scottish Highlands, where he and his family have restored a working estate over the last thirty-five years. 

Randolph W. Sesson Jnr., MBA, BA

Randy Sesson is a US and UK citizen. He has worked as an investment banker for more than 35 years, primarily with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, and currently manages his own firm, Blackbird Capital Partners.

Randy advises transport, oil and gas and infrastructure companies on a variety of transaction types including mergers and acquisitions, equity and debt capital raisings and financial restructurings. He has lived in London since 2000, prior to which he lived in both New York and Hong Kong.

Randy is a 1985 graduate of Yale College and a 1989 graduate of Stanford Business School. In addition to his Brooklands responsibilities, Randy has also been Chairman since 2002 of Sponsors for Educational Opportunity – London. He is a keen F1 and GT motor racing fan, and an aviation enthusiast, having been fortunate enough to fly on Concorde several times.

 

Geoffrey Want

Geoff trained at Brooklands as an Undergraduate Apprentice with BAC, graduating with an Aeronautical Engineering degree, before joining British Airways for a 31-year career in operational roles, including running “day to day “ worldwide operations and a number of senior roles including Director of Safety and Security and Director of Ground Operations. He became one of the airline’s main links with Brooklands and was instrumental in BA’s decision to loan Concorde G-BBDG to the Museum.

After British Airways, Geoff worked for mining company Rio Tinto as Global Aviation Safety Adviser, and for five years as Director of Safety and Security at easyJet, before retiring in 2018.

A Chartered Engineer with an MBA, Geoff is currently a safety adviser to the Board of Merlin Entertainments PLC and Chair of Governors of Sir William Perkins’s School in Chertsey. He also continues to undertake a number of advisory roles within the aviation industry.

Georgina Wood

Georgina is the Managing Director for P & A Wood, a Rolls-Royce and Bentley Motor Car dealership specialising is sales, service, restoration and spare parts for all Rolls-Royce and Bentley Motors cars from 1904 to present day and official Rolls-Royce Motor Cars dealers.

Georgina is the daughter of Paul Wood, one of the founding brothers of P & A Wood, and has been surrounded by unique and interesting motor cars her entire life. She has passion and enthusiasm for elderly automobiles and has completed a number of trials and rallies in Rolls-Royce Silver Ghosts, as well as driving the London to Brighton Veteran Car Run 10 times (so far!) in her own 1903 De Dion Bouton.

Among one of her proudest achievements is driving the Napier Railton on behalf of Brooklands Museum at Wings & Wheels, Dunsfold, in 2014.

 

James Thorne, Company Secretary

James, a consultant Solicitor and Brooklands Museum volunteer, was appointed company secretary in January 2019.

James qualified as a Solicitor in 1992. After five further years in the corporate/M&A department of a City law firm (included two years in Tokyo), he worked in a number of practices in the south-east, before setting up his own legal and company secretarial consultancy in 2009.

James is a regular weekend steward at the Museum and, although he has a particular interest in motor racing history, enjoys helping in the Reithian task of informing, educating and (hopefully) entertaining visitors on all aspects of the site’s extraordinary history, and the personalities who made it happen.

An RFU-qualified referee since 2009 and an FA-qualified referee since 2015, in the winter months James can also be found – when ageing joints permit – endeavouring to keep order on the sports fields of Surrey.