Amongst all of the other things we’ve been doing to get OCF up and running as a new organisation, before Christmas we put out the call for people who would be interested in sitting on the Online Centres Foundation board. There was a great response, and so (drumroll please…) I’m delighted I can now reveal our fantastic list of new board members.

Our chair will be Lord Knight of Weymouth, Jim Knight, Labour MP 2001-2010 and former Schools and then Employment Minister, and then becoming a Life Peer in 2010; Jim is currently working with ITN Consulting, TSL Education, Apple Europe, and Alderwood Education. Jim has long been a supporter of UK online centres, and is passionate about the benefits being online can provide to everyone.

Joining him will be five external board members:

Roger Darlington, Chair of the Digital Consumer Expert Group, Member for England on the Communications Consumer Panel, and Deputy Chair of the Policy Stakeholder Committee of Nominet.

Simon Milner, UK Policy Director at Facebook

William Perrin, Founder of Talk about Local and of the charity Indigo which works with technology developments in Africa

Nick Stanhope, CEO of We Are What We Do

Liz Williams, General Manager of Corporate Responsibility at BT

I was bowled over by the quality of the people wanting to sit on our board, and also their commitment and real passion for supporting the organisation and moving it forward to become a sustainable social enterprise. In the end, the candidates were so strong that we chose five external board members instead of the three we’d originally set out to find.

Of course, we wouldn’t be a staff-owned mutual without electing some staff directors, and so I can now introduce you to them as well:

Pete Carr is our Community Champions Manager and works on the community hub programmes for UK online centres. Pete was Director of Gloucestershire Open College Network before managing learndirect hubs.

Vic Stirling is the Quality and Audit Manager for UK online centres, and has lots of experience in managing networks and funding.

Charlotte Wheat is UK online centres’ Senior Marketing, Training and Communications Manager, and is an expert in running large-scale marketing campaigns, partnership working and building brands. Before joining UK online centres, Charlotte worked for The Princes Trust.

And I don’t want to be left out so, as Chief Executive, I’ll also be part of the board.

Bringing the board together is one of the things that’s exciting me the most about our new organisation, and I know that all of them – internal and external – will have a huge part to play in the future of Online Centres Foundation. Thank you to everyone who expressed an interest, and I don’t think I can stress enough just how flattered I am to have such big names wanting to play on our team. I can’t wait until out first board meeting.