Ex-Officio

• Lord Hannay of Chiswick (Chairperson of the Board)

• Janet Blackman (Vice-Chairperson of the Board)

• Rodney Fielding (Vice-Chairperson of the Board)

• Andrew Boakes (Chairperson of Conference)

• Sam Daws (Executive Director)

• Simon Le Fevre (Interim Executive Deputy Director)

Biography of Lord David Hannay

Hannay was born in London on 28 September 1935 and educated at Winchester
College and New College, Oxford. He entered the Foreign and Commonwealth
Office in 1959, and was initially posted to positions in Tehran and Kabul. Starting
in 1965 and continuing into the early 1970s, he was involved in the discussions
that led to the UK’s entry into the European Communities.

During the 1970s he did a four-year spell in the European Commission in Brussels;
and was involved with energy and Middle Eastern policy. He was minister at the
British Embassy in Washington DC in 1984-5, and was then promoted to
ambassador and permanent representative to the European Communities from
1985-90. He then spent the next five years as ambassador and permanent
representative to the United Nations.

Following his retirement from the diplomatic service he was the British Special
Representative for Cyprus between 1996 and 2003 and a member of the UN
Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, which
submitted its report in December 2004.

In 2001 he was created a life peer. He has been pro-Chancellor of the University
of Birmingham since 2001. In 2003 he was made a Companion of Honour.

UNA-UK Press Release (London, 30 January 2006)