Board

Isabel Hilton – Chair

Isabel Hilton has reported from China, South Asia, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Europe, written and presented several documentaries for BBC radio and television, and has been a writer or editor for The Sunday Times, the Independent and the Guardian. She’s Founder and Senior Adviser of The China Dialogue Trust of www.chinadialogue.net, an innovative, fully bilingual Chinese English website devoted to building a shared approach on climate change and environmental issues with China.

Alf Hill – Treasurer

Alf Hill is an accountant with extensive experience in the public and private sectors. Following graduate recruitment as a civil servant he worked in the insurance and reinsurance industry as a company director in the corporate sector and Lloyd’s of London, chairing the tax committee of the Association of British Insurers. Changing careers, he worked in adult education before leading up finance and resources at the Equal Opportunities Commission and onto its transition as part of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. He has mentored early stage social entrepreneurs as part of UnLtd, chairs Storm Skills Training CiC, providing training in self harm and suicide prevention and is or has been trustee of social benefit and environmental charities, including Keep Britain Tidy.

Iona Craig

Iona Craig is a British-Irish freelance investigative journalist. Since 2010 her work has focused on Yemen and the Arabian Peninsula. Her work from Yemen has won six awards including the 2016 Orwell Prize for journalism as well as the 2016 Kurt Schork Memorial Award for international journalism. In 2014 she received the Martha Gellhorn Prize and the Frontline Club award for print journalism, for her undercover investigative reporting. In addition to Yemen, Iona has reported from Djibouti, Turkey, Lebanon, Washington DC and the Occupied Territories.

Abbianca Nassar

Abbianca is an award-winning ex-newspaper journalist and NCTJ-accredited ghostwriter. Formerly with the Evening Standard, her diverse reporting has spotlighted hidden child victims of lockdown, uncovered stories of the XTC gang, an illegal wildlife syndicate exploiting Thai women and girls as scapegoats for wildlife crimes and the issue of period poverty and its impact on homeless girls. After several successful years in journalism, she transitioned to sales, working with clients (big and small) in Chicago and Texas. Now back to her storytelling roots, Abbianca ghostwrites for top CEOs across Dubai, London, and the US, helping them establish thought leadership. With a ‘squiggly career’ path from journalism to sales and back again, Abbianca thrives on using her storytelling expertise to make an impact across industries.

Stefania Spezzati

Stefania Spezzati is an award-winning reporter covering European banking at Reuters. Based in London, she chronicles all things finance, breaks news and digs deep into the world’s biggest banks. Prior to joining Reuters, Stefania spent about a decade at Bloomberg News. In 2022, she co-led a data-driven investigation which exposed how over 130 million pounds in taxpayer-backed loans went to firms with dubious credentials. The story won at the British Journalism Awards in Crime and Legal Affairs Journalism.

Alyssa Stansbury

Alyssa Stansbury is a barrister at One Essex Court specialising in commercial law, with a particular focus on complex contractual disputes, banking and civil fraud. She has been involved in a number of high-profile cases, including recently the student group claim regarding tuition fees paid during Covid-19 (Hamon v University College London), claims relating to the SFO’s long-running criminal investigation into ENRC (ENRC v Dechert LLP, Mr Gerrard and the SFO), and the US$2bn claim of misappropriation from Ukraine’s largest bank (PrivatBank v Kolomoisky, Bogolyubov & Ors).

 

Omega Douglas – Board Observer

Omega Douglas is a Lecturer in Media, Communications and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, and convenor of the BA in Journalism. She’s worked for Conde Nast, The Guardian, TI Media, Hearst, and the BBC, amongst others. She has also worked as a media consultant, including for the UN. Her research interests lie in race, decolonial epistemology in journalism & media studies, EDI, international reporting, particularly coverage of Africa, and the role of diasporic communities, as well as international institutions, such as NGOs, in global communications.