Trustees and Members

The trustees of Bellevue Place Education Trust sit on the BPET Board. The trustees are made up of four sponsor trustees – two appointed by Bellevue Education, two appointed by Place Group – two independent trustees, two parent trustees and one financial expert.

Declaration of Pecuniary and Personal Interests: BPET is required to publish a record of  its trustees’ business and personal interests annually, through the BPET Board Register of Interests.

Board of Trustees

Claire Delaney – Chair of Trustees and founding trustee

Claire has held a number of board level positions, most recently as an owner and director of Place Group Ltd and as the Chair of the Bellevue Place Education Trust. As Managing Director of Place Group, Claire has led an organisation that has a 23-year history of supporting major education transformation programmes in the UK. Place also supports public sector organisations focus on optimal back office delivery, efficiency and compliance. Claire brings strategic knowledge of the education sector as well as in depth commercial and business experience. Claire is also a BPET Member.

Ralf Jeffrey – Vice Chair

Ralf has worked in technology since the early 1990s having founded and run a number of businesses, and since 2007 consulted to a diverse range of organisation such as Old Mutual, Hargreaves Lansdown, Wayfair, Santander, O2, Aviva, M&G, Coutts and many more, helping them to transform the way they design, build and manage technology. He has worked in the UK, South Africa, Australia, Germany and the USA.

Ralf firmly believes that future generations should leave school with the knowledge and understanding of how to work within a technology enabled world. This means not just knowing how to use the technology, but understanding how it has changed the ways in which people interact within the workplace. Ralf's area of expertise covers cyber security.

Mark Malley - Founding trustee

Mark Malley is a founding trustee of Bellevue Place Education Trust and the founder and Chief Executive of Bellevue Education, a highly successful group of independent schools in the UK and Europe.

Mark has extensive experience in education, business leadership and school governance. Under his leadership, Bellevue has established a strong record of running successful schools, strengthening school leadership and performance, and supporting schools to grow and thrive while retaining their individual character. He founded Bellevue Education with the belief that excellent schools combine high academic expectations with outstanding pastoral care, inspiring leadership and a deep understanding of the communities they serve.

As a BPET trustee, Mark brings considerable strategic, financial and operational expertise, together with a long-standing commitment to providing children with an ambitious, broad and enriching education in exceptional local schools.

Chris Gallant

Chris has worked in marketing, communications and crisis communications for the past 20 years for a range of businesses within the education sector, including school travel, educational IT and training companies, as well as with schools directly. Now he is a Director of Pharos Response Ltd, a risk, reputation and crisis management business serving clients in the education, youth, travel and adventure sectors.

In addition, he has previously been a Parent Governor for an Outstanding primary school in Richmond before deciding to switch allegiance to join the Advisory Board of BPET’s Deer Park School when his daughter first become one of the founding 12 pupils of the school. Chris joined the BPET Board in December 2017 as an elected parent trustee.

Sandeep Jain

Sandeep is an experienced bank Chief Financial Officer (CFO) with over 30 years’ experience in global, start-up and domestic UK banks. He is currently, an independent consultant working with a range of start-ups and other banks primarily in finance and treasury areas. He is also a Board member and Chair of Audit Committee at a start-up in the process of applying for a UK banking license.

Sandeep has previously worked with Standard Chartered Bank, Revver Bank and Bank of Baroda UK Ltd, as CFO. Besides London, he has lived and worked in India, Singapore, New York and Indonesia. Sandeep has been an active board participant at all the institutions he has worked in. He holds a graduate accounting degree and an MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.

Cara Demetriades

Cara is a finance and operations professional who brings over 15 years of school business management experience to the BPET Board. As a past pupil of one of the BPET schools, she has a personal dedication to the trust's mission. Cara transitioned into education after a successful corporate career, which included serving as Director of Operations and IT at Barclays Capital. She has extensive experience developing strategy across both independent and state schools. Additionally, Cara is an accomplished fundraising consultant who has driven a range of community sports projects across London and the South East in partnership with Sport England, the London Marathon Trust, and the Football Foundation.

David Hatchett

David Hatchett joined the BPET Board of Trustees in December 2025 and is an experienced executive and non-executive leader. David is currently Chief Executive of a multi-academy trust of 15 primary and secondary schools, headquartered in London. Previously, he held senior executive roles in two other large national school trusts and in a FTSE 100 company, where he led major assessment contracts for the UK and overseas governments. David is also an experienced school leader, Ofsted inspector and co-authored several textbooks for a well-known publisher. He has a long-standing commitment to voluntary service, including work with young offenders in the local community and as a ‘Games Maker’ at the London 2012 Olympics. David brings extensive governance experience across multiple sectors, including primary education, a successful sixth form college, and an NHS Board. Alongside his trusteeship at BPET, he also serves as a Charity trustee on the Boards of Parentkind and the English-Speaking Union. David holds a BA (Hons) in Education with English, an MA in Education Leadership, and an MBA in Executive Management.

Justin Khaksar

Appointed in Dec 2025. Biog to follow shortly.

Trustee Attendance Record 2025-2026

For the attendance record for previous academic years, these are contained in the Audited Accounts for the relevant academic year.

Members

Claire Delaney and Mark Malley are both BPET Members.

Mervyn Douglas

Mervyn Douglas joined SVG Advisers in 2011 as a senior member of the investment team and sits on the SVG Capital Investment Committee. Prior to joining, he was a fund manager at Aviva Investors where he was responsible for the management of over £2 billion of UK Equities and the UK research analysts. Previously he was a UK equities fund manager at Legal & General and Schroder Investment Management. Mervyn achieved his AIIMR qualification and has a degree in Law from Nottingham University. Mervyn brings senior strategic business and finance experience.

Emma Thompson

Emma Thompson became a Member of BPET in May 2019. Emma has worked at Equality Now as the Director of Marketing and Communications since November 2017. Emma has spent nearly two decades developing creative marketing, brand and communication campaigns for not-for-profits organisations. Beginning her career at one of world’s biggest cancer research charities, she then moved on to work on three general elections at the Labour Party in the United Kingdom. Most recently, Emma served as the Marketing Director at the Royal Society for Blind Children. She holds a B.Sc. in Politics from Plymouth University in the UK and is accredited from the UK’s Institute of Direct Marketing.

Martin Chilcott

Chairman and CEO 2degrees Ltd and Manufacture 2030. Founder and non-executive director of The Innovation Gateway Ltd. Martin is a purpose-driven, environmental and digital entrepreneur whose focus for over 30 years has been on launching new, disruptive businesses that catalyse large scale change to industries to improve their social and environmental impacts. Martin was the founder and CEO of one of the UK’s earliest digital agencies, Clarity IBD Ltd. On its sale in 2000, he worked briefly in corporate IT as Global Head of Innovation at Proxicom Inc., and then as Group Marketing Director for Dimension Data plc. In 2003, he co-founded the education consultancy Place Group with Simon Rule and Claire Delaney and then went on to set-up clean energy incubator Meltwater Ventures and the sustainable business network 2degrees.

Last updated: August 2026