Governing Body

Chair of Governors

Alison Burrows

Alison attended Presdales School in Hertfordshire and went on to read Psychology at Lancaster University where she graduated with a BSC Hons with a minor in the History of Education. She then qualified as a Chartered Accountant working at Smith & Williamson. Alongside corporate audits she worked as part of the charity audit team for their North London office.

Moving into industry Alison worked in a venture capitalist backed Facilities Management company where she was Executive Director of Finance and Support Services. She has experience of corporate finance, business acquisition, MBOs and refinancing.

Having left the Corporate world to have her child, who attends St Chris, she now works as an international Executive Leadership and Business Coach.

Governor

Jakub Kozlowski

Jakub was born in Poland, where he completed The International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IB). This experience inspired him to pursue further education abroad.  Once in the UK, he graduated MEng in Computer Science from University College London (UCL).  After university he had a brief career in Investment Banking as an Algorithmic Trading Developer, before joining a then fairly small US start-up that partners with the most strategically important institutions in the world to transform how they use data and technology.

Jakub is a passionate musician and an aspiring Perma culturist.  He and his young family have only recently moved from London to put down roots locally.

Governor

Chris Toepfer

Chris is an Old Scholar of St Chris (F Group/Year 4 through to Sixth Form).  After completing A-levels at St Chris, Chris studied Biomedical Sciences at Imperial College London before completing a PhD jointly at Imperial College and the National Institutes of Health (Bethesda, USA).  Chris performed his post-doctoral work at Harvard Medical School focussing on the key drivers of sudden cardiac death, and in 2019 moved to the University of Oxford as an Associate Professor of Cardiovascular Science, researching inherited heart conditions.  Chris is a Sir Henry Dale Fellow of Wellcome and a Principal Investigator of the British Heart Foundation Centre of Research Excellence in Oxford.

Chris has other close connections to St Chris – his partner, Becca Toepfer, is Head of History and they both take an active role in the Duke of Edinburgh’s award expeditions, with their dog Harvie.

Governor

Rouane Mendel

Rouane was raised in Canada before coming to the UK for her Sixth Form in a northern comprehensive school and going on to study English at Oxford.  She later studied Theatre, directing at Tel Aviv University and Victoria, British Columbia.  She lived for years in Nigeria and Turkey where she taught in local schools.  She went on to teach in Forest Gate, London and schools in Letchworth Garden City, Biggleswade and Royston before becoming Head of Giles Nursery and Infants School, Stevenage, in 2011 where she has been ever since. 

Rouane also worked for many years as part of County’s Early Years advisory body, supporting settings to improve their practice and working as part of the team that developed HQS, now a national kitemark for excellence in Early Years.

Rouane lives in Letchworth Garden City.  Her three children all studied at St Chris and she has had a connection with the school since 1998, being for many years a member – and then Chair – of the Parents’ Circle during the jurisdiction of three successive head teachers.  So, Rouane knows the School and its history well.  She is a lapsed French horn player, adores a Capella singing and in a misspent youth was lead singer in various rock bands.  She believes passionately that pupils learn and thrive in a caring, creative environment.

Governor

Ana Nicholls

Ana was brought up in Shropshire, and attended a local comprehensive school before going on to study English at Cambridge University. She then became a journalist in London, before taking up a two-year role as an editor for the United Nations in Lithuania. A move to Vienna started her career at The Economist Group, where she started by writing about Eastern Europe and eventually became the Director of industry analysis at EIU in London. In this role she leads a team that forecasts global business trends, including industrial, trade and climate policies.

Ana has lived in Letchworth Garden City for the past 18 years. Her daughter attended St Chris from the age of three to 16, while her sister was previously a governor.

Safeguarding Governor

Paul Juniper

Paul is the Assistant Head responsible for boarding at a large co-educational HMC boarding school on the South Coast. He is also Head of the Animal Management Department – where he has been fortunate enough to design and build the school zoo. He also teaches science at GCSE and is a Designated Safeguarding Lead and BSA Level 4 Accredited Boarding Practitioner.

Paul has a BSc in Applied Zoology from the University of Liverpool, a PGCE from Keele University and an MA in Residential Education from the University of Buckingham.

Paul’s background is one of combining education and zoos: his father was a keeper at London Zoo, and before training as a teacher, he spent a decade working as a zookeeper, at a variety of British collections, including Southport Zoo, Chester Zoo, Port Lympne, in Kent and Woburn Safari Park, in Bedfordshire. His experience is with Asian Elephants, with Binturongs (shaggy- haired, Labrador-sized, arboreal beasts, with a fantastic smell), and with a plethora of primates. He has a passion for educating young people about science, and about conservation issues in particular.

Paul has taken many students on conservation visits into the African bush, surveying populations of Hazel Dormice in the Kent and East Sussex countryside and breeding endangered species of fish that have become extinct in the wild in his science lab.

Encouraging young people to be the best versions of themselves and promoting opportunities for children in care within the independent school sector are where he gains most satisfaction at work.  But he feels his greatest skill is building effective teams of people, both in schools and in zoos, who work together supportively and in a collaborative way to achieve strategic ambitions effectively.