Trustees

Governance
The BGI is governed by an independent Board of Trustees, informed by Advisory Boards. The Trustees direct how it is managed and run. They enable and support our compliance with relevant legislation and regulation, and promote an operational culture where every piece of work undertaken by the charity works towards fulfilling the charity’s vision. The BGI’s constitution and governing documents define a set of core operational governance practices, including conflict of interest policy, and conform to the Charity Governance Code. The Trustees aim to operate in an open and honest way to ensure we exemplify correct governance and best practice.

Constitution
You can read the BGI’s constitution here.

Annual reports
You can read our annual reports as they are released:

Trustees report and financial statements for financial year ending 30 April 2021

Trustees report and financial statements for financial year ending 30 April 2020

Trustees
The charity is recruiting for 3 new trustees in roles of Finance, HR and Law. Find more information here

Current members of The BGI’s Trustee Board

Andy Payne OBE
Andy is an experienced video games entrepreneur of 33 years and has worked with many of the world’s top studios & publishers, running Mastertronic from 1988 – 2015.  He chaired trade body Ukie from 2005-2015 and is still a board member.  He is a board advisor at games developer Bossa Studios and a founder of games industry charity, GamesAid, where he is now a Patron, as well as working closely with BAFTA to develop their presence in games.  Andy founded mobile & tablet specialist AppyNation and Gambitious, now renamed Good Shepherd, which is the world’s first equity based crowdfunding platform for games and movies.  Andy was founder of simulation specialists Just Flight and a VP of games charity, Special Effect. Andy also sits on the Creative Industries Council, which reports directly to DCMS and BEIS, as well as being a founder of the UK Crowdfunding Association.  Andy is chair of The British Esports Association and a board adviser to the world’s  biggest esports company, ESL.

Ben Pearce, Charity Director, Trustee and Freelance Development Consultant
Ben is a freelance Fundraising Consultant and Non-Executive Director, working with a number of arts, heritage and culture charities across the UK. Ben was previously Executive Director of the West Horsley Place Trust in Surrey, and prior to that of the national creative-health charity, Paintings in Hospitals. Ben was Project Director at the Royal Academy of Arts (RA), developing and leading the Lottery-funded Reveal, Celebrate, Explore programme, and also led a London 2012 Olympic host-Borough project (High Street 2012) in the East End, which included a community grants programme. Ben is also a Trustee of GEM (Group for Education in Museums); a founding Non-Executive Director of the Culture, Health & Wellbeing Alliance (CHWA), and is a Guardian (Trustee) of the SPAB, where he Chairs the Advocacy Committee.

Catriona Mary Wilson, Petrie Museum
Catriona Wilson has worked in the UK heritage sector for nearly 20 years in independent, local authority and university museums. She is currently Head of the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology at UCL, having previously been Collections Manager and joint Heritage Manager at Guildford Heritage Service where she developed a keen interest in the preservation of Videogame heritage. Before that, Catriona established a new museum of medical history at the University of Worcester – The Infirmary. She has fundraised around £2m in project funding to date, which has created numerous permanent and project-based jobs and traineeships. Catriona advocates for fairer and more ethical heritage jobs with the grassroots campaign Fair Museum Jobs, and is a committee member for the Society for Museum Archaeology. She has been mentor to numerous members of staff and volunteers, is a UCL Wellbeing Champion, and a Clore leader.

Claire Boissiere, Jumpship (Chair)
Claire has been at the forefront of games development for nearly 20 years, working across production, design and narrative to deliver innovative and award-winning games. She has worked at AAA development studios like PlayStation London and Media Molecule. Claire is currently Studio Director of indie developer Jumpship Studio working on their debut title Somerville, a hand-crafted narrative Sci-Fi adventure. She is also on the Grads in Games Advisory Board. 

Helen Kennedy, University of Nottingham
Helen is Professor of Creative and Cultural Industries at Nottingham University. Helen’s career has been characterised by her passion for the integration of research, innovative curriculum development with collaborative and creative partnerships. She has an international reputation for her research and advocacy work in Game Studies and for her leadership in the development of the field.Helen was co-organiser of the first UK International conference on games – Game Cultures – in 2001, and spent the following eight years inaugurating and developing the Play Research Group and the Digital Cultures Research Centre as key international nodes in the field of Game Studies. During this period she published widely and collaboratively with other members of this network and in the process established a distinctly British Game Studies approach to the examination of computer games, everyday technologies of play and the wider ludification of culture. Her current research interests are feminist interventions into games culture, experience design and cultural evaluation. She is a Principal Investigator on an international equity project aimed at the transformation of games culture and the games industry. Recently she has been awarded further significant UK Research Council funding to investigate new technologies and new creative practices in immersive experience design.

Ian Livingstone CBE (President)
Ian is one of the founding fathers of the UK games industry and has a long track record of working to support the growth of the sector. He co-founded iconic games company Games Workshop in 1975, and co-created the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks in 1982 which have sold over 17 million copies to date. He designed Eureka, the first computer game published by Domark in 1984, and joined the company in 1992 as a major investor and director, overseeing a merger that created Eidos plc in 1995, where he served as Executive Chairman until 2002. At Eidos he launched major franchises including Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. He co-authored the Next Gen review in 2011 published by Nesta, recommending changes in ICT education policy to bring computer science into the national curriculum as an essential discipline. He is a serial angel investor in multiple UK games studios, chair of Playdemic and PlayMob, and Member of the Creative Industries Council and Creative Industries Federation. He was appointed OBE in 2006, and has also received a BAFTA Special Award, a British Inspiration Award, the Develop Legend Award, an Honorary Doctorate of Arts by Bournemouth University and an Honorary Doctorate of Technology by Abertay University, Dundee for his contribution to the UK computer and video games industry. He was appointed CBE in the 2013 New Year Honours list.

Marcia Deakin, NextGen Skills Academy
Marcia is co-founder and Games Partnership Director of NextGen Skills Academy,  an organisation dedicated to working with employers and education to address skills shortages in Games, Animation and VFX.  She has worked in the Games Industry since the days of the PS1, at great companies including  Eidos, THQ and even a spell at PlayStation in Australia. She is passionate about creating opportunities for the best UK talent to work in our industry.

Marie-Claire Isaaman, Women in Games
Marie-Claire is CEO of Women in Games (WIGJ) a not for profit organisation working to address Gender Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in the Game Industries. WIGJ were winners of the 2017 TIGA Games Industry, Diversity Award. She is a Consultant, Trustee, Researcher, Advisor and External Examiner across a range of UK & European Universities and Colleges. Currently a Consultant at Ukie where she is leading a research project Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI): Enhancing Competitiveness in the UK Game Industries and Educational Pipeline and Chairing Ukie’s recently launched EDI Brains Trust. She was inducted into EA’s sponsored 2014 ‘European Women in Games Hall of Fame’ and named in The Market for Computer and Video Games (MCV) 2014 & 2015 Annual Top 100 UK Women in Video Games list and in the GamesIndustry.Biz 100 most influential people in Video Games list 2017.

Phoenix Perry, UAL Institute of Creative Coding
Phoenix Perry creates physical games and embodied experiences. Her work looks for opportunities to bring people together to raise awareness of our collective interconnectivity. As an advocate for women in game development, she founded Code Liberation Foundation, which catalyses the creation of digital games and creative technologies by women, non-binary, femme and girl-identifying people to diversify STEAM fields. Phoenix is Course Leader at Institute of Creative Coding at UAL.

Anna Poulter-Jones, Sheridans
Anna is a games lawyer at Sheridans, which offers one of Europer’s most well-established and respected Games practices. Shed advises on a wide variety of commercial and intellectual property matters across the games and interactive entertainment space. Building on her background in the games industry and subsequently in intellectual property and technology law at Slaughter and May, Anna now combines her legal expertise and games knowledge to provide advice in connection with game development, financing, publishing and plicy, TTRPG, esports and interactive media products. Anna’s clients include game developers and publishers, as well as companies acting more broadly across the media, technology and creative industries.