Board Members

Nest is a trust-based workplace pension scheme run by a Trustee, the Nest Corporation. The Trustee is comprised of up to 15 Board Members and the employees of Nest Corporation. The Board Members are collectively referred to as the Board of Nest Corporation, or simply the Board.

The Chair and Board Members set the strategic direction and objectives of Nest. They also have a number of legal duties, including making sure that the scheme is run in the interests of its members.

The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is looking to appoint five new Nest Board Members. We welcome and encourage applications from a diverse range of candidates. Prior non-executive experience is not essential for these roles.

Interested in becoming a Board Member?

If you’re interested in applying and would like to learn more, please watch our webinar from 7 February 2024. Listening to the webinar, which is a panel discussion with the Nest CEO, two current Board members and the Head of Responsible Investment, you will hear about what it’s like to be a Nest board member, the importance of the role, and how to apply for one of these vacancies.

You can also read through FAQs that were raised during the webinar.

More information on the roles available and the application process can be found on the public appointments website.

Board Member profiles

Brendan McCafferty, Chair

Brendan was appointed Chair of the Board of Nest Corporation by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions effective 1 February 2022.

He has been at the forefront of public body collaborations between industry and government. He has also successfully led major transformational strategic change in regulated financial institutions deploying new digital technologies and data analytics. Most recently, he led the transformation and sale of an insurance business for a private equity shareholder, and was CEO (Intermediated and Direct) at AXA Insurance UK plc. He was also the founding CEO of Flood Re Ltd, an innovative Public Body venture between the government and the insurance industry. He is a non-executive director of NPA Insurance Limited.

A qualified accountant, Brendan is also a Trustee of two registered charities – Blueprint for Better Business, which encourages companies to be a force for good in society, and the Catholic Dioceses of Salford – for many years.

Helen Dean CBE, Board Member and Chief Executive Officer

Helen has been a leading player in delivering pension reform, having worked at the DWP to design a solution to the UK’s problem of chronic under-saving in pensions. She has worked in pensions for 20 years, firstly from inside government as a regulator and then as a policy maker.

She led the product marketing and operations arms of Nest Corporation before becoming CEO in September 2016. She is a mentor to women in the pensions industry and has established a senior leadership programme to cultivate the next generation of diverse leaders for Nest Corporation’s future.

Helen is also a non-executive trustee director of the debt charity StepChange, a member of HM Treasury’s Asset Management Taskforce and a governor of the Pensions Policy Institute.

Chris Hitchen, Board Member

Chris re-joined the Board in 2018, having previously served as a Board member from 2010 to 2015. He has over 30 years’ experience in investment and pensions.

He is Chair of the Border to Coast Pensions Partnership, investing money for 11 Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) pension funds with assets under management totalling £60 billion, as well as Chair of the Nuclear Liabilities Fund, investing to pay the 100-year costs of safely decommissioning nuclear power stations. For twenty years, Chris was Chief Investment Officer and then CEO of the 350,000-member UK Railways Pension Scheme.

Chris chaired the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association (PLSA) from 2007 to 2009 and was the inaugural Chair of the Pensions Quality Mark, raising standards in defined contribution (DC) pensions. He has also served as a board member for the Toronto-based International Centre for Pensions Management and for the UK’s Investor Forum, which promotes strategic dialogue between companies and investors.

Chris is an actuary and an honorary fellow of the CFA Society of the UK.

Myfanwy Barrett CB, Board Member

Myfanwy has served as a non-executive director at The Pensions Ombudsman (TPO) since 2021. She is a qualified accountant (CPFA) and her executive career was in public finance. She was Corporate Director of Finance at Harrow Council and Managing Director of Corporate Services at the House of Commons. She has experience leading a wide range of services, including the MPs’ pension scheme and the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS), as well as strategic planning, people and portfolio management.

Myfanwy is currently also a Director of Plumbing Pensions (UK) Administration Ltd, Senior Independent Board Member at Ocean Housing Group, Trustee/Treasurer of Morrab Library and Newlyn Art Gallery & The Exchange, and a member of two Tate Committees.

In 2018 she was awarded the Most Honourable Order of the Bath, Companion (CB).

Karen Cham, Board Member

Karen is Professor of Augmented Intelligence, Digital Transformation and Design at Kingston Business School. Here, she heads up 'The BRAINS Lab' with behavioural scientist, Professor Gealle Vallee Tourangeau, an interdisciplinary unit dedicated to an inclusive, ethical and sustainable digital future. Karen’s research concerns designing for persuasion, emotion, and trust, and she specialises in the digital transformation of values at scale and ethical practice.

Her previous role at the University of Brighton was professorial lead for Connected Futures research and enterprise, which included digital economy, digital health, complex systems and immersive, simulation and virtualisation. As part of this, she was also academic lead of the Digital Catapult Centre Brighton and the 5G Brighton project, part of the government’s 5G strategy.

Karen is an internationally recognised expert in user experience design and engineering behaviour change. She has worked in e-commerce, ﬁntech, health and care, arts and heritage, games, e-learning, military and defence. In her 28-year career in human-centred design and build her clients have included PlayStation, Diesel, ITV, Topshop, Which?, Ernst & Young (EY) and ?What If! Innovation.

She is a fellow of the RSA, the royal society for arts, manufactures and commerce.

Sarah Laessig, Board Member and Senior Independent Director

Sarah is a seasoned non-executive director who brings experience in financial services, pensions, government, and data and digital to her role on the Board.

She serves as a non-executive director of United Trust Bank and Local Pensions Partnership Investments. Sarah is a member of the Board of Advisors of data.world, a cloud-native enterprise data company, and a past director of CG Pension Trustees Ltd, the trustee for Citi (UK) Pension Plans. She also served a five-year term as a Civil Service Commissioner, chairing open recruitment competitions for senior posts in the civil service for HM Government. Sarah was previously an executive at Citigroup, managing businesses across developed and developing markets. She is an Ambassador of Women on Boards UK.

Richard Lockwood, Board Member and Chief Financial Officer

Richard has been part of Nest Corporation’s executive team since 2014. From the controls environment to the culture, he has been involved in helping us to mature from a start-up to one of the UK’s biggest workplace pension providers. He initially managed the finance and procurement teams. Over time, he has added people and development, IT and facilities, internal communications, and central change into his remit, while also becoming Deputy CEO.

As executive champion for diversity and inclusion, Richard has led a programme of work that is helping to increase staff awareness of, and openly discuss and tackle, biases and barriers. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Diversity Project, a cross-company initiative working to create a more inclusive culture in the financial sector.

Richard is a chartered management accountant. His career over the last 30 years includes roles in a number of blue-chip UK retail and consumer product companies including Home Retail Group plc, BAA plc, Kingfisher plc, Whitbread plc and BP plc.

Martin Turner, Board Member

Martin has 37 years’ experience working within the financial services industry in companies such as Barclays plc and Lloyds Banking Group plc. He has had a broad range of roles, both in the UK and overseas, ranging from front-line customer service and relationship management through to strategy and transformation and IT and operational service delivery.

More recently, he has had group-level accountabilities in the second-line risk function including operational risk, regulatory compliance, internal risk reporting and external risk disclosures. This has included overseeing significant structural reform programmes driven by regulatory and legislative requirements.

Martin retired from full-time executive roles at the end of 2016. He is currently a non-executive director and trustee with AQA Education, where he chairs the audit, risk and compliance committee.

Nina Hingorani-Crain, Board Member

Nina has had a diverse 25-year career with leadership roles in the public, regulatory, corporate and charity sectors. Her executive career was largely in financial services and includes ten years advising UK and global financial services organisations, followed by ten years in senior roles at the UK’s financial regulator, including as Chief of Staff and Principal Private Secretary to the Chair during the global financial crisis. After leading the establishment of the Financial Conduct Authority, Nina undertook a six-month secondment to Age UK to inform the strategy of placing consumer needs at the heart of the new regulatory mandate, which laid the groundwork for the regulatory focus on vulnerable customers. Since 2015, Nina has focused on a non-executive career and has sat on several Boards in the public and private sectors. She currently serves on the Boards of National Savings & Investments, and an NHS Foundation Trust.

Helen Copinger-Symes, Board Member

Helen has over 30 years’ experience in financial services, initially in fixed income capital markets, followed by an extensive career in institutional asset management focusing on investments for UK pension funds. She has worked for several global investment firms including Deutsche Asset Management, Invesco Perpetual, AllianceBernstein and State Street Global Advisors, in addition to a boutique equity hedge fund. Helen currently serves as a non-executive director on the Pension SuperFund (PSF) Holdings and PSF Sponsor boards. She is a Trustee for the Rifles Regimental Museum Trust and is a Trustee and Chair of the Investment Committee for DHL (UK) Foundation overseeing the Foundation’s portfolio of assets.

Nikki Marsh, Board Member

Focusing on driving customer-centric culture in organisations, Nikki has had a successful leadership career in financial services spanning thirteen years, including ten years in the mutual sector, interspersed with seven years as a senior civil servant in the public sector. She has covered a broad range of roles within her career including marketing, digital transformation, and communications. She also spent several years as a Trustee for a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to improving the way people are cared for and supporting staff who deliver care and is currently a non-executive director at Penrith Building Society and an executive coach.