Nigel joined The Big Issue in 1994 and currently is its Group Chairman, previously being its Chief Executive. Last year 3,000 homeless and vulnerably housed Big Issue vendors sold 124,000 copies a week in the UK and earned over £8 million as an alternative to begging. The Big Issue has inspired similar publications to be set up in 100 countries around the world.

Previous to that, he worked as a project manager, a systems analyst, works manager, lithographic No.1 printer and Trade Union official in the publishing and printing industry. He has founded three printing and publishing social enterprises. Trained as a lithographic printer, he gained his Diploma with Distinction at the London College of Printing.

He has also been a non-executive director of a London borough regeneration company and Chair of the Board of the London College of Communications (now part of the London University of the Arts).

He is a Cabinet Office Social Enterprise Ambassador, and a Council member of the Social Enterprise Coalition and is also a member of the British Venture Capital Association’s Responsible Investment Advisory Board. In 2008 he was the winner of the IOD Enterprise award.

Nigel Kershaw was been made an OBE in the 2010 New Year’s Honours List, for his services to social enterprise.
 

Robin served as a regular officer in the Royal Navy from 1958-1968, operating as a carrier pilot mainly in the Far East. He subsequently obtained a Master of Science degree from the Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston.

On leaving MIT, Mr. Monro-Davies spent a year as an investment analyst on Wall Street and then joined Fox-Pitt Kelton (FPK), a US brokerage firm specialising in institutional research on banks and insurance companies. He subsequently became Joint Managing Director of FPK. In 1976 FPK set up a subsidiary, IBCA, which specialised in credit rating of banks outside the United States. IBCA expanded rapidly to become the largest European rating agency.

In 1992 a controlling share of IBCA was sold to the French company Fimalac and Mr. Monro-Davies relinquished all responsibilities at FPK. In 1997 IBCA bought Fitch Investors Service, the US rating agency creating a new company Fitch IBCA, the world's third largest rating agency of which he was appointed CEO. In the year 2000 Fitch IBCA bought Duff & Phelps and in 2001 bought Thomson BankWatch. At the end of 2001 Mr. Monro-Davies retired as CEO of Fitch which had now been renamed Fitch Ratings. 
 

For nine years to 2001, Sarah was at the World Bank working in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe with a specialisation in microfinance. She spent four years in Bosnia-Herzegovina where she led a £50 million microfinance investment fund providing risk capital and business support to start-up microfinance institutions, which today are serving large numbers of low-income people and providing financial returns to investors.

From 2001-2004, Sarah was a Director at the New Economics Foundation (nef) where she headed nef's work on access to finance, social enterprise, and social return on investment. She was also Director of the Inner City 100 which championed entrepreneurship in the inner city.

Sarah has served on the boards of several microfinance and social venture organisations.She has a Masters in Economic and Political Development from the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University and a BA in Law from Cambridge University.

Ed was first introduced to Big Issue Invest when SBI was asked to help the company launch its first loan fund in 2004. Ed has made a career of finding innovative ways of providing finance to businesses deemed by traditional financial institutions to be too risky.

In the developing world he has overseen the granting of thousands of loans to small businesses with no securable collateral or reliable financial accounts, and in the UK he has been a member of the Big Issue Invest Credit Committee since its inception and has been closely involved in the structuring of some of the more complex transactions it has undertaken.

Ed has practiced skills in debt financing and experience in structuring and utilizing quasi-equity and equity finance instruments. At Credit Suisse, Ed worked on a variety of structured and subordinated debt financings and at Big Issue Invest he advised on the structuring of a revenue-linked financing for Belu Water, among others.

From his time working with financial institutions around the world for SBI, Ed has experience with equity investment and governance issues from both the investor and investee as well as board rep perspectives. Ed has an MBA in Finance from New York University and an undergraduate degree in Economics from Boston College.