Alex Wilmot-Sitwell graduated from the University with a degree in History in 1983 and went on to start his career in corporate finance at The English Trust. He moved to South Africa in 1991 and subsequently joined Robert Fleming as a Director in Corporate Finance in 1995. He joined SBC Warburg in 1996, which later became UBS. At 37, he became Head of UK Investment Banking at UBS and moved back to London. During his time at UBS, Alex worked on some of their biggest deals, including the restructuring of Lloyds Banking. At UBS, he went on to become Global Head of Investment Banking, co-CEO of UBS Investment Bank and finally CEO of UBS AG in APAC. He served on the Group Executive Board at UBS AG. In 2012 he joined Bank of America Merrill Lynch as the President of their business in Europe, Middle East and Africa. Today, Alex is a Partner at Perella Weinberg Partners’ advisory business based in London, having joined in September 2018. He has regularly been ranked as one of the 100 most influential people in the City. Alex was a Vice President of Save the Children UK from 2008 to 2014 and was on the Advisory Board of The Sutton Trust until 2018. Today he serves on the Advisory Board of the National Theatre. Alex was appointed as a Pro-Chancellor of the University of Bristol in December 2019.

Evelyn Welch became Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of Bristol in September 2022. Evelyn graduated from Harvard University, receiving her PhD from the Warburg Institute, University of London. She was previously Senior Vice-President for Service, People & Planning at King’s College London, and had been Vice-President (Arts and Sciences) and Provost (Arts and Sciences). She has taught at University of Essex, the Warburg Institute, and held leadership roles at University of Sussex (PVC Teaching and Learning) and Queen Mary, University of London (Dean, Arts and PVC Research and International). As Professor of Renaissance Studies, she has led major research programmes including ‘The Material Renaissance,’ and ‘Beyond Text: Performances, Sounds, Images’. She recently completed a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award for a project on ‘Renaissance Skin’ and has authored numerous books, including Fashioning the Early Modern: Creativity and Innovation in Europe, 1500-1800 (OUP 2017), and Shopping in the Renaissance (Yale 2005), winning the Wolfson Prize for History.

James Alexandroff studied law at the University of Bristol and graduated in 1979. He went on to qualify as a solicitor with Clifford Chance in London and subsequently became a fund manager with Stewart Ivory in Edinburgh, focusing on emerging markets. James then went on to join GT Asset Management in Hong Kong before co-founding an emerging market investment boutique, Arisaig Partners, in Singapore. James now advises the Perivoli Trust on their investment and philanthropic activities. He is particularly focused on the Trust’s portfolio of early-stage venture investments held through Perivoli Innovations and on the activities of the Perivoli Schools Trust, which runs a nursery school teacher programme in sub-Saharan Africa. He is a Trustee of the Perivoli Foundation, a UK charity which supports the Perivoli Africa Research Centre at the University of Bristol. He is Chairman of Governors of a prep school and a non-executive Director of Lindsell Train Investment Management, and in January 2023 he was awarded an OBE for his services to Education in Africa. He is married with four children and lives in Somerset.

Dr Una Ryan graduated from the University is 1963 with a degree in Zoology. She is a serial entrepreneur and investor with extensive experience leading public, private and non-profit companies. She currently sits on the boards of Cortexyme, RenovoRx and Elemental Machines. Una also serves on the Boards of Cambridge in America and is the Chair of the University of Bristol Foundation Inc. She is an LP at Breakout Ventures and an LP at Lionheart Ventures. Una focuses on women-led ventures as Managing Director of Golden Seeds, and a partner in Astia Angel. Una was President and CEO of Diagnostics for All, Inc. (DFA), developing inexpensive diagnostics for the developing world. She was President and CEO of Waltham Technologies, and President and CEO of AVANT Immunotherapeutics, Inc. (now Celldex) developing vaccines and immunotherapeutics for infectious diseases and cancer. Una is also translating science into art and has founded ULUX to bring new perspectives on science to the art world. As well as having a PhD from Cambridge University, Una has held Professorships of Medicine at University of Miami, Washington University, St Louis and Boston University. She has received numerous awards including the Albert Einstein Award (2007) for outstanding achievement in the life sciences, the Cartier Award (2009) and World Economic Forum Tech Pioneer (2011). In 2002 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II awarded Una the Order of the British Empire (OBE).

Henrietta Baldock graduated from the University with a BSc in Economics and Accounting in 1992. She went straight into the City and worked for Kleinwort Benson until 2000 and then Bank of America Merrill Lynch. She has 25 years of investment banking experience, focused on advising financial services companies on capital raising and mergers and acquisitions. She was a trusted advisor to boards of large cap companies on some of the biggest transactions in the financial services sector and advised UK banks and the Irish Government during the global financial crisis. Henrietta is currently the Chair of Legal & General Assurance Society and sits as a non-executive director on the board of Legal & General Group plc as well as Investec Limited in South Africa and Investec plc. She also sits on the board of Hydro industries, a Welsh water technology company developing, designing and operating solutions for water purification and industrial effluent processing. Henrietta lives in London and has twin sons aged 10. She does a lot of work for the NSPCC where she is a member of the NSPCC Rebuilding Childhoods Fundraising Board and Chair of the NSPCC City Fine Wine Challenge Committee.

Jason Katz read History at the University of Bristol and graduated in 1995. After graduating he joined S.G. Warburg (which subsequently became UBS Investment Bank) where he worked for 12 years. In 1998 Jason established a new sector team at UBS, with responsibility for coverage of the leisure sector. He grew this team into a highly profitable, market-leading franchise over the course of the following decade. Jason was the youngest Managing Director in the investment bank, aged 31, and won a leadership award. Jason left UBS in 2007 to establish Kings Park Capital, a private equity firm dedicated to investing in the leisure sector and backed by 70 illustrious individuals from within it. He has always maintained his links to Bristol, for which he holds a deep affection, and has grown a significant student rental business which now houses some 200 students. He is married to Davina Katz, one of the country’s leading divorce lawyers, and they have two daughters, Emmanuelle and Uma.

Dr Bhikhu Patel qualified as an architect at the University of Bristol during the 1970s and is now a serial entrepreneur. Together with his brother Vijay, he founded Chemys, a chain of retail pharmacies in the South East of England. In 1984 Bhikhu then went on to establish Waymade PLC, a distributor of pharmaceutical products throughout the UK. With a keen architect’s eye, Bhikhu built a property portfolio of commercial and residential properties under the brand Sovereign Property. After this successful diversification, Bhikhu and Vijay entered the global healthcare business, setting up Amdipharm in 2002 to acquire and market mature branded pharmaceutical products. Following on from Amdipharm’s success, Bhikhu created a similar business called Atnahs in 2013, which grew to over £100m in sales worldwide. Throughout his professional career, Bhikhu has donated substantial sums of money to hundreds of charitable projects - from building an eye hospital in India to funding educational bursaries in the UK. In honour of his mother, Shanta, who taught him to always give something back no matter how much or little you earn, he formalised the Shanta Foundation to provide health, shelter and education across the UK, India and Africa. In the last decade, he established Waymade Capital of which he is Co-Chairman, a family venture which re-invests the proceeds of the divestment of numerous businesses into startups and SMEs. Waymade Capital invests in the four pillars of pharma, property, private equity and philanthropy with assets under management of over £1billion.

Andrea Salvato is Senior Vice President and Chief Development Officer for Liberty Global, with responsibility for the group’s global mergers and acquisitions and business development activities, the central content function and the technology and media ventures portfolio. He is an executive officer of Liberty Global and sits on the company’s Executive Management and Investment Committees.

Andrea sits on the board of Virgin Media O2, the UK joint venture of Liberty Global and Telefonica S.A. He is also a director on the boards of Formula E and All3 Media. Before joining Liberty Global in July 2005, Andrea was a Managing Director at JPMorgan Chase’s investment banking division where he focused on advising telecommunications and media clients, including the predecessor companies to Liberty Global. Prior to JPMorgan Chase, Andrea held roles at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and Bain and Company. He studied Chemistry at the University of Bristol and is a former Courtaulds Chemistry Scholar.

Andrea is a Co-Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Street Child, a UK based charity which raises funds for children’s education in 16 countries across Africa and Asia. He is married with two children and lives in London.

Sam Smith studied Economics & Accounting at the University of Bristol and graduated in 1995. Sam is the only female Chief Executive of a City broking firm. She established her firm, finnCap, in 2007 having orchestrated the buy-out of a small broking subsidiary of a private client stockbroking firm. Today, finnCap is ranked as the number one nominated adviser and broker to AIM companies. Sam qualified as a chartered accountant at KPMG. She is passionate about ensuring that girls and women see only opportunities rather than barriers to success in whatever industry they want to be in. Outside her duties as CEO, Sam is actively involved in various mentoring projects and organisations such as Pinky Lilani’s 'Women of the Future' awards, of which Sam is a former winner. Sam is also a patron for the Modern Muse project, which aims to encourage and inspire millions of young girls throughout the UK to look at business careers and entrepreneurship as a way to achieve their dreams. Sam was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree by the University in 2019, in recognition of her pioneering work.

Nazir Razak graduated from the University of Bristol in 1988 with a degree in Economics and Politics and obtained an MPhil from the University of Cambridge in 1989. Nazir is currently the Chairman and Founding partner of Ikhlas Capital. He retired as Chairman of CIMB Group in October 2018 after a 29-year career with the ASEAN banking group. Nazir was recognised as Malaysia’s top executive/CEO on several occasions and was the youngest recipient of Finance Asia’s ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ in 2009. He was awarded Euromoney’s ‘Outstanding Achievement Award’ in 2012 and was winner of the prestigious ‘Asia House Asian Business Leaders Award’ in 2015. An advocate of ASEAN economic integration, Nazir was the inaugural Chairman of the World Economic Forum’s ASEAN Regional Strategy Group. He served on the Investment Panel for the Employees Provident Fund (2002-2017) and the Board of Khazanah Nasional (2014-2018). In 2009 Nazir was the Chevening Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies and in 2019 was the Transformational Leadership Fellow at the Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford University.

Jonathan de Pass graduated from the University in 1979 with a degree in medicine (MB ChB). He held junior hospital posts in Bristol, Leicester and London and then in 1982 attended Manchester Business School. In 1983 he began his business career as an investment analyst at Robert Fleming in the City of London. His specialisation was in life-science industries (pharmaceuticals and biotechnology) and over the next decade he became one of that sector's most highly ranked analysts.

From 1994 to 1995 Jonathan was a Sloan Fellow at London Business School. In 1996 he founded Evaluate.com, a data provider to the pharmaceutical industry and its community of advisors and investors. With a record of uninterrupted growth over more than two decades Evaluate became a leading provider of commercial intelligence to that sector. Jonathan was chief executive and then chairman until September 2020. He stepped down from the board in September 2021 when Evaluate merged with MMIT, a leading provider of market access solutions to the US pharmaceutical industry.