Since 2011, Neil has been the Headmaster of Queen Elizabeth’s School in Barnet, which has consistently been named in the national press in recent years as the country’s top state school for A-Level and GCSE results.  He attended John Lyon as a pupil from 1989 to 1996.  Following his undergraduate degree at Oxford and PGCE at London’s Institute of Education, Neil started teaching in 2000 in a mixed comprehensive in the London Borough of Brent.  He moved to Queen Elizabeth’s in 2002.  Before his appointment as Headmaster, he has been Head of Geography, Head of Year, Assistant Head and Deputy Head.  Neil was awarded his National Professional Qualification for Headship in 2007 and an MBA in 2010.  He has been Chair of Governors at The John Lyon School since September 2025 bringing significant experience of governance from a range of different settings across both the independent and maintained sectors.

Liam is an economist, writer and broadcaster. He is also an experienced business investor, having been a board member and partner of an international asset-management company working with leading pension funds, insurance companies, charities and sovereign wealth funds. A widely respected economics commentator, Liam has been a reporter for The Economist, The Financial Times and Channel Four News and is now best-known for his award-winning weekly “Economics Agenda” column in The Sunday Telegraph. He remains a regular broadcaster, frequently appearing on BBC radio and television, CNN, Sky and RTE to provide economic and political commentaries. Liam is also a shareholder and Editor-at-Large at bne IntelliNews. He holds a First Class (Hons) degree in economics from the University of Warwick and an MPhil (Econ) from St Antony’s College, Oxford University. Liam came to John Lyon on a scholarship in 1980 and left in 1987 as Head Boy. He was the first person in his family to go to university.

Simon is the CFO of The Curtis Brown Group, the UK’s leading Literary and Talent agency, with its US parent based in Beverly Hills, California. Whilst at the school Simon played football for the England Public Schools XI and was the inaugural winner of the Vessey Shield for sporting achievement. After leaving school Simon qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Moore Stephens and has spent his working life as a senior executive and corporate financier within the Entertainment and Media industry in the UK, North America and Europe. Outside of work Simon served two terms on the MCC’s Marketing and Public Affairs Committee, during which time they championed and oversaw the admission of Women members to the MCC. Simon was also previously the Chair of Members of a muti academy trust of primary schools, having started as a parent Governor and then as a Trust Governor.

Since 2018, Matthew has been Headmaster of Leighton Park School, an HMC co-educational day and boarding school in Reading. Previously, he was Second Master of Haberdashers’ Boys’ School, Elstree and latterly also Headmaster of the Preparatory and Pre-Prep. He has also held posts as Principal of an independent fifth and sixth form college in central London. Matthew was a senior public examiner for Geography and is a serving ISI inspector and a Magistrate. He has served on a number of boards, including as school governor and chair of trustees for an international education charity. He is a member of the Worshipful Company of Haberdashers’ and freeman of the City of London. Matthew was educated at a state comprehensive and attended the University of Wales and Queens’ College, Cambridge and he currently chairs the Education Committee at John Lyon.

Kay has over 22 years’ experience in the real estate sector, spanning public, private, and government-backed organisations. She is a Chartered Surveyor and currently serves as Interim Managing Director of Investment at a residential platform within a major UK retail bank, where she leads its national housing investment strategy. Kay has held senior leadership roles with some of the UK’s largest housebuilders, a housing association, and Homes England, the Government’s housing agency. She also serves as a Non-Executive Director of a housing association.

John holds the Davson Chair of Biomedical Research at University College London, Institute of Ophthalmology. Over a 40-year career in research he has been awarded many prestigious grants, has published in major scientific journals including Nature and the Lancet, and served as head of department. He runs a large and active research group studying eye and brain diseases and cancer and has launched a related biotech company. John is an Old Lyonian from the class of 1974 and was appointed a Governor of the School in March 2020.

Heyrick Bond Gunning is S-RM’s Chief Executive Officer. His focus is setting the strategic direction for the business, working with key clients to understand their needs and investor relations. He also sponsors important projects within S-RM including new technology platforms, the ED&I and S-RM’s culture programs. He has played a pivotal role in S-RM’s growth since joining in 2007, leading the management buy-out of the company from Salamanca Group in 2015. S-RM now has nine international offices and employs 450 people, serving clients across cyber security and corporate intelligence, in 140+ countries.

Prior to joining S-RM, Heyrick was Managing Director at Kroll, an independent risk advisory firm, and Head of Client Engagement for MergerMarket (Acuris). He set up DHL’s operations in Iraq at the end of the Gulf War, delivering $75M in revenue in their first year. He started his career with five years as an officer in the British Army.
Heyrick has a BA in Geography and Archaeology from the University of Manchester, is an alumni of INSEAD and Harrow School, and a published author.

James is Director and Head of International Trade at Deloitte LLP, where he advises businesses on international economic and foreign policy issues. He previously held several roles in Westminster politics, including as a government special adviser, as an adviser to a political party and a director of a political consultancy. A former John Lyon pupil and Head Boy, James joined the teaching staff at Harrow International School Bangkok on his gap year before undertaking undergraduate and Master’s degree studies at university. James was previously a governor of an academy school in London. He is a Vice President of the Old Lyonian Association and has served on its Council since 2013.

In 1997, Derek Gilroy obtained his PhD from the William Harvey Research Institute, University of London and thereafter received postdoctoral training jointly at the University of Houston Texas and at Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan from 1998-2000. After which time, he returned to the William Harvey Research Institute for a further four years. In 2004, Derek was appointed as New Blood lecturer funded as a Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellow at the Division of Medicine, Rayne Building, University College London. In 2009, he became a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow and in 2010 was promoted to Professor of Immunology. At UCL he is now Head of Department, Experimental and Translational Medicine. He has pioneered research examining how the body regulates immune responses to infection and, when this goes wrong, how chronic inflammatory diseases develop. Professor Gilroy has won the Bayer International Young Investigator Award (2005), the Norvartis Award (2007), and the Peter Dressel Award (2020). He is a Fellow of the British Pharmacological Society and a member of the British Immunological Society and the Henry Kunkel Society, New York.

Chinmay is a surgeon scientist and ex professional cricketer who specialises in sports injuries of the knee. After he left John Lyon in 1990, he was awarded a domus scholarship at Oxford and was also awarded 5 Oxford Cricket Blues, captaining the side in 1996. Chinmay’s surgical career was based around London, and he above ordered the Robert Jones gold medal proxime accessit in 2008. He was later appointed at Imperial College in 2011. He is also a trustee/executive board member of the British Knee Society, an ex-president of the Royal Society of medicine orthopaedics section and served on the main committee/board of the Marylebone Cricket Club for 8 years. He continues as a knee specialist and the academic researcher supervising PhD and postdoctoral projects and also runs his clinic in Harley Street.

Richard, a former Lyonian who left the School in 1990 to study Town Planning at Manchester University, is a Chartered Town Planner with over 25 years’ experience working in the private consultancy sector. He is an Executive Director and founder partner of hgh Consulting, a niche planning consultancy business based in central London, which became an Employee Ownership Trust in 2021. Richard specialises in sensitive and challenging projects in urban, Green Belt and rural areas advising property owners, land promoters, developers, public sector bodies, schools and charities to maximise their property assets through securing planning permission. Richard is highly recognised for his work in the residential and supported living sectors. Over the past number of years, he has been advising schools including Haberdashers’ Boys’ School, Haberdashers’ Girls’ School, Emanuel School, The Whitgift Foundation and Queen Elizabeths’ School, Barnet on their strategic development plans and delivering planning permissions for new teaching, dining, operational, administrative and sporting facilities.

Meg is a GMC-registered eye surgeon and an entrepreneur. After attending school at the Notting Hill and Ealing High School, she studied medicine at UCL, qualifying in 1993, and has been a Fellow of the Royal College of Ophthalmologists (FRCOphth) since 1999.  She is a former Consultant Ophthalmic Surgeon at both Kingston Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Hillingdon Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.  Following a career break to care for her youngest child during a serious illness, she founded her own ecommerce retail business. In 2023 she set up The MW Clinic London, specialising in the area of regenerative aesthetics. She is a mother of three children, including two boys at John Lyon School. Her oldest son, Toby, was Head Boy and Captain of the 1st XI Football for the academic year 2023-2024.

Joanne Owens is a partner at the law firm Pinsent Masons. She specialises in consumer credit, mortgage and payments regulation. She has worked as a solicitor in this area for over twenty years. She has two sons, who studied at John Lyon Prep before moving to Harrow School. Joanne is a member of the John Lyon Prep Committee.

Catherine started her career with PwC in Australia where she qualified as a Chartered Accountant before transferring to London. Having worked on audit and transactional clients for some 14 years, she then moved into the commercial environment working with a number of high profile media groups and operations going through rapid change – UBM, Heathrow, Johnston Press plc and Telegraph Media Group where she is currently Interim CFO. Her eldest son was a pupil at John Lyon. Cathy was Chair of the F&GPC between 2021 and 2025 and a Governor since 2018.