Charles Edward Lord (known professionally as Edward and by friends as Charlie or Ed) is a board level leader and adviser – with strong commercial, public, university, sport, and voluntary sector experience. Their core skills are operational, governance, and people leadership; senior appointments and remuneration; organisational change and redesign; stakeholder engagement and advocacy; policy development; ethics; philanthropy; and diversity/inclusion

The main positions they currently hold are –

• Elected Councillor, City of London Corporation – Chair, Gresham Committee; Lead Member for Sport
• Independent Chairperson, Northern Ireland Assembly Commission Audit & Risk Committee
• Independent Director, British Basketball League – Chair, Nominations and Remuneration Committee
• Deputy Governor, The Honourable The Irish Society
• Trustee and Vice Chair of Council, Gresham College
• Justice of the Peace, Central London
• Lay Member, Employment Appeal Tribunal

Born in 1972, Edward was educated at Bury Grammar School in Lancashire, the Government Department of the University of Essex, graduating in 1994 in Public Policy and Public Management, and BPP Law School. On graduating from Essex, Edward served for two years on the National Executive Committee of the National Union of Students. 

Edward’s early career was in the charity and higher education sectors, serving as development director at Liverpool John Moores University and City University, London before establishing their consultancy and interim leadership practice in 2002.

They have been an elected member of the City of London Corporation since 2001. Over their 22 years of service, they have held a number of senior leadership roles:

• Lead Member for Sport (2022-date)
• Chair and Deputy Chair, Gresham Committee (2021-date)
• Member, Policy and Resources Committee (2009-2023)
• Chair, Civic Affairs Sub-Committee (2022-2023)
• Chair, Deputy Chair, Acting Chair, Establishment/Corporate Services Committee (2015-2022)
• Chair and Deputy Chair, Standards Committee (2012-2017)
• Chair and Deputy Chair, Licensing Committee (2008-2014),
• Deputy Chair, 2012 Sub-Committee and Lead on London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. (2010-2013)

Edward was a leading member at the Local Government Association from 2004 to 2017, including serving on the LGA Executive and Improvement Board. They were chair and then non-executive director of Local Partnerships LLP (previously Public Private Partnerships Programme Limited), a multi disciplinary professional services firm which acts as a commercial and efficiency taskforce jointly owned by HM Treasury and the LGA. Edward was chair of Capital Ambition, a £38 million investment fund supporting improvement and innovation projects in London’s local authorities from 2011 to 2018 and a member of London Councils’ Leaders’ Committee.

Other former non-executive roles included being chair of Megalith Realty Limited, a private equity backed property developer and manager; deputy chair of the Whittington Hospital NHS Trust; and director of Parkwood Holdings plc, London Strategic Housing Limited, and Social Investment Business Limited. Charity trusteeships have included Albert Kennedy Trust, Anne Frank Trust, Bishopsgate Foundation, British Youth Council, LGBT Foundation, Refugee Council, St Botolph’s Project, and Trust for London.

Edward was chair of the Group Board of the Amateur Swimming Association (now Swim England), England’s national governing body for swimming, diving, water polo and synchronised swimming, from 2013 to 2015 and had a number of roles within the Football Association, including as chair of the London FA’s Inclusion Advisory Group and as a chair of anti-discrimination disciplinary commissions. They served as a member of the FA’s Inclusion Advisory Board from its inception until September 2014 and as an Independent Director of Middlesex County Cricket Club Limited from 2019 to 2023.

A strong advocate for diversity and inclusion, Edward served as the LGA’s national lead on equality from 2004 to 2013, and as a board member of the Pride Trust and deputy/acting chair of Pride in London’s community advisory board. Edward was profiled by Stonewall in 2012 as one of its first seventeen LGBT role models, and served on the Government’s review of the Public Sector Equality Duty in 2012-13.

Appointed a Justice of the Peace in 2002, Edward sits in magistrates’ courts in the Cities of London and Westminster and in the appellate jurisdiction of the Crown Court sitting at the Central Criminal Court (Old Bailey) and Southwark Crown Court. They have been an approved presiding justice since 2008. In July 2021, the Lord Chancellor appointed Edward to serve as a lay member of the Employment Appeal Tribunal, a senior court of record dealing with significant points of employment and labour relations law.

Edward was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen’s 2011 Birthday Honours List, recognising their public service, particularly for promoting for equality and social inclusion.

Edward lives in the City of London with their cat, Barney.

Edward’s pronouns are ‘they/them/their’