Patrick
Higdon
Patrick Higdon is the UK Executive Director and Director of Programs at World Connect. In this role he is responsible for overall program quality and integrity and guides our program strategy, team, and key partnerships. He is also World Connect's representative in the United Kingdom. Prior to becoming UK Executive Director and Director of Programs, Patrick was Program Manager for 7 years and spent 2+ years as the Program Coordinator for World Connect's education program.
Board of Directors
Hafsat
Abiola
Hafsat Abiola is the President of Women in Africa, the first international platform dedicated to the economic development and support of leading and high potential African women. She served as a member of the Ogun State cabinet where she pioneered the use of mobile phones to deliver cash grants to poor pregnant women to ensure their access to health centres for antenatal to post-natal care and worked on programmes to ensure inclusive growth to address high youth unemployment. Through her non-profit, the Kudirat Initiative for Democracy (KIND), she has worked to promote a groundswell of exemplary women leaders and build pathways to public service for them. Motivated by women’s strength, Hafsat believes that the challenges facing the continent of Africa offer opportunities for women’s leadership to emerge. She is one global councillors of the World Future Council; a recipient of several international awards, including the Vital Voices’ Public Service Award, Goi Peace Foundation Award, and the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leadership community, her work is a tribute to her parents who lost their lives while leading the democracy movement that brought an end to military rule in Nigeria in the ‘90s.
Kemal
Ahmed
Kemal Ahmed has over 26 years of institutional asset management experience. He is currently a Partner with London-based CGM UK Advisors Ltd, a strategic investor in asset management firms. Prior to CGM, his experience includes institutional money management in senior roles for Ninety One Asset Management, Old Square Capital Advisors (an investment firm he founded), the Brown University Endowment and the World Bank Group’s Treasury Department. He has extensive asset allocation, portfolio management, and manager selection skills.
His not-for-profit activities include having served (most recently) on the UK Board of the International Rescue Committee (IRC), and previously on the boards of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Fund for Global Human Rights.
Kemal earned a MA, with distinction, from the Johns Hopkins University and graduated Phi Beta Kappa.
Andrew
Bedford
Andrew Bedford is the 15th Duke of Bedford. He has been a supporter of World Connect's work since its founding in 2005. Andrew has run Bedford Estates since 1988 and Woburn Abbey since 2000. Andrew serves as Director of Tattersalls Limited, Woburn Estate Companies Limited, Woburn Enterprises Limited, and Jockey Club Estates. Andrew was educated at Heatherdown, Harrow, and Harvard, class of '84.
Christopher
Cabot
Chris Cabot is President of Value Retail Plc. Value Retail specialises in the creation and operation of luxury outlet shopping Villages in Europe and China, including Bicester Village outside of London and Suzhou Village outside Shanghai. He joined Value Retail in 2001 and has held a variety of positions including Chief Operating Officer of Value Retail Management, and President of Value Retail China, where he led the company’s China expansion.
Prior to joining Value Retail he was Co-Founder and Chief Financial Officer of PipingHot Networks, a broadband point-to-multi point fixed wireless business that was sold to Motorola.
He also worked in investment banking in the Media, Telecom and Technology corporate finance teams at Lehman Brothers, Alex. Brown and Bankers Trust in New York and London.
He served on the board of Camaieu (a French retailer). He is currently on the board of P.W Productions, the development board of the Royal Court Theatre, and is a member of advisory committees for HarvardX and the Harvard Program for Integrated Knowledge.
Mr Cabot holds an A.B. with honours from Harvard College and an M.B.A from the Yale School of Management.
Stephanie
Cabot
Stephanie Cabot is half French, half American and grew up in London, Paris and New England. She attended Harvard, where she studied History, and first worked in New York and London with JP Morgan. Her career as an agent began at WME in London, where she spent nine years and ran the office for the last five, before relocating to the US and to The Gernert Company in NYC, where she worked for fifteen years. Stephanie joined SLA in the Spring of 2020. Stephanie’s interests are a reflection of her own reading tastes which have always been wide and far ranging. She represents authors from all over the world and is drawn to the international narratives whether told in story, memoir or essays as well as literary fiction reflecting diverse, global voices, speculative fiction, upmarket commercial fiction, crime and thrillers.
Sarah
Caplin
Sarah is a qualified solicitor and former TV executive having worked for both the BBC and ITV in senior production and management roles, responsible for creating and producing a wide range of factual programmes. She joined the BBC as a graduate trainee after completing her legal training and became editor of BBC’s Watchdog programme (a popular consumer investigation series) for 6 years.
She was Deputy Secretary of the BBC from 1995 - 1997 and then moved to ITV where she became Head of Features for ITV Studios.
She was producer of the BBC’s Childwatch programme which launched the national charity ChildLine and became a founder trustee, serving on its Board of Trustees for 17 years. ChildLine is now one of the key services provided by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
She was also the trustee of a grant-making charity, Jewels For Children, which ran until its founder’s death in 2000.
She left full-time TV production in 2011, and in 2012 she renewed her professional collaboration with Dame Esther Rantzen CBE, accepting the role of Director of Development and Communications at The Silver Line Helpline – a new, free, 24-hour helpline for older people. She played a key role in developing the charity, raising funds and awareness for the national launch of The Silver Line in November 2013 and worked for 3 years in a pro bono capacity, raising substantial funds and awareness. The Silver Line is now an important AgeUK service, and part of that major national charitable organisation.
She is also a trustee of The Alfred Caplin Family Charitable Trust, a grant-making body.
She became a Trustee of the Migration Museum in 2018 and is the board member with special responsibility for development and fundraising.
She studied for an MSc in Crime Science at University College London and achieved a merit award in 2019. She continues to work on various crime-related broadcasting projects.
She lives in London and is married to the broadcaster and author Nick Ross. They have three sons.
Emmanuelle
Lepic
Emmanuelle Lepic is French and currently lives in London. She is a ceramicist. Prior to her artistic career, Emmanuelle worked in commercial art galleries and as an exhibition organiser for the Tate Gallery and Serpentine Gallery in London. Since 2015 she has been involved with non for profit organisations focused on helping refugees in Greece and France and co founded in 2016 the non for profit organisation Relay for Refugees which supported education programs and raised funds for refugees in Europe.
Esme Lovell
Smith
Esme Lovell Smith is Senior Business Planning Manager at Value Retail PLC
Ilia
Tchelikidi
From 2005 to the present time Ilia Tchelikidi founded and runs investment company United Capital Group. The company focuses on private equity investments and turn-around management of companies in economic and financial distress in Mongolia, Russia and Ukraine.
Prior to that, Ilia led corporate finance and private equity for Uralsib Bank in Moscow, Russia from 2002 to 2005. Prior to that Ilia was a Vice President in Equity Research at J.P. Morgan Securities Inc. in New York City from 2001 to 2002 and a Principal at Oliver Wyman in New York City from 1994 to 2001.
Ilia is a board member of IDS Borjomi, a mineral water producer in Georgia.
Ilia Tchelikidi received his MBA in Finance from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania in 1994 and undergraduate degree in in Mathematical Economics from Moscow State University in 1986.
Kristina
Kenworthy
BA (Hons) and LLM Env (UCL) British Citizen (Swedish mother) Lives south of London.
After qualifying as a solicitor with London law firm Norton Rose, Kristina moved into banking first with Svenska Handelsbanken, and then with JP Morgan in London. Since leaving the City to raise a family she has done a variety of things since including a masters in Environmental Law at UCL, writing and producing a book for the Duchess of Westminster and returning to the legal profession as a litigation solicitor. From 2015-2022 she was a consultant solicitor with Richard Buxton Solicitors (Environmental and Public Law) primarily involved in bringing judicial review cases in the High Court, Court of Appeal and Supreme Court.
Her life with sculptor husband has meant travelling, in particular to the US and East Africa. She was a trustee for a small Kenya based charity, Friends of Karen Street Children for over a decade. She is currently a trustee of the Foundation and Friends of Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. She was an advisory member of Surrey Hills AONB/Protected Landscape Board for some years and continues to sit on the Farming in Protected Landscape Assessment Panel, whichmakes grants on behalf of DEFRA to land managers in the Surrey Hills.
Her voluntary work has included chairing the board of the Surrey Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE Surrey) from 2014-2022. She joined on a working group for two years restructuring the association of CPRE charities at national level. She has just joined the board of trustees of Citizens Advice Mole Valley with a view to taking over from the current Chair in early 2025.
Joanne Lankester
BA (HDE)
BA in English and Psychology with a Higher Degree in Education.
Jo is South African and has lived in the UK for 27 years. Married with 4 children.
Director and Co-Founder of Lankester White Safaris, a luxury African travel company that focuses on excellence not only in service and accommodation, but are committed to supporting companies with proven sustainable and effective community and conservation projects.
Work history
A teacher by training, having specialised in sex education just as the reality of the impact AIDS would have on communities in Africa.
Working in publishing on conservation and environmental impact projects, as well as Primary Health Care AIDS manuals.
After a move to the UK, two years in the financial markets in the city was probably two years too long.
Back to publishing in the specialised field of Home Health Care manuals.
Charitable Works/Board positions
Fund raiser, events for Fauna and Flora International 1999 - 2001
Trustee of Friends of the Child Protection Unit - Founder trustee in 2004. FCPU gives support to those at the victims crime and support units in specific areas of Cape Town, as well as providing the child victims with comfort toys, toiletries and fresh underwear. Support for VCSUs in terms of providing counselling to simply ensuring victim support units had tea and coffee supplies reduced staff turn over, which in turn increased efficiency within the police force.
Yabonga UK Trustee, 2014 - 2018 Support for Yabonga Children's Project. Started in 1989 with the aim to support women running informal creches in their backyards. A children's centre in Khayelitsha (township in South Africa) offers food, art, sports and academic support and an emergency respite centre for victims of abuse.
Lankester White Safaris has also supported a number of street sports ‘clinics’ in Tanzania and South Africa, in the collection and shipment of used sports equipment and clothing.