Helena joined the Board of Governors in November 2017. She is deputy chair of the Finance Committee and is Lead Governor for the School of Law.
Helena is a retired solicitor who - following her return to the UK after four years in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia - spent most of her working life as an in-house lawyer in London, mainly in the publishing sector. She was also a Chartered Tax Adviser and ran her own tax practice for some years after a spell in the Technical Department of the Chartered Association of Certified Accountants.
She was Legal Director and Company Secretary of Penguin Books for thirteen years and for eight of those years was also HR Director. After the merger of Penguin and Random House in 2013 she became Legal Director UK and International, Penguin Random House, until her retirement in 2016.
Helena read law at Oxford and as a mature student gained a Postgraduate Diploma in International Copyright Law from Queen Mary University of London. She became an accredited CEDR mediator during her time in HR. She helped set up the Penguin Pension Plan and was one of its company nominated trustee directors until her retirement.
Currently, Helena sits as a magistrate at Highbury Corner, Islington. She is a committee member for the Pearson Pension Plan and was a non-executive member of social housing providers in Charlton and East Acton until 2018. She lives in London with her husband, also a retired lawyer. They have one daughter who is a doctor specialising in haematology.