Rory Brooks : Co-Founder & Trustee 

Rory Brooks is co-founder of the international private equity group MML Capital Partners. Rory graduated from UMIST (now University of Manchester) in 1975. He funded the UK’s first chair in Enterprise at the University of Manchester in 2001.

In 2005 the Rory and Elizabeth Brooks Foundation became the principal benefactor of the Brooks World Poverty Institute, which was merged with the Institute for Development Policy and Management in 2015 to create the Global Development Institute (GDI). The Foundation continues to support the GDI.

Rory is the inaugural Chair of the University of Manchester’s International Advisory Board having previously been Chair of the Global Leadership Board for eleven years. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University in October 2010.

Rory is a previous Chairman of the Board of the Centre for Social Justice and is an inaugural Trustee of the newly formed CSJ Foundation. He is Chairman of the Quintessentially Foundation, where he has been an advisor since the Foundation’s inception in 2010. Rory was a member of the 2012 Government Task Force on Philanthropy in Higher Education, the “Pearce Report”, and was Chairman of the Giving Summit Action Group on Philanthropy in Education. In 2015, Rory was awarded the CASE Volunteer of the Year Award.

In November 2015, Rory received his CBE for charitable services through the Rory and Elizabeth Brooks Foundation and the Brooks World Poverty Institute at the University of Manchester.

Elizabeth Brooks: Co-Founder & Trustee  

Elizabeth Brooks worked for twenty years across the communications industry, in public relations, advertising and fashion magazine publishing in Boston, New York and London.

She has a keen interest in the visual arts and is a past Chair of the Tate Patrons Executive Committee, is the co-chair of the Tate’s Photography Acquisition Committee and is a patron of a number of arts organisations including the Directors Circle of The Photographer’s Gallery.

In 2015, following a pilot funded by the Foundation, The Brooks International Fellowship was set up at Tate. The Foundation also supports the highly acclaimed ARTiculation Prize.

Elizabeth supports the Rugby Portobello Trust, which works with disadvantaged and excluded youth in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Rugby Portobello Trust merged with P3, People, Potential and Possibilities, a social exclusion charity and social enterprise, where Elizabeth served as a Trustee for many years.

Bridget Fury: Trustee  

With more than 25 years of experience, working at the nexus of philanthropy and social development, Bridget is a trusted, strategic advisor to philanthropists, HNWIs, Foundations, Business and Government high net worth individuals on all aspects of communications, corporate and individual philanthropy on the allocation of catalytic capital, public-private partnerships and CSI and Corporate Responsibility.

Bridget Fury started her career in South Africa, and subsequently spent years working in London. She is now based in Johannesburg and London, where she is consulting to multi-national companies on innovating around Responsible Business, developing venture philanthropy and social enterprise models. She also continues to work internationally and maintains her international networks.

Until 2022, Bridget served as the Head of Oppenheimer Generations Philanthropies, the social investment arm of Oppenheimer Generations, which seeks to generate positive social impact by unlocking catalytic investment in underfunded areas, with a focus on inclusive economic growth, job creation, impact investment and inclusive models for wildlife and conservation economies. She led the establishment of the South African Future Trust, an independent trust set up with a donation of R1billion in response to the covid-19 crisis in 2020, which supplied interest-free loans to 10 000 SMMEs. Additionally, Bridget held the position of South African Director of the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) and has a wealth of experience in and understanding of the SMME sector. She is on the National Task Force for Impact Investing in South Africa and is passionate about the role of innovative philanthropy in achieving sustainable social development.

Bridget advised the Rory and Elizabeth Brooks Foundation since its inception in 2005 and has been involved in all aspects of the Foundation’s philanthropic activities.

Rebecca Eastmond: Trustee 

Rebecca Eastmond is Co-Founder and CEO of Greenwood Place, which she created to leverage the experience she gained over 20 years’ work in philanthropy.

Rebecca began her career as a charity lawyer at Allen & Overy, then became CEO of The Prince’s Foundation for Arts & Kids - taking it from a start-up to working with 33,000 children.  

She was a Managing Director of J.P. Morgan Private Bank, leading the bank’s philanthropy advisory offering in EMEA for almost a decade.  

Rebecca serves on the board of two grant-making foundations.

She is also a trustee of Smart Works, and a global council member for Acumen, very different organisations that share a common approach of listening hard to the people they seek to serve and giving them access to the tools they need to build their own better futures. She was a founder trustee of the House of Illustration.

She served on the board of the UK’s Philanthropy Review and has received numerous awards for her work in philanthropy. She read law at Oxford University and qualified as a solicitor in England and Wales.

Greenwood Place 

The Trustees are supported in their activities by Greenwood Place.