Advisory Committee

Andrew is a Chartered Surveyor having worked for Healey and baker and St Quintin for 13 years and as Chief Surveyor for the Church Commissioners for 8 years. He retired from the position of Chief Executive for the Church Commissioners after 16 years in that role in 2020.

He currently chairs William Leech Investments and Foundation, the Glebe Committee of the Diocese of St Albans and the Investment Committee of Trust for London. He is a member of the Diocesan Board of Finance for St Albans and a trustee of the Jane Cart Trusts. He was previously a director of the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) and chair of CMS Pension Trust.

An accredited mediator from the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution, he is a Trustee of Mediation Hertfordshire, a local mediation service offering pro bono mediation to communities in the county.

Chris is currently the Chief Investment Officer of Investec Wealth & Investments, one of the UK’s leading firms of asset managers for charities and high net worth individuals. In that role, he is the architect of its approach to portfolio management, its internal research department and its investment policy committee. Chris was formerly a director of Baring Fund Management, where he managed a range of institutional mandates and was a member of its strategic investment team. He joined Investec in 1995 in his present capacity.

Chris is also a director of Invesco Income Growth plc (on which he chairs the Management Engagement Committee), Henderson Opportunities Trust plc and the Association of Investment Companies. He provides counsel on investment matters to a number of charity organisations.

Rory has over 35 years of wide-ranging investment experience. Until early 2021, Rory was the Senior Bursar at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he remains a Fellow. He was responsible for the College’s financial strategy and for the management of a £2 billion property and equities endowment portfolio.

Rory is currently a member of Cambridge University’s Finance Committee, a Director of Lindsell Train Limited and an Investment Committee Member of Paloma Property Funds. He is also a founder member of Cambridge Ahead and serves as a Trustee of Schoolreaders and the Ernest Cook Trust.

From 2000 to 2006, Rory launched and managed emerging markets equity funds of c.$3 billion at Thames River Capital and prior to that was a Senior Director and Head of Global Emerging Equities at Baring Asset Management.

Rory is a qualified Chartered Accountant with a law degree from Cambridge University

Brenna is a highly experienced independent research consultant and founder of RHL Strategic Solutions. Over the past three decades she has honed her expertise in overlaying analysis of cyclical movements, structural trends and regulatory frameworks to distil insights and real estate solutions for investment strategy, business planning and for the direction of the real estate industry. She undertakes commissioned projects on behalf of industry organisations, including INREV and ULI, and bespoke assignments for investment managers. Brenna is also non-executive board and finance committee member of Tuath housing and appointed to the non-executive technical committee of a pan European retail fund. Previous roles include Director and Head of European Strategic Research at Deutsche Bank Asset Management (now DWS), which she joined in 2005 from JLL, where she was Director of European Retail Research.

Alan has held a variety of roles in the Church of England both at local and national church level, and in 2014 started his second 6 year term as a member of the Church of England Pensions Board where he chairs the Housing Committee and is a member of the Investment Committee.

Alan has significant experience in financial services and investment management having been Managing Director of a Leicester based pensions brokerage in the 1980’s and Chairman of the Neville James Group of Companies from 1992 until 2001 when the business was sold to the Challenger International Group. Alan has been a non-executive director on the Group Board of the Paragon Group of Companies plc since February 2009 and is a member of the Risk Committee, Nominations Committee and Audit Committee and Chair of the Remuneration Committee. He is also a Trustee Director of the defined benefit pension scheme for Paragon.

John is a chartered surveyor with over 40 years of experience in the real estate industry and spent the whole of his executive career with Prudential Corporation’s property investment management subsidiary, PRUPIM (now M&G Real Estate), retiring from the Board and as Head of Fund Management in 2010. Between 2007 and 2016, John was a Church Commissioner and served on the Board of Governors, the Investment Committee and as Chairman of the Property Group.

John is now Chairman of The Portman Estate; a Director of Balanced Commercial Property Trust (managed by Columbia Threadneedle), The Pollen Estate and Norges Bank Real Estate Management Europe. He also sits on Investment Committees for DTZ Investors.

Birgitta Bostrom is a member of the Advisory Boards at M&G’s Charifund and Charibond. She has over 20 years of experience in asset management both from the government sector (Bank of Sweden and the World Bank) as well as the private sector including Wellington Management. During her career, Birgitta has managed fixed income portfolios, as well as consulted on portfolio management and risk. She was also Head of Fixed Income Product Management at Schroders.

Since her retirement from full time employment, she has been actively involved with several UK charities as a Trustee as well as investment advisor.

Howard has over 40 years experience in managing property investments and funds on behalf UK Charities, Pension Funds and private investors. Having retired from the Real Assets team of UBS Asset Management in 2022, Howard holds the position of Director of Archmore Infrastructure Holdings Limited, a global infrastructure fund.

He spent nearly 10 years at UBS where he was the Head of Real Estate UK, Portfolio Manager of the Triton Property Fund, a member of the UBS UK Asset Management Board, the European Real Estate Management Committee and the European Real Estate Investment and Lending Committees.

Prior to this he was the Head of Property Investments at LV Asset Management, a Partner at Cushman and Wakefield and an Associate Director at Legal & General Investment Management.

Keith is an advisor to a private wealth manager and a trustee at the National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NIESR) where he is a member of Council and chair of the Investment Committee. He was previously chief economist at Schroders where he was responsible for the house view of the world economy and was a member of the group asset allocation committee. During a 30-year career at the fund manager he took a key role in the investment process for the multi-asset department which was responsible for £130bn at Schroders. He published timely macro research to the market as well as long term studies into asset returns to guide strategic asset allocation.

Keith is also an external adviser to the Addenbrooke’s Charitable Trust in Cambridge where he was a trustee and chaired the finance and investment committees for ten years until 2022. Previously he worked at the London Business School on macro-economic research and forecasting of the UK economy. He has a BSc and MSc in Economics from the London School of Economics.