Board of Directors
Lord Curry of Kirkharle Kt, CBE, FRAgS
Donald Curry has been a Crossbench Peer in the House of Lords since 2011.
He is a trustee of Clinton Devon Estates, and also Anglican International Development (AID), a charity leading on a range of development projects in South Sudan. He is also Chair of Food and Farming Futures and a founder and Chair of The Rural Design Centre in the North East of England. In 2017 he became President of Community Action Northumberland.
From 2014 to 2021 he was Chair of Cawood Scientific, an independent provider of accredited analytical laboratory testing services for the land-based sector.
He was a founding trustee of the Prince’s Countryside Fund and was Chair from March 2016 to December 2021. In 2019 his term as Chair of the Council of the Royal Veterinary College ended, having started in 2012.
Gillian Marshall
Gillian is retired from a successful career within the business support and financial sectors.
She now enjoys various board positions; at Rural Design Centre she directly contributes to the development and direction of our growth.
Ian Simpson
Ian is a native and passionate Northumbrian. He had a 30 year career with Barclays Bank before leaving to run one of the largest garden centres in the country.
After taking that business through a trade sale, he set up his own consultancy, working with a portfolio of owner managed, family-based SME’s, on structure, strategy and succession planning.
Ian lives in Morpeth with his wife Jean. He is an Elder at Alnwick Baptist Church, a keen skier and a long-term, and long-suffering, season ticket holder at NUFC.
Phil Pattison
Phil is a finance and commercial professional, who has held positions as director or senior manager for numerous blue-chip companies including; General Electric, Rolls-Royce, Marks and Spencer, Newcastle Science City and Royal IHC.
In 2005 he and other fellow directors set up a specialist skincare company and floated on AIM. He currently runs his own personal consultancy business, holding numerous executive and non-executive director positions.
Phil is a Fellow of the Institute of Management Accountants, a Chartered Banker and holds an MBA from Newcastle University. Whilst at GE he was Compliance Leader and a Black Belt in Six Sigma, business process improvement.
Helen Golightly OBE
Helen is the former chief executive of the North East Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), where she led and championed the region’s economic growth for over a decade. Under her leadership Helen calmly embedded effective regional public, private, education and voluntary sector partnership, working to create more and better jobs, and improve the quality of life of residents and opportunities for business.
Helen has been instrumental in securing over £3bn into the region, and worked with partners to invest it strategically in key projects. In this role, she also worked with partners and businesses regionally and nationally to develop and deliver the evidence-based regional economic strategy, reduce the region's skills gap, increase business start up and scale up performance and support innovation led growth across the North East of England.
She was awarded an OBE in the 2021 Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to business and the economy.