Charlotte has lived in Whitstable for over a decade, raising her own family here.

She is a local charity chairperson and schools’ writing workshop leader for the Canterbury Festival. She is also a governor at a local secondary school.

Charlotte has led campaigns to refurbish Whitstable play parks, co-ordinated a local laptop donation initiative for families struggling to access online learning during lockdown and she has volunteered many hours over the past three years as a Covid-19 vaccinator.

Charlotte is involved in many heritage and history projects across our district, which ties in nicely with her part-time PhD study at the University of Kent.

A champion for rescuing heritage at risk, Stephen has spent the past 9 years restoring Canterbury’s iconic Westgate Towers and its former city gaol to create the mixed use heritage complex One Pound Lane.

Stephen has lived in the city for 20 years after attending Canterbury Christ Church University. He founded the Canterbury’s Tales of England vision 8 years ago when he became frustrated by the huge potential that lay dormant in Canterbury’s heritage story - wanting to bring some of his entrepreneurial spirit to help unlock it.

Stephen’s background is in design, heritage, live events and business. Now that the restoration of One Pound Lane is complete, Stephen has begun his next enterprise - a tech startup.

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TBC

Lisa Carlson is CEO of the Canterbury Business Improvement District, leading multiple forums and working groups representing business interests across a range of topics from inward investment and destination management to climate change and safety & security.

Lisa represents the BID as a Board Director of Canterbury for Business (the district-wide business group) and the Canterbury Climate Action Partnership, and she Chairs Canterbury in Bloom.

Lisa is also Chair of the ATCM Board and appears regularly on local and regional television and radio. She is part of the High Streets Task Force Sector Leaders Group and regularly joins the All Party Parliamentary Group for Towns and City Centres.

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Rosie Duffield has served as the Labour Member of Parliament for Canterbury constituency since June 2017, having won the seat for Labour for the first time and becoming Labour’s first female MP in Kent.

She currently serves on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs select committee and has previously chaired the Women’s Parliamentary Labour Party.

Rosie, an enthusiastic supporter of cross-party working, is also an officer of a range of All-Party Parliamentary Groups, covering topics such as antisemitism, women in parliament, coastal communities, dog welfare, fisheries, and fruit, vegetables and horticulture.

As Lead Officer for Place at Canterbury City Council, Bill has responsibility for planning, property, regeneration, culture and leisure.

Bill worked at Thames Valley Berkshire Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) since 2014 in various roles including Communications, Stakeholder Engagement, Digital Connectivity and, since 2018, as Head of Infrastructure where he managed the LEP’s investments in excess of £170m.

Prior to the LEP, Bill was a senior international marketing executive with extensive commercial experience within the Media, Entertainment & FMCG sectors. His most recent corporate work experience was with global media company NBC Universal. As Vice President for International Marketing, he delivered targeted marketing content strategies for several major studio film and TV releases (such as the Fast and Furious film franchise, Despicable Me, the studio's 100th Anniversary campaign and Downton Abbey) across international markets.

Bill has also worked for a number of other Hollywood studios eg Twentieth Century Fox, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Disney – as well as major FMCG companies such as Bass and Gallaher Tobacco. He has also run a small start-up company creating a range of upmarket movie-themed apparel.

Bill’s connections with the Canterbury area go back a long way – he is a former student of the University of Kent, and his youngest daughter finished her degree there last Summer.

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Stephanie is Director for Growth and Communities Division at Kent County Council. This is a diverse Division covering planning, economy, public protection, countryside and community services. In a nutshell it is about how the County grows, thrives, remains resilient – and is a brilliant team of over 1000 staff (the biggest proportion being our library staff across our 99 libraries).

With a University Certificate in Public Health from Canterbury Christchurch University (an original University education at Lancaster and Copenhagen), Stephanie is passionate about how partners together can drive improved health outcomes, and given 80% of our health and care outcomes are driven by societal and educational factors, is committed to ensuring we can capitalise on those wider factors in absolutely everything that we do, especially in place shaping. Healthy communities are thriving communities, safe communities, communities with opportunity.

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Always quick to spot opportunity and potential, Blake has a track-record of transforming spaces and heritage sites for events and performance.

As director of Republic Events, Blake has organised a variety of highly successful events ranging from Free Music Festivals, Wimbledon Screenings, to Drive-In Cinemas and Street Food Markets.

Blake is also behind Student Republic, Kent’s leading student brand, which organises weekly events with around 10,000 attendees per month, in the city.

Blake is also on the board of directors at Canterbury BID representing the Hospitality and Night Time Economy sector.

Blake has lived and/or worked in Canterbury for over 15 years and is super-passionate about the city’s future.

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Neil is Head of Historic Properties Kent for English Heritage and joined the organisation in 2012. He is responsible for managing the EH portfolio in Kent including large attractions such as Dover Castle and Walmer Castle as well as smaller sites such as St Augustine’s Abbey. The Kent cluster collectively attract over 600,000 visitors per annum to Kent and cover a range of commercial activities including visitor operations, retail, food and beverage, events, filming and self-catering holiday accommodation.

Prior to joining English Heritage Neil spent nearly 20 years working in a variety of local authority roles including Head of Tourism for the London Borough of Greenwich and Tourism Manager for both Canterbury City Council and Thanet District Council.

He is a Fellow and past-President of the Tourism Management Institute and is the current Chair of the Canterbury World Heritage Site Management Committee. He is also a Trustee for the Kent Mining Heritage Foundation / Kent Mining Museum.

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A staunch advocate of history and heritage as central means by which a place both shapes and projects its identity, Philip brings a great deal of experience of working in research, heritage, the creative economy and higher education to the work of the Board.

Philip is the Director of Engagement at the University of Kent, leading on the University’s civic mission, communications, international partnerships, philanthropy, corporate events and alumni relations.

Before working at the University of Kent and at De Montfort University, Philip worked for the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for seven years where he was responsible for the development and promotion of major initiatives involving public policy, the creative economy, heritage and arts and culture and for setting up and developing partnerships with the BBC, the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Arts Council and the Cheltenham Festival, among many others.

Philip has qualifications in PR and teaching, having taught in both higher and further education, and a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Sussex on the subject of Nietzsche’s aesthetics.

Stewart is an historian and prolific writer who has lived in Canterbury for over 45 years.

When moving to the city, he was astonished to find so little of city’s rich history commemorated in public monuments, works of art, and tourist information. He joined the Commemoration Society to try and rectify this.

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TBC

John was a founder member and Deputy Chair of the Canterbury Society from 2010 to 2020. Until October 2016 John was a Trustee and Deputy Chair of Civic Voice, the national organisation for civic societies in England. His special interests are the quality of the public realm, good design and strategic planning.

TBC

Deirdre Wells OBE was appointed as CEO of Visit Kent in September 2018. Deirdre is also CEO of Go to Places, an organisation created by the company, to deliver services to partners outside, and in partnership with Kent, including the Big Weekend and a number of national tourism projects.

Prior to her appointment to Visit Kent, Deirdre was Chief Executive of UKinbound, representing nearly 400 UK inbound tourism businesses. Deirdre joined UKinbound following 20 years in Government at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport working on a variety of high-profile projects including the Millennium Dome, Liverpool Capital of Culture 2008 and the 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games, and latterly as Head of Tourism.

Deirdre is Chair of English Tourism Week and sits on the Board of the Tourism Alliance.

Deirdre lives in Kent with her husband and two sons.

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