About UsOur Trustees

Cliff Hampton

Cliff Hampton became Board Chair in June 2016. Cliff has over 30 years of Investment Banking experience with Phoenix Securities, Donaldson, Lufkin &Jenrette and Chaired Lexicon Partners for 11 years and Fenchurch Advisory for 3 years.

He was previously the Chairman and Founder of Marshgate Developments Limited. He was Chairman of Godolphin & Latymer School for five years until 2018 and continues to sit on the School’s Bursary Fund, Development and Finance Committees. He was a founding partner of Vamizi, a luxury island retreat and conservation project in Mozambique.

He was appointed Global Chairman of Opportunity International in November 2018.

Michael Crofton-Briggs

Michael was the City of Oxford's most senior town planner for 13 years and overall his career as a chartered town planning professional spans nearly 40 years. After a successful career in local government, in 2015 he set up his own company, MCB Planning Ltd, and he has been working on a wide range of commissions in Oxford. Michael was invited to be a trustee of OIUK in 2017. He is also active as a trustee of an Oxford charity that supports the homeless and secretary of the PCC of a North Oxford church.

Nigest Haile

Nigest is the Founder & Executive Director of the Center for Accelerated Women’s Economic Empowerment (CAWEE), Trade Promotion Organisation involved in promoting women exporters. Nigest has over 30 years’ experience in enterprise development with a focus on women's enterprises, currently involved in facilitating intra-African trade, women taking the lead, among four countries: Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya and Rwanda.

She is one of the founders of Ethiopian Women’s Commercial Bank (Enat Bank). She is currently Advisory Board member for Women in Africa ( WIA) and Executive Board Member for Healing Hands of Joy.

Robert Goldspink

Robert was an international litigator and arbitrator in the City of London for over 30 years and head of litigation in two substantial firms. He has been an adviser to Opportunity International for over 10 years, been a trustee of OIUK since 2009; was on the board of Opportunity Tanzania from 2010-2013, and has worked with us extensively in Malawi. He was a non-executive director of the Serious Fraud Office from 2010-2013. He is a non-executive director of a financial institution;  has been a senior legal adviser to the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights in Berlin; runs a legal and governance consultancy; and also runs a small real estate development company. 

John Ford

John Ford is a holder of the right to use the Chartered Financial Analyst® designation and read Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford University. His expertise has been developed over a 25 year career in portfolio management, where he has held a number of senior roles – most recently as Chief Investment Officer of T. Rowe Price International. As well as his involvement with Opportunity International, he is chair of New Hope, a Christian charity working with those facing homelessness and is treasurer of his local church. John chairs Opportunity UK's Finance and Audit Committee.

Anne Grim

Anne Grim is an experienced executive turned advisor, consultant and non-exec Director with 30+ years in senior financial services leadership roles at Fidelity International, Barclays, Wells Fargo, American Express and Mastercard. Her expertise is in customer experience, strategic planning and execution, technology innovation and business transformation.

Anne joined the Opportunity International UK Board of Trustees in 2017. She is also a non-executive Board member for Insight Investment, Metro Bank PLC, Openwork Holdings Ltd, Plus500 and Advisor to the Investment Association's FinTech Engine.

Roger Witcomb

Roger Witcomb is currently Chair of Ofgem’s RIIO-2 Challenge Group.

In a career spanning nearly 50 years he has worked at the Competition and Markets Authority, the Competition Commission, Winchester University, Infraco and Globeleq (developers of infrastructure projects in developing countries), CDC, Anglian Water, Saxton Bampfylde, National Power, Winchester College, BP, Cambridge University and the Bank of England.

Hywel Rees-Jones

Hywel’s career was focused on the world’s poorer countries; initially as an agricultural economist working on development projects and programmes and latterly working in development finance and private equity. He spent over 20 years living and working in Africa, Asia and the Pacific. He was a Partner in Actis and later a Managing Director at CDC, the UK’s official development finance institution. At CDC he was responsible for building its microfinance portfolio. He has non-executive director experience in the finance sector in the UK and overseas. He was a Church Commissioner and is currently Treasurer of Church House Corporation.

Tineyi Emmanuel Mawocha

Tineyi is the Africa Regional Director for Opportunity International. He joined Opportunity International in 2014 as CEO of Urwego Opportunity Bank (UOB) (Rwanda), then CEO of Opportunity Bank Uganda from 2016 to 2020.

Tineyi has over 20 years experience in commercial and retail banking as well as microfinance. His initial training was in hospitality management and he worked in this industry in the UK and Zimbabwe.  Tineyi is an advisor and faculty member of Accion’s Board Leadership for Impact programme. He is also a member of the Governing Council for Waterford Kamhlaba United World College of Southern Africa.

James Copestake

James is Professor of International Development at the University of Bath. His research interests embrace agrarian change and rural development, development finance and its evaluation, the definition and measurement of poverty and wellbeing, and the political economy of development. His academic career has included being Director of the Centre of Development Studies, and Director of Studies for the professional doctorate in policy research and practice at the Institute for Policy Research.

James is a founding director of Bath Social and Development Research Ltd, a social enterprise dedicated to impact evaluation and has served on the board of several other charities. Prior to joining the University of Bath he worked as an economist and project manager for a variety of international development organisations.