The core purpose of the Scott Trust is to secure the financial position and editorial independence of the Guardian in perpetuity.
The subsidiary purpose is, to the extent consistent with the core purpose, to promote the causes of freedom of the press and liberal journalism both in Britain and elsewhere.
Conclusions of the Scott Trust’s 2021 governance review
The Board
Ole Jacob Sunde, Chair of the Scott Trust
Ole Jacob joined the Scott Trust in 2015. He was appointed Chair in June 2021, following a short period as Acting Chair. He has been associated with the Schibsted Media Group ASA for 30 years, being elected to the Board in 2000 and serving as Chair since 2002. He is also the Chair of the Tinius Trust, and a member of the Board of Visitors at Columbia University, School of Journalism. He is the founder and chair of Formuesforvaltning AS private bank and also invests in start-ups and works with initiatives related to the sustainable development goals.
Katharine Viner, editor-in-chief, Guardian News & Media
Katharine Viner is editor-in-chief of the Guardian, a position she has held since June 2015. She was deputy editor 2008-2015, launched the award-winning Guardian Australia in 2013, and was also editor of Guardian US, based in New York. Since becoming editor-in-chief, she has put the Guardian’s purpose at the heart of its journalism, led the development of the Guardian’s successful reader contribution strategy and brought the organisation back to a profitable position. Under her leadership the Guardian became the first news organisation in the world to win both an Oscar and a Bafta.
Katharine gave the 2013 AN Smith lecture in journalism at the University of Melbourne, The Rise of the Reader, discussing journalism in the age of the open web, and a speech on Truth and Reality in a Hyper-Connected World as part of the Oxford University Women of Achievement Lecture Series in May 2016. She is the winner of the Diario Madrid prize for journalism for her 2016 long read, How Technology Disrupted the Truth. She is based in London.
Tracy Corrigan
Tracy Corrigan joined the Scott Trust in December 2022 and chairs the Scott Trust’s investment committee. She was previously chief strategy officer of Dow Jones and has held a range of senior editorial positions including editor in chief of the Wall Street Journal Europe, editor of the Financial Times’ Lex column and editor of FT.com. Tracy is currently a non-executive director of Barclays Bank UK PLC, Direct Line Insurance Group PLC, and Domino’s Pizza Group PLC.
David Olusoga
David Olusoga joined the Scott Trust in June 2018. He is a historian, writer, broadcaster and filmmaker, who has produced and presented documentaries for more than 20 years. David is an award-winning author and wrote Black & British, which was awarded the Longman-History Today Trustees Award and the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize in 2017. He writes regularly for the Guardian, the Observer and BBC History Magazine. David is a patron of the Wimpole History Festival and a member of the advisory panel for the Imperial War Museum’s Second World War Galleries.
Stuart Proffitt
Stuart Proffitt joined the Scott Trust in 2015. He has been a publishing director at Penguin Books since 1998, and before that he was the publisher of the trade division at HarperCollins for six years. He founded and for 17 years chaired the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction (now the Baillie Gifford Prize), and was awarded the London Library/Christie’s ‘Life in Literature’ prize in November 2014.
Matthew Ryder
Matthew Ryder KC is a barrister and founder member of Matrix chambers in London, specialising in human rights, media, data and information, crime and regulatory law. He was deputy mayor of London for social integration between 2016 and 2018 overseeing the mayor’s community engagement, diversity and equality work, and use of data. He has worked on a number of influential reviews including the Lammy Review into racial bias in the criminal justice system, and has held numerous board positions including chair of the UK’s Black Cultural Archive and governor of the University of the Arts in London.
Vivian Schiller
Vivian Schiller joined the Scott Trust in 2015. She is Executive Director of Aspen Digital, a program of the Aspen Institute. Previously she has held multiple high-profile media roles including head of news at Twitter, general manager of NYTimes.com and president and CEO of National Public Radio.
Russell Scott
Russell Scott joined the Scott Trust in 2015 and is the Scott Trust’s senior independent director. He runs a consultancy business specialising in content and commercial strategy in sport, he is chief commercial officer for Mavis, a platform that democratises live video production in the cloud and is a director of The Guardian Foundation. Previously he held multiple senior roles in publishing, digital and broadcast sectors including content director of The Football League, commercial director of Northcliffe media and managing director of fish4, a digital classified joint venture between 5 major UK regional press groups.
Haroon Siddique
Haroon Siddique joined the Scott Trust in 2022 as its journalist director. He has worked at the Guardian for over 15 years and is currently its legal affairs correspondent, previously serving as a reporter and senior reporter in the Guardian’s newsroom.
Margaret Simons
Dr Margaret Simons joined the Scott Trust in 2022. She is an award-winning journalist, author, and journalism academic. She is Honorary Principal Fellow at the Centre for Advancing Journalism, part of the University of Melbourne. She was director of the centre from 2012 until 2017, and was a founding director of Australia’s Public Interest Journalism Initiative from 2018 until 2021. She is also a founding director of the hyperlocal journalism startup *PS Media. Over a four-decade journalistic career, Margaret has written for The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, The Monthly, Crikey, and the Guardian, among others. She holds a Doctorate in Creative Arts from the University of Technology Sydney.
Nabiha Syed
Nabiha is chief executive officer of The Markup, an award-winning journalism non-profit. Prior to launching The Markup, Nabiha spent a decade as an acclaimed media lawyer working at the frontier of technology and newsgathering, including at the New York Times and more recently at BuzzFeed where she was associate general counsel.
She has extensive experience of working at the frontier of technology and newsgathering, advising on publication issues with the Snowden revelations and the Steele Dossier, litigation around police disciplinary records, as well as privacy and free speech issues globally.
In 2023, Nabiha received the NAACP-Archewell digital civil rights award. She serves on the executive committee of the New York Civil Liberties Union and on the boards of The New Press and Upturn.
Stephen Godsell
Stephen Godsell joined GMG in 2017 as general counsel and company secretary. Prior to this he was group general counsel and company secretary at PA Group, and has held senior positions at The Economist Group and Clifford Chance. Stephen is a board director and trustee of The Economist Educational Foundation, a member of the Joint Committee on Legal Deposit and a freeman of the City of London.