Our leadership team
Our work is overseen by our Chief Executive Officer, Chief Operating Officer and a board of trustees. They are responsible for the governance and strategic vision of our work.
Olivia Marks-Woldman OBE, Chief Executive Officer
Olivia joined the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust (HMDT) as Chief Executive Officer in February 2012. She has overseen the growth of Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) around the country and a hugely increased media presence.
Olivia believes passionately that everyone, regardless of age or background, should know about the Holocaust, Nazi Persecution of other groups and more recent genocides, and should set aside time to remember all those who suffered. She feel privileged to be working for an organisation that enables people to do this, that encourages people to consider their own responsibilities, and that puts the life stories of those who were murdered and those who survived at the centre of commemorations.
Before joining HMDT, Olivia worked in a number of other charities, mainly in roles that involved political lobbying, policy development and stakeholder engagement. Olivia is also a trustee of the children’s disability charity, Kids.
Paul Lopez-Salzedo, Chief Operating Officer
Paul joined HMDT in 2024 as Chief Operating Officer. He has wide experience across commercial and not-for-profit sectors, including technology, security, telecoms, IT infrastructure, software and business development. This broad background helps ensure HMDT’s operations are innovative, resilient and effective.
At HMDT, Paul leads on operations, HR, finance, governance, risk and compliance, working closely with the Chief Executive and trustees. He focuses on sustainable systems that support the operation, enabling the national Ceremony and thousands of local Holocaust Memorial Day activities across the UK.
Paul is a keen environmentalist and active repairer, regularly volunteering at his local repair cafe’s.
Trustees
Our Trustees are from a broad range of backgrounds and contribute to our work through regular board meetings and liaison with our staff team.
Each Trustee stands for a minimum of one three-year term, and is eligible to be re-elected for one further three-year term after this time. Three of the places on our board are reserved for those from the Board of Deputies and two for the Holocaust Educational Trust.
Laura Marks CBE, Honorary Vice President
Laura is a consultant (The Common Good) and activist focusing on issues relating to faith and gender.
After a career in marketing, she founded Mitzvah Day in 2008, which brings people of different faiths together through social action, and now operates in over 20 countries.
Building on her interest in faith groups and in women, Laura co-founded Nisa-Nashim, a national Muslim Jewish women’s network in 2016 and has also set up a multi faith Women’s Faith Forum to feed into policy issues of today. She is former SVP of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and a current trustee of the Jewish Leadership Council and the Commonwealth Jewish Council.
Laura has advisory roles on the UK Freedom of Religion or Belief Forum and the Mayor of London’s Equalities Diversity and Inclusion advisory group. She is a regular contributor to BBC 2 Pause for Thought with Zoe Ball and writes and speaks regularly.
Laura joined the board of HMDT in 2013 and was Chair of the trustees from 2016-2025
Sir Sajid Javid, Chair
Sir Sajid Javid was appointed Chair of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust in 2025. He has served in senior roles in Government, including as Home Secretary, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, and Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. His experience in public service, combined with his longstanding commitment to tackling hatred and division, underpins his leadership of HMDT’s Board of Trustees.
As Chair, Sir Sajid works with the Chief Executive, trustees and staff to guide the organisation’s strategy and governance. He is committed to ensuring that Holocaust Memorial Day continues to play a central role in national life — commemorating the memory of the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, and bringing communities together to challenge prejudice and build a more cohesive society.
Sir Leigh Lewis KCB, Vice Chair
Following a career of nearly 40 years in the Civil Service – the last five as Permanent Secretary at the Department for Work and Pensions from 2005 to 2010 – Leigh has over the last nine years undertaken a variety of roles in the public, private and not for profit sectors. Currently Leigh is Vice President of the homelessness charity, St Mungo’s and he was previously Chair of Trustees at Drinkaware, the alcohol education charity.
In addition, he is a non-executive Director of Fair4All Finance, a body established by Government to promote affordable borrowing. Leigh is also a visiting fellow at Greenwich University Business School.
Leigh is a lifelong supporter and season ticket holder at Watford FC.
Brian Markeson – Treasurer
HE David Ashley
David has 30 years of diplomatic and international experience, working primarily on genocide and conflict prevention. Having studied history at Cambridge and SOAS, David worked for the UN in Cambodia, including advising on the establishment of the tribunal for Khmer Rouge leaders. After joining the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1999, David helped secure UK ratification of the International Criminal Court. He has subsequently worked to end conflicts and pursue justice in the former Yugoslavia, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Since January 2021, he is the British Ambassador to Madagascar.
David said: ‘My father, now 96, and all my grandparents were Jewish refugees from Germany. My wife is a Cambodian survivor of the killing fields. Unsurprisingly I feel passionate about the need both to honour the victims of the Holocaust and subsequent genocides, and to stop such crimes from being repeated in today’s world.’
David Austin OBE
David is the Chief Executive of the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), the UK’s independent regulator of film and video. In this capacity, he considers potential harmful content for the classification of theatrical films, online videos and websites, including about the Holocaust.
Before joining the BBFC, David worked in the Diplomatic Service, specialising in conflict resolution and post-conflict reconciliation in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
David says: ‘I learned a huge amount about tolerance and the fight against racism from my father, who as a young Czech Jewish boy, escaped the Nazis and came to England… From this personal experience I believe passionately in the work of the Trust to bring the wider community and future generations knowledge and awareness of the impact of the Holocaust and the lessons we should learn from it.’
Paul Giannasi OBE
Paul is currently the Hate Crime Advisor to the National Police Chiefs’ Council in the UK. Having accrued 30 years’ experience as a police officer, he advises on hate crime policy and coordinates national responses, managing ‘True Vision’ (www.report-it.org.uk) and the National Online Hate Crime Hub on behalf of the police. He is the co-author of the national Police Hate Crime Guidance which offers advice to all UK police officers and partners.
From 2007, until it ended in 2017, Paul led the cross-government Hate Crime Programme, which brought all sectors of government together with civil society, to coordinate efforts to improve the response to hate crime across the criminal justice system.
For over a decade, Paul represented the UK Government to international governmental agencies on hate crime. He has a number of publications and has worked to share good practice in many developing and post-conflict states, training professionals and assisting in policy development.
Michael Marx
Michael worked in business for many years and has been an active Trustee in the charity sector for decades. He is a Governor of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies and also of The Jonathan Levene Music Scholarship (a trust providing assistance to socially disadvantaged young and aspiring musicians). Until recently, he was a Trustee of JW3 (a significant Jewish cultural and community centre in London) and prior to that Chair of the London Jewish Cultural Centre as well as a trustee of The Separated Child Foundation (a trust providing comfort and welfare to separated child refugees in the UK).
For many years, whilst Michael was the Chairman of the London Jewish Cultural Centre, that organisation ran a Holocaust teaching and awareness programme; additionally, the organisation funded and produced the Holocaust Explained website to help learners understand the essential facts of the Holocaust, its causes and its consequences.
Michael’s late mother-in-law Mascha and most of her sisters and brothers were survivors of Auschwitz and other concentration and labour camps during the Holocaust and she provided testimony and was a lifelong lecturer of their terrible experiences.
Joan Salter MBE
Joan Salter is a child survivor of the Holocaust. In the 1970s, following a career as an official of the(Inner London Education Authority, she studied at the London School of Economics & Political Sciences, obtaining a BSc (Hons) in Social Science and Public Administration. Since the 1980s she has been involved in Holocaust education and research and has an MA in Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
In addition to her own Holocaust experience, her presentations and papers include Surviving Occupation in France, and Tarnow the life and death of a Polish Jewish Town. She has presented in schools, universities, and at corporate and civic memorial events as well at academic conferences in the UK, USA, Germany, Poland and Greece.
In 2018 she was awarded an MBE for services to Holocaust Education.
Phil Rosenberg
Phil Rosenberg is the 49th President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews. At 38, he is the youngest ever President in the Board’s 264-year history. Phil is the Deputy for Brondesbury Park Synagogue. A consultant specialising in government relations, media, faith and diplomacy, he has served as an elected local councillor in the London Borough of Camden and was previously Director of the Faiths Forum for London. Phil is married to Frances.
Julian Blake
Julian Blake is a barrister at the public law chambers of 11 King’s Bench Walk. He was called the Bar after completing his studies at Cambridge and Yale Universities, ultimately specialising in international security studies. Before taking up pupillage, Julian worked with condemned prisoners in Uganda at the Foundation for Human Rights Initiative.
In his professional life Julian has been appointed to the Attorney General’s ‘A’ panel of counsel, representing His Majesty’s Government in some of its most challenging and important cases. This includes several appearances in the Supreme Court, the largest ever sanctions case, and as Counsel to the Inquiry in the Post Office IT Inquiry.
Julian’s grandparents escaped from Nazi Germany and Czechoslovakia, with many close family members sadly killed, including his great-grandfather in Theresienstadt. Alongside his HMDT work and other charitable causes, Julian currently serves as a Trustee and Honorary Vice President of the Jewish Leadership Council.