About us
Our board comprises the Chairman, our Chief Executive, our Group Finance Director, our Group HR Director and a number of Non-executive Directors.
Adam Crozier
Chairman
Date of appointment to the board
April 2017 Chairman since March 2018
Adam was Chief Executive of ITV plc from April 2010 to June 2017. During his time as Chief Executive, ITV was transformed into a global media player of scale, delivering consistently good growth and with increasing emphasis on international content creation and distribution.
Prior to ITV, Adam was Chief Executive of Royal Mail, where he led its modernisation and transformed it from a heavily loss making position to profitability. He has also been CEO of The Football Association between 2000 and 2002 as well as joint CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi from 1995-2000.
ASOS plc (Non-Executive Chairman)
Vue International (Non-Executive Chairman)
Great Ormond Street Hospital Discovery Appeal (Trustee)
Remuneration Committee
Nomination Committee
Alison Brittain
Chief Executive
September 2015
Alison joined Whitbread from Lloyds Banking Group, where she was Group Director of their Retail Division, with responsibility for the Lloyds, Halifax and Bank of Scotland retail branch networks, remote / intermediary channels / products and the business banking and wealth businesses. Prior to joining Lloyds Bank, Alison was Executive Director for Retail Distribution and Board Director at Santander UK PLC. She previously held senior roles at Barclays Bank. Alison was named ‘Business Woman of the Year 2017’ in the Veuve Clicquot awards and awarded a CBE in the 2019 New Years honours list.
Marks and Spencer Group PLC (Non–executive director)
Prince’s Trust Council (Trustee)
Nicholas Cadbury
Group Finance Director
November 2012
Nicholas joined Whitbread in November 2012 as Group Finance Director. He previously worked at Dixons Retail PLC, in a variety of management roles, including Chief Financial Officer from 2008 to 2011. Nicholas also held the position of Chief Financial Officer of Premier Farnell PLC, which he joined in 2011. Nicholas originally qualified as an accountant with Price Waterhouse.
Land Securities Group Plc (Non-executive Director and Chairman of the Audit Committee)
Louise Smalley
Group HR Director
Louise joined Whitbread in 1995 and has held the position of Group HR Director since 2007. During her time at Whitbread, Louise has held a variety of HR roles across the Whitbread businesses, including HR Director of David Lloyd Leisure and Whitbread Hotels & Restaurants. She previously worked in the oil industry, with BP and Esso Petroleum.
DS Smith Plc (Non–executive director)
Richard Gillingwater
Senior Independent Director
June 2018
Richard is Chairman of both Janus Henderson Plc and SSE PLC, and served as a Non-Executive Director of Helical PLC and was former Pro-Chancellor of the Open University. Richard is a highly experienced executive and has spent much of his career in corporate finance and investment banking with Kleinwort Benson, BZW and Credit Suisse First Boston, before he moved out of banking and became Chief Executive of the Shareholder Executive and then Dean of Cass Business School.
Janus Henderson Plc (Chairman)
SSE Plc (Chairman)
Chris Kennedy
Non-executive Director
March 2016
Chris is Chief Financial Officer of ITV plc which he joined in February 2019. Prior to this, Chris held roles with Micro Focus International plc, ARM Holdings plc and easyJet plc, having previously spent 17 years in a variety of senior roles at EMI.
ITV plc (Chief Financial Officer) The EMI Group Archive Trust (Trustee)
Great Ormond Street Hospital Trust (Trustee)
Audit Committee (Chairman)
Deanna Oppenheimer
January 2017
Deanna spent over 25 years in a number of senior roles in banking at both Barclays Bank PLC and Washington Mutual Inc., where she ran retail banking across leading national branch franchises in the UK and US. Since 2012, through her family's hospitality business, she invests in boutique hotels in western US.
Hargreaves Landsown Plc (Non-executive Chair)
CameoWorks (Founder)
J&A Mentoring Partners (Mentor)
Tesco Plc (Senior Independent Director)
Remuneration Committee (Chair)
Frank Fiskers
February 2019
Frank is a highly experienced executive with a solid background in the global hospitality industry. He has held senior roles with The Radisson Hotel Group, Hilton Hotels Worldwide as well as the CEO of Scandic Hotels for eight years and took the company public in 2015.
Shurgard Self Storage SA (Non-executive director)
EQT (Industrial Adviser)
RAK Hospitality Holding
Audit Committee
Susan Taylor Martin
January 2012
Susan held a number of roles at Thomson Reuters, including President of Thomson Reuters Media, President of Global Investment Focus Accounts and Managing Director of Legal in the UK and Ireland. Prior to this she was Global Head, Corporate Strategy for Reuters, which she joined in 1993.
Horst Baier
November 2019
Horst is a highly experienced executive with more than 20 years background in the leisure industry. He was for 8 years the Chief Financial Officer of TUI AG, the London-listed anglo-german leisure travel group until the end of September 2018.
During his time as Board Member of TUI AG, Horst played an important role in TUI´s transformation from a tour operator to a global provider of holidays operating 380 leisure hotels and 17 cruise ships.
David Atkins
David is Chief Executive of Hammerson plc, former Chairman and Executive Board member of the European Public Real Estate Association (EPRA) and past President and a former committee member of Revo (formerly BCSC).
Hammerson plc (Chief Executive)
British Property Federation (Committee Member)
Reading Real Estate Foundation (Director and Trustee)