Council members

Council is the governing body of The Zoological Society of London.

Together, our Charity Trustees form Council, the Society's governing body. Council has twelve members and normally meets formally five times a year.

Council is collectively responsible for ZSL’s governance and provides leadership and oversight of the strategic direction of ZSL, in line with our charitable purposes, and oversees the Chief Executive Officer and Executive Committee’s management and administration of ZSL.

How are council members chosen?

Six members of Council are elected from and by the Fellows of the Society. Every year, the Fellows are informed of the number of vacancies on Council, the skills and experience that would best support ZSL, and are invited to stand for election. Newly elected Trustees are formally appointed at the Annual General Meeting in November.

Six members of Council are directly selected by Council based on their skills and experience in a process managed by ZSL's Nominations Committee.

All Council members serve a four-year term of office, with the possibility of a second four-year term.

Our Current Council Members

Chair: Professor Sir Jim Smith FRS

Jim Smith is a developmental biologist who served as Director of the Medical Research Council (MRC) National Institute for Medical Research, where he helped establish the Francis Crick Institute. More recently he was Director of Research Programmes at Wellcome and is currently the Interim Director of the Babraham Institute. Jim was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society in 1993 and of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 1998, and was knighted in 2017.

More about ZSL​

Richard Sykes

Richard, a chartered accountant and a former senior partner at PwC, was appointed as Treasurer in January 2020 and brings his accounting, risk, governance and wider business and charity expertise to his role as Chair of the Audit Finance and Risk Committee. Richard was appointed as Senior Trustee effective from March 2025.

Dr May Chiao

May has been an editor within the Nature Portfolio for more than 20 years, where she handles physics and astronomy content; she is especially interested in crossovers between traditional subject areas, as well as in science policy and social justice. She is currently enrolled in the Executive Master of Public Administration programme at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her active engagement with public policy, combined with broad experience in scientific outreach, help to support ZSL’s mission in an increasingly complex and fast changing sector.

Alex Large

Alex finished a 25-year career in investment banking at JPMorgan in 2018, where he held a variety of risk management, capital-raising, and corporate finance roles in the UK and Asia Pacific. He now runs his own business working with fast-growing companies.

Jonathan Cracknell

Jonathan became a Fellow in 2008 after completing a RCVS Residency in Zoo and Wildlife Medicine at ZSL. Jonathan is a zoo and wildlife veterinarian, has been the zoological director at a number of zoos and Safari parks, and is a zoo inspector with over thirty years of experience working with captive collections, welfare programmes and working in the field. As a member of Defra’s Zoos Expert Committee, Jonathan was closely involved with recent legislative changes including the Standards of Modern Zoo Practice for Great Britain and the Irish Standards of Modern Zoo Practice.

Loraine Woodhouse

Prior to becoming a Trustee in September 2023, Loraine Woodhouse was a non-voting member of ZSL’s Audit, Finance and Risk Committee (AFRC) since October 2017. Loraine’s background is in finance with previous executive roles primarily in the retail sector, including as Finance Director of Waitrose and Chief Financial Officer of Halfords. Loraine has extensive experience working at Corporate Board level, covering all aspects of corporate governance including reporting, regulatory compliance, policy setting and strategic risk management.
 

Shruti Ajitsaria

Shruti is a partner at law firm Allen & Overy where she created and launched an initiative to build digital skills. She brings this spirit of innovation and adoption of technology in addition to her governance and fundraising experience from serving as a School Governor and sitting on a Fundraising Development Group for a Hospice, in addition to completing the FT Non-Executive Director Diploma.

David Jones

David had a Board level career at the John Lewis Partnership where he held senior roles in Retail, Commercial and Supply Chain. He brings to ZSL experience in non-executive roles, spanning retail, sport, local government, community and voluntary, charity, regulatory and trade bodies.David is the lead ZSL Trustee for diversity, inclusion and belonging.

Richard Kimblin

Richard started out in environmental sciences: PhD, Royal Society post-doc, environmental assessment. He was then called to the bar in 1998, practicing in planning/environmental law. Richard was a Trustee of the United Kingdom Environmental Law Association for ten years and its Chair for two. Richard was appointed Queens Counsel 2016 and advises in and appears in respect of development and environmental issues for government, developers, and planning authorities.

Nik Engineer

Nik is a Senior Director at Ownership Works, a US-based international nonprofit focused on economic justice. He has spent the last decade leading nonprofit organizations that work to transform the economy and deliver better outcomes for people and the planet, including eight years with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Before switching to the nonprofit sector, he was a Management Consultant for 10 years, specialising in strategy and culture transformation.

Karen Lawrence

An Independent consultant, Karen Lawrence continues to make significant contributions to conservation science over a 30 year career focussing on the integration of innovative, science-based techniques for forest and marine ecosystem analysis and conservation programme impact design. Her work emphasises participatory spatial planning, deforestation analysis, and supply chain risk assessments, supporting indigenous territories and community based resource management across tropical regions in Asia, Latin America, Africa, Caribbean, and Australasia. Holding a PhD in political ecology, she has designed and evaluated complex, multi-country conservation programmes ensuring the development of evidence based strategies and impact measurement approaches.