New Trustees appointed at Holocaust Memorial Day Trust

David Ashley, John Howell OBE MP and Rev Mark Poulson will join existing Trustees to oversee the work of HMDT, providing valuable strategic direction and governance.

Chair of Trustees, Laura Marks OBE, said: ‘We are very pleased to welcome David, John and Mark who are joining our diverse Trustee Board. I look forward to working with them to help increase the reach and impact of Holocaust Memorial Day, particularly at this time as we are looking forward to the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau in January 2020.

‘Our Trustees contribute so much to HMDT and bring their unique skills and knowledge to help guide our work. As we welcome new Trustees, I also want to thank Fiyaz Mughal OBE for his invaluable support, as he reaches the end of his term and leaves our Board after six years.’

Our Trustees come from a broad range of backgrounds and contribute to our work through regular board meetings and liaison with the HMDT staff team.

Read more about each of the new Trustees below:

David Ashley

David has nearly 30 years of diplomatic and international experience, working on genocide and conflict prevention. Having studied history from 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 (FCO) in 1999, David helped secure UK ratification of the International Criminal Court. He has since worked to end conflicts and pursue justice in the former Yugoslavia, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. He is currently responsible for Syria and Iraq in the FCO.

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.’

John Howell OBE MP

John Howell OBE is the Member of Parliament for the Henley Constituency. He has a long interest in the Holocaust and the individuals who perished at the hands of Nazi Persecution, and also in more recent genocides. He has wide international contacts and interests including Africa and Central Europe where the genocides in Rwanda and Srebrenica occurred. He believes it is vital to remember what happened in these conflicts, to root out Holocaust denial and to protect the world from further antisemitism (anti-Jewish hatred) in particular.

John has served in Parliament in various roles and has been a longstanding member of the Justice Select Committee. He is the Prime Minister’s Trade Envoy to Nigeria, and also sits as a UK representative on the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). John is an Associate of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators where his interests include arbitration and especially mediation.

Rev Mark Poulson

Mark taught for nine years in two state secondary schools in inner urban West Midlands until being ordained in the Church of England in 2000. He served parishes in Wembley and Southall in London and was the Inter Religious Relations Adviser to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Church of England until 2018.

He is now Canon for Interfaith Relations at St Paul’s Cathedral. Still passionate about education, he is governor of two Southall schools – primary and secondary. He is developing a training hub for cross-cultural and interfaith awareness training called the Kings Centre Southall.