A strong advocate of social mobility, he is President of Thames Reach, a charity working to shelter and resettle the homeless; former Chair of the Shaw Trust, supporting the disabled and chronically unemployed to find work; founding Chair of the Aleto  Foundation, supporting future leaders from tough reality backgrounds; a former Governor of the Peabody Trust; and a former Non-Executive Director of the West Lambeth NHS Trust.  He is President of London Youth, a member network of 450+ youth clubs supporting tens of thousands of young Londoners each year, and a trustee of the Prince of Wales’s Charity Fund.  He chairs BusinessLDN (formerly London First) and is High Bailiff and Searcher of the Sanctuary at Westminster Abbey.
   
Awarded an OBE in 2010 for services to London’s homeless, he is the first person of mixed heritage to hold the office of Lord-Lieutenant of Greater London, to which he was appointed in 2015. He was knighted in 2018 for services to business and philanthropy.  

Born in Nottingham in 1951, he was educated at High Pavement, a revered 18th century grammar school then undergoing conversion to a comprehensive, and Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge (1971) where he read Natural, Social & Political and Management Sciences and to which, in 2011 he and his wife, Julia (Homerton 1971, Newnham 1975), donated £2m to endow the Olisa Library.