#285: Dr Alice Maynard CBE – NED & Chair

Dr Alice Maynard CBE

Alice has had a wide-ranging career. It began in the IT industry working in a range of roles in software development and localisation where she developed her approach to dovetailing outcomes between different stakeholders including customers and staff to get great results.

In 1991, she took a year out at Ashridge Management College to do an MBA. On completion she set up a company with her sister, using her business skills, and her sister’s legal background and understanding of disability equality issues. She spent six years as a consultant before taking up a role in the rail industry with a brief to create a national accessibility strategy for stations.

Following the stint in the rail industry, she founded her own business, Future Inclusion, to help leaders improve organisation performance through inclusive practice. Alice now has a portfolio of non-executive roles and is an executive coach/mentor. Through Future Inclusion, she also advises businesses on EDI.

Alice is non-executive career began in the nonprofit sector in the late 90s. Initially with local organisations, but later on a national scale, she was a trustee and chairman of a number of charities, including latterly Scope (2008-2014), the disability charity, and Swanswell, a drug and alcohol addiction charity, successfully merging Swanswell with Cranstoun in 2016.

Her nonprofit experience led her to join third sector colleagues in establishing the Association of Chairs, to improve performance through better chairing. In 2014 Alice won a Sunday Times Non-Executive Director of the Year award and received an honorary doctorate from the University of York. She received a CBE in the 2015 New Year Honours.

She currently sits as NED for the Financial Conduct Authority and chairs the People Committee. She is Chair of Council and Pro-Chancellor at the University of York. She is a member of the Government Commercial Office Remuneration Committee, and stood down from HMRC, where she chaired the People Committee, in 2022, and was a Board member of Transport for London until 2021.

Alice likes to work with organisations that are clear about the value they want to add to society, as well as focussing on their own success. She helps organisations increase their understanding of, and engagement with, their people in order to remove barriers in the way of fun, purposeful and rewarding work. She loves thinking about systems, the consequences of even small changes, and how we, as leaders, can best intervene to create change for social good.