Chair
Richard is a highly experienced Chair and Non-Executive Director in the charity and business sectors, with significant expertise as an advisor to boards. He brings considerable business skills to FareShare, including experience of driving improvement, connecting people to strategy and staff engagement.
Richard enjoyed a distinguished and long career at Ernst & Young, spanning more than 4 decades, where he was a Managing Partner for the Regions and Ireland, with overall responsibility for a £450m budget and 4,000 employees across 28 sites. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.
As well as becoming a FareShare Trustee and joining our Finance Sub Committee, Richard currently chairs the Audit and Risk Committees of two companies and chairs the Willow Foundation, set up in memory of the former Arsenal footballer Bob Wilson, and which provides special days for seriously ill people.
Steven is a retired lawyer who has volunteered at FareShare for a number of years. Prior to retirement he had over 40 years’ experience of legal matters in a variety of roles, working both in private practice and in financial institutions. Latterly, he specialised in corporate and financial services law, where his clients included a number of not-for-profit organisations.
Steven was appointed to FareShare’s Finance Committee in 2019.
Juergen joins FareShare as a highly experienced international business manager and investor and is currently a Senior Managing Director at Blackstone Group, the leading global alternative asset manager. Juergen sits on the boards of several companies including: the Board of Directors and Chair of the Audit Committee at BME in the Netherlands, a leading distribution and logistics company; the Chair of the Board of Directors at Averys in Belgium, a leading warehouse solutions business; and the Board of Directors at Schenck Process in Germany, a leading global food process equipment manufacturer.
He holds a Masters degree in Economics and Business and has studied in Australia and Japan.
Martin brings 30 years of experience across investment banking and market infrastructure leadership roles that have focused heavily on technology and M&A transformation. He was previously Group Chief Operating Officer at TPICAP plc where he led the integration of the separately listed Tullett Prebon and ICAP group of companies. Prior to this, Martin was CEO of London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) Business Services and CIO and board member of its subsidiary, LCH Clearnet. He has also held roles at Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan, where he began his career in its markets sales & trading business working in the U.K. USA and Japan. Martin graduated from the University of Manchester, having read economics. He was a board governor and audit committee chair at Tower Hamlets College and is currently a serving board trustee at the Willow Foundation.
Aron Gelbard co-founded Bloom & Wild in 2013, and over the last 10 years has built the business into Europe’s leading direct-to-consumer flower and gifting platform, delivering millions of bouquets, plants and other gifts every year. It operates in eight European markets with a family of three consumer brands. Bloom & Wild differentiates itself through a direct-from grower supply chain with meaningfully lower waste than industry norms and through the use of proprietary technology to deliver a better customer experience and a more scalable and sustainable operation. The Group has been certified carbon neutral since 2020, is a signatory of the UK’s Tech Zero pledge, and has pioneered numerous sustainability innovations across supply chain and product development. Previously Aron worked at Bain & Company in London and Silicon Valley. He has an MA from Oxford University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Aron is an active angel investor including in Carbon 13 and Eka Ventures in the sustainability space and is a pledger to Founders Pledge.
