British Weight Lifting Announces Four Board Members

British Weight Lifting are pleased to announce the appointment of four new Non-Executive Directors, who take up their positions with immediate effect.  Following a highly successful recent recruitment campaign Jane Fenwick, Rupinder Ashworth, Matthew Curtain and Neil Wood have been appointed to the British Weight Lifting Board.

Matthew Curtain is well-renowned both Internationally and within the UK and joins with a wealth of weightlifting and sporting experience. He is currently the Sport Director of FITEQ, a new International Federation responsible for the sport of Teqball, Chair of the Netball World Cup 2023 Bid Evaluation Committee and a member of the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) Sport Programme Commission.  Prior to this, he served the Commonwealth Games Federation as their first-ever Director of Sport and International Federation Relations from 2014 to 2018, primarily responsible for designing the sports programme for the Commonwealth Games editions of 2022 to 2030 and in regard to Gold Coast 2018 he was responsible for developing and delivering the innovative and inaugural athlete quota framework, qualification systems and medal-event gender equity strategy that was applied for the first time.

Jane Fenwick is an all-round senior manager with broad commercial experience gained across a number of public, not for profit and private sector organisations.  These have included Asda, McVities, SimplyHealth, Leeds University Business School and Northern Powergrid.  She has held a number of senior roles and brings experience in marketing, corporate communications and stakeholder engagement.  Jane set up her own company around 4 years ago working with a range of businesses on key strategic projects.  She enjoys running, entertaining and travel.

A creative and marketing strategy consultant with 25 years’ experience, Rupinder Ashworth is vastly experienced at working with boards and business owners to develop marketing strategies that translate into pragmatic workable actions that make a difference to business success. Her work has taken her from Shell to Ford and over to the agency side working on everything from alcohol with Diageo, Motorshows for Ford, new tech launches with Ericsson and Sony, sales programs for Adidas, retail design and strategy for Bose and electric car start up planning.  Rupinder is also a Trustee and Non-Executive Director for The Piece Hall Trust in Halifax - a £20m+ regeneration of the oldest remaining cloth house built in the Georgian era - providing strategy, marketing and branding services and governance. The restoration of this building and everything within is forming the foundation of a cultural, creative and commercial regeneration of Halifax and Calderdale and has re-opened to rave reviews from across the world.

Neill Wood was appointed to the Board on 18 December 2018. Neill is currently leading the operational finance team as Financial Controller of City Football Group. As a Big-4 audit-trained financial professional and Chartered Accountant, Neill provides more than ten years of finance expertise, working with international listed and privately-owned businesses in an advisory capacity, as well as currently working at the highest level of elite football.  Neill is a Loughborough Sport Science and Maths graduate and currently works closely with and advises the Audit Committee, Compensation Committee and the Board of an internationally recognised elite sporting organisation, in his role as Financial Controller at Manchester City Football Group. Neill, who will Chair the BWL Audit Committee moving forwards also brings a strong passion for sport and wellbeing to the Board. 

We are also delighted to announce that two existing Non-Execs, Guy Taylor and David Knaggs, have agreed to serve another four-year term on the Board; providing continuity to the team.

Interim-Chair Patrick Roberts commented, “Volunteers are absolutely core to everything that we do at BWL and I am very grateful to our Board members, old and new, for the time and expertise they give to ensure that our sport is well governed.  I would also like to thank a number of Board members who have recently finished.  Malcolm Boyd and Peter Rowley both retired in September; whilst Catherine Eastham and Michele Verroken stepped down in December, having completed their four-year terms.”

BWL are currently initiating the process to find a new Independent Chair to be in post from 31 March 2019 onwards and further details will be released very soon.