Meet the team

The Good Business Charter is an initiative of the Good Business Foundation, a charity registered in England and Wales. The Good Business Charter team works closely with the TUC (Trades Union Congress), IoD (Institute of Directors) and FSB (Federation of Small Businesses) among others to ensure that the voices of both businesses and workers are heard.

Our core team

Jenny Herrera | CEO

Jenny is in charge of the everyday running of GBC. She is the person who co-ordinates our largest organisations and bridges communication between the GBC trustees and the GBC team.

Sam Beardall | Head of Community & Places

Sam works with anchor organisations and local businesses to create GBC Places and develop communities of responsible businesses. She also works closely with smaller GBC organisations to support them with their accreditation.

Julie Allen | Impact & Support Manager

Julie is our Impact and Support Manager focusing on our larger GBC organisations; building relationships and working closely with them to offer support and champion best practice.

Hunter Hampton-Matthews | Head of Growth

Hunter is in charge of our accreditations and renewals, and helps organisations on their responsible business journey and towards GBC accreditation.

Mark Olivier | Accreditations & Renewals Administrator

Mark is responsible for the processing of new accreditations and renewal applications and for undertaking compliance reviews on existing accredited organisations.

Harriet Gilholm | Marketing & Communications Officer

Harriet is our Marketing & Communications Officer responsible for GBC’s marketing, events, PR and communications, elevating the organisation’s impact and visibility.

Our history

The Good Business Foundation was established in Autumn 2019 to develop the Good Business Charter accreditation. It launched in February 2020 with Capita as our first member, joined by other founder members Deloitte, Brompton Bicycles, Richer Sounds and London City Airport. It quickly attracted more members including small businesses and charities until the coronavirus pandemic slowed its progress. In spite of the pandemic, St. James’s Place joined in June 2020 as the first FTSE100 member, and TSB joined as the first retail bank in August 2020.

In January 2021 Federation of Small Businesses and the Good Business Foundation collaborated on a streamlined version of the Good Business Charter that was promoted for organisations with up to 50 employees and led to increasing number of organisations joining the scheme, making it the largest accreditation scheme in the UK, measuring responsible business behaviour.

The vision was then to see the GBC promoted across all sectors in a particular town, city or region as something to aspire to and sign up to. At the end of June 2021, York became the first GBC City with the University of York becoming the first University to join and Aviva the first insurance company. You can read more about what we define as a GBC City in our blog post here.

The Chief Executive of the Good Business Foundation is Jenny Herrera, who is both a chartered accountant and experienced charity CEO, having built up two successful national charities from scratch, one supporting victims of anti-social behaviour and the other helping people in poverty.

Our Trustees

Simon Fox

Simon Fox, previously Chief Executive of Reach plc, the company that owns the Daily Mirror, Express and Star newspapers, is chairing the board of trustees.

John Foster

John Foster is Director of Policy and Communications at the CBI.

Tim Sharp

Our TUC trustee representative is Tim Sharp who is a Senior Policy Officer with responsibility for its work on employment rights.

Katherine Chapman

Katherine Chapman is Director of the Living Wage Foundation, and brings her considerable expertise in running an accreditation scheme to the board of trustees.

Kirsty Watt

Kirsty Watt is an Advisor to the Board of Trustees at the Good Business Charter. She is the Director of Strategy and External Affairs at ACAS, overseeing policy, research, communication and partnership work.

Julian Richer

The Good Business Charter was the idea of Julian Richer who is the initial funder and a trustee of the Good Business Foundation also.

Acknowledgements

The GBC is partnering with the Living Wage Foundation, the Ethical Trading Initiative and the Prompt Payment Code amongst others as part of its accreditation process as it prefers to work with respected, established operators in their respective fields.

The GBC team would like to thank Julie Abraham, Robert Bamforth, Alistair Crane, Lol Lecanu, David Robinson, George Turner, Scott Wood and Claudia Vernon for their help in setting up the Good Business Charter. We would also like to thank Jennie Colville, Kasia Gulyk Rutkowska and Hannah Winter from Capita, Alex Maitland from Oxfam, and Tim Coote and Martin Peters from Commotion for their help in the developing the GBC.

We would also like to thank Unsplash and all the gifted, generous photographers whose amazing work has helped to illustrate this website.

Photo of Julian Richer: Gerardo Jaconelli