Meet the Trustees

Abi has been serving as Responsible Business Director at Centrica since 2018. She has over 20 years working across sustainability, social impact, marketing and corporate-charity partnerships bringing a wealth of experience in combining purpose-led strategy with commercial insight.

Abi previously held senior roles at FTSE 100 companies including retailers Tesco and Kingfisher, working across the full marketing mix and a range of social impact programmes, developing a deep understanding of customer behaviour and operations.

As a mum of two young boys, she feels passionately about Starlight’s work because she recognises how the power of play can support children’s health and wellbeing. Her favourite childhood memories of play are being outdoors with her brothers, cousins and a bunch of family friends, running round playing tag, climbing trees, and inventing variations on hide and seek.

Christian is VP and General Manager of the LEGO Group for UK and Ireland. He brings experience in strategy, marketing and sales and deep knowledge of the power of play in childhood.

Since 2012, Christian has been in a variety of senior roles at The LEGO Group in Germany, Denmark and the UK, where he has held his current position since 2020. Prior to joining the LEGO Group, his career included working at the consulting firm The Boston Consulting Group in Germany, Finland and across Western Europe.

For him play connects people, relieve stress, and allows people to explore new possibilities and be creative. His favourite childhood memory of play is when he and his brother would lock themselves away for hours to play with their LEGO® bricks and other toys. It was a sacred place to go whenever they wanted to have fun or just spend time together. As a father of four, play is immensely important to him. Of course, now he plays with LEGO® bricks with his children.

Alain Wolffe is a former Executive Director of Strategy and Governance at Canada Life.

He brings a wealth of corporate governance and strategy development experience to the Board as well as empathy and interest in Starlight Children’s Services as the father of a teenager with cerebral palsy.

Dr Chris Kelly is a clinician research scientist in the health artificial intelligence team at Google, and a paediatrician at the Evelina Children’s Hospital in London. He brings experience of children’s services in the NHS, combined with an interest in how technology can improve children’s experience of healthcare.

Starlight was first brought to Chris’ attention whilst working as a paediatrician. He was so grateful for everything Starlight provided, and he witnessed the power of play positively impacting not only patients and families, but also the staff too.

Growing up, play time for Chris meant making models, building little robots, and being outside playing rugby, swimming and tennis.

Ian Harding is the Managing Partner at Arcus Infrastructure Partners and brings with him a wealth of fundraising, financial and governance expertise.

Ian himself doesn’t particularly like hospitals, so really appreciates how the power of play and distraction help to alleviate concerns for children in hospital.

The majority of Ian’s spare time during childhood involved playing football. Using jumpers as goalposts, Ian and his friends would play the days away. Plus, to their parent’s relief, they burnt off a lot of energy!

Alasdair Hadden-Paton is Honorary Chair of Fundraising. In November 2023, he stepped down from the Board of Trustees and his role as Vice Chair, having served since 2001. He will continue in his role as Chair of the Starlight Blenheim Ball Committee, bringing together a talented and creative group of people who’ve successfully organised not one but two balls at Blenheim Palace raising nearly £2 million combined.

Alasdair is a Chartered Accountant with over 30 years financial experience in the luxury goods, hotel, property investment and venture capital sectors.

He continues to work with Starlight because it never ceases to amaze him how such simple things can transform a child’s treatment, recovery and mental attitude.

Alasdair loved the characters from the Noddy books growing up and his family gardener, Mr Seamons, made up lots of wonderful stories about him. When Mr Seamons died, Alasdair’s mother told him Noddy was looking after him and they lay flowers at his grave in the shape of Noddy.