Advisory Board

Chris Skidmore is the Conservative Member of Parliament for Kingswood. He was elected following the 2010 General Election and served as the Universities Minister on two occasions between 2018 and 2020. He has also previously had Ministerial roles at the Department for Health and Social Care and the Cabinet Office. Prior to becoming a Government Minister he was George Osborne’s PPS for a year between 2015 and 2016 when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer. As a backbencher, he now co-chairs the All-Party Parliamentary University Group alongside his new role on the Advisory Board at the UPP Foundation.

Before being elected as an MP Skidmore was an education adviser for the Conservatives, working for then-Shadow Education Secretary Michael Gove, and has also served as Director of the Party’s Public Services Improvement Group, run by Stephen Dorrell and Baroness Perry. He is also a historian and published author. His first book, ‘Edward VI: The Lost King’, was released in 2007 and his second, ‘Death and the Virgin: Elizabeth, Dudley and the Mysterious Death of Amy Robsart’, was published in 2010. He has a First Class Honours in Modern History from the University of Oxford.

Lucy Heller became the Chief Executive of Ark in 2012, a children’s charity that runs education and health programmes in the UK, Africa and India. She joined Ark in 2004 from TSL Education, which published TES magazine, where she was joint Managing Director.

Her previous roles include General Manager of The Observer and Executive Chairman at Verso, a trade and academic publisher.

Elaine was appointed Chief Executive Officer of UPP in 2020, to lead and deliver on UPP’s strategic commitments to operational excellence, long-term partnerships and generating value for reinvestment in the future growth of the Business.

She has significant experience and expertise in delivering facilities and property services, gained most recently during her role as Chief Executive Officer for NHS Property Services Ltd where she was responsible for managing and servicing a £3bn asset portfolio, some 4,000 properties, 5,000 employees and an annual income of more than £700m.

Prior to this, Elaine held the position of Group Property Director at BT Group PLC where shemanaged the largest corporate portfolio in the UK, delivering services to 7,000 properties globally. As well as having considerable private sector experience, Elaine has also held public sector roles, notably Crown Representative in the Cabinet Office for Property and Facilities Management across Government.

Elaine is a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS).

Professor Shearer West was appointed Vice-Chancellor and President at the University of Nottingham in 2017. Previous roles also include Provost and Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Sheffield, Head of the Humanities Division at the University of Oxford, and Director of Research at the Arts and Humanities Research Council where she also chaired the Research Directors Group for Research Councils UK.

Shearer is a Professor of Art History and has authored and edited many articles and nine books including Portraiture, The visual arts in Germany 1897-1940: Utopia and Despair, and Fin De Siecle: Art and society in an age of uncertainty.