Who We Are

Chairman

Sir Jeremy Greenstock

Jeremy Greenstock is the Chairman of the strategic advisory company, Gatehouse Advisory Partners, established in September 2010, and Chairman of Lambert Energy Advisory, the oil and gas specialists, since January 2012.

Born in 1943, Sir Jeremy was educated at Harrow School and Worcester College, Oxford.   His principal career was with the British Diplomatic Service, ending his career as UK Permanent Representative at the United Nations in New York (1998-2003) and then, after a suspension of his retirement, as the UK Special Envoy for Iraq (September 2003-March 2004).

After three years as an Assistant Master at Eton College, he joined the Diplomatic Service in 1969.   The two themes of his career were the Middle East and US/Western European Relations.  He studied Arabic at the Middle East Centre for Arab Studies, Lebanon (1970-72) and went on to serve in Dubai and Saudi Arabia in the early 1970s and mid 1980s respectively.  From 1974-1978 he was Private Secretary to Ambassadors Peter Ramsbotham and Peter Jay in the British Embassy in Washington, starting a total of ten years spent in Washington and New York on US and Transatlantic business.

After a spell as Political Counsellor in Paris (1987-90), Sir Jeremy came back to London as Director for Western and Southern Europe, the foundation for a number of years’ work on the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy and in particular on the Balkans, Cyprus and Gibraltar.  He returned to Washington as Minister (Deputy Ambassador) in 1994-95, and was then brought back to London as Director General for Eastern Europe and the Middle East (1995) and then Political Director (1996-98). After chairing the European Union’s Political Committee during the UK Presidency in the first half of 1998, he moved to New York as UK Ambassador to the UN in July 1998.   As the UK’s Representative on the Security Council up to July 2003, he worked extensively on matters of peace and security in Africa, the Middle East, the Balkans and South Asia, but particularly on Iraq.   He chaired the Council’s Counter-Terrorism Committee from October 2001 to April 2003.

Sir Jeremy left government service in March 2004, after seven interesting months in Baghdad.  He became Director of the Ditchley Foundation, the conference centre in Oxfordshire promoting transatlantic dialogue, in August 2004, a position he left in August 2010.  He was also a Special Adviser to the BP Group from 2004 to 2010, a Non-Executive Director of De La Rue from 2005 to 2013, a Governor of the London Business School from 2005 to 2008 and Chairman of the UN Association in the UK from 2011 to 2016.  He now works concurrently as a Member of the Chatham House Council, as a Special Adviser to the NGO Forward Thinking, as a policy adviser to the International Rescue Committee (UK) and as co-Chair of the European Eminent Persons Group on Middle East issues.

He is married with three grown-up children and seven grandchildren.

CEO

Nick Greenstock

Nick Greenstock is the CEO of Gatehouse Advisory Partners, and works with governments, businesses and civil society to identify and interpret critical geopolitical themes. He is the primary contact for the Gatehouse expert network.

Nick has a broad corporate background: he has worked in Banking, management consulting and corporate affairs. He also played rugby professionally (Wasps, Quins and England). Nick is a co-founder of Gatehouse.

Director

Sir David Manning

David joined the Foreign & Commonwealth Office in 1972. He served in Warsaw, New Delhi, Paris and Moscow. From 1994 to 1995 he was Head of Policy Planning; from 1995 to 1998 Ambassador to Israel; and from 1998 to 2000 he was Deputy Under-Secretary of State for Defence and Intelligence and a member of the Foreign Office Board.

David served as the UK Permanent Representative at NATO from 2000 to 2001 before returning to London as Foreign Policy Adviser to the Prime Minister and Head of the Defence and Overseas Secretariat from 2001 to 2003.  He was then Ambassador to the United States from 2003 to 2007.

David has previously served as a Non-Executive Director of the BG Group and Lockheed Martin (UK). He is a nominated member of the Council of Lloyds of London and a member of the Panel of Senior Advisers at Chatham House.

Managing Director

Ashish Bhatt

Over 25 years experience at senior levels of policy, government affairs, geopolitics, business intelligence, sustainability, strategy and development in India and the UK.  Prior to joining Gatehouse, Ashish was Executive Vice President at Xynteo, an Oslo-based advisory firm where he led that company’s growth in India for eight years.

Previous roles have included: expert consultant to the European Commission’s Task Force on Justice and Home Affairs; Special Adviser to a UK Cabinet minister, Deputy Director of the Ditchley Foundation, and Director for Research and Intelligence at a London-based geopolitical risk consultancy focussing on South Asia.

Senior Advisor

Ann Wyman

Ann has twenty years of experience working for global financial services companies. She has built a career rooted in the analysis of economic and political trends in global emerging markets, with an in depth knowledge of the CEEMEA region.

Ann spent over a decade in various research functions at Citigroup. Initially as a Senior Economist, then Head of Emerging Markets Research and subsequently as a Managing Director of the Economic and Political Strategies group in New York, where she worked with former US Treasury officials, including Secretary Robert Rubin. In 2010, Ann joined Nomura Securities where she ran the emerging market research team in London, and also served as the firm’s research ambassador in the Middle East, conveying economic and strategic views to key clients including sovereign wealth funds.

Ann currently works with a Pan-African private equity fund focused on investing in the SME sector across the continent. She also sits on the board of the Tunisian American Enterprise Fund, established by US congress in the wake of the Arab Spring, which is dedicated to private sector investment in Tunisia, particularly in the country’s disadvantaged interior regions.

Senior Advisor

Radek Sikorski

The Hon. Radosław (Radek) Sikorski is a member of the European Parliament for Poland, sitting on Committees for Foreign Affairs, the Special Committee on Artificial Intelligence and the Security and Defence Subcommittee. He is the Chairman of the Delegation for relations with the United States. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Center for European Studies at Harvard and Distinguished Statesman at CSIS in Washington D.C.

He was Poland’s Minister of Defence (2005-2007), Foreign Minister (2007-2014) and Speaker of Parliament (2014-2015). He served as a war reporter in Afghanistan and Angola. 2001-2005 he was Resident Scholar at AEI and director of its New Atlantic Initiative. Together with Carl Bildt, he launched EU’s Eastern Partnership. He proposed and helped to set up the European Endowment for Democracy. In 2014 he led the EU mission to Kiev, which stopped the bloodshed on the Maidan. 

Foreign Policy magazine named him one of 100 global policy intellectuals ‘for speaking the truth even when it’s not diplomatic.’  He is the author of several books, most recently ‘Polska Może Być Lepsza.’  Radek Sikorski graduated from Oxford University with a B.A. in Politics, Philosophy and Economics.  He is married to the writer Anne Applebaum.

Senior Geopolitical Consultant

Jack Lambert

Jack Lambert joined Gatehouse in 2017. As a Senior Geopolitical Consultant, Jack oversees delivery of client projects on a wide range of global markets and leads Gatehouse’s UK Political Advisory service.

After studying Politics, Philosophy and Economics at the University of Oxford, Jack joined Bank of America Merrill Lynch in 2012, where he was an Associate in the UK Investment Banking & Corporate Broking team. This role encompassed transaction advisory (Mergers & Acquisitions, Equity and Debt) and long-term client relationships (including BT Group, Fresnillo, WPP, Capital & Counties, Man Group, Weir Group, Spirax-Sarco).

Head of Operations

Alexandra Ibrová

Alex joined Gatehouse Advisory in 2018 as Executive Assistant, later becoming Head of Operations overseeing operations, office management, accounting and HR. She holds an MSc in Anthropology and Human Genetics from Charles University in Prague, and is currently finalising her PhD.

Executive Assistant

Natasha Johnson

Natasha joined Gatehouse in 2022 as an Executive Assistant. She has over 20 years of experience in various secretarial and office administrative roles. Previous sector experience has been in Investment Banking, Automotive Financing, Building Service Consultancy, Health Service and Information Technology.
Natasha is certified in Professional Management Studies from The Royal Bank Institute of Business & Technology in Trinidad.

Senior Geopolitical Analyst

Chris Baird

Senior Geopolitical Analyst

Sara Willoughby

Sara is a Canadian who has also lived in the US and Middle East and now makes her home in London. She joined Gatehouse as a geopolitical analyst in 2021.

Prior to joining, Sara worked as a policy consultant in the Middle East, where she advised government clients on political risk management and crisis preparedness. She holds Master’s degrees in International Relations from the University of St Andrews (MA Hons) and the London School of Economics and Political Science (MSc) and studied Arabic at the American University of Beirut.

Senior Geopolitical Analyst

Carl du Jeu

Carl du Jeu joined Gatehouse as a Geopolitical Analyst in 2020, and leads Gatehouse’s research on China and France. Prior to Gatehouse, Carl worked in investment banking in Uganda and advocacy in the United States. He studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford, finishing first and fifth in his year in British and Chinese politics respectively. Carl was born in Paris, and speaks French fluently.

Geopolitical analyst

Olivia Philipon

Olivia joined Gatehouse in 2022 as a geopolitical analyst. After studying International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science, Olivia worked as a research analyst in a consulting firm specialising in macroeconomic and geopolitical analysis of the Middle East and North Africa. Olivia was born and raised in France and speaks French fluently.

Geopolitical Analyst

Benjamin Haigh

Ben Haigh joined Gatehouse as a Geopolitical Analyst in January 2022. Prior to Gatehouse, Ben worked in an investment consultancy. He graduated with first class honours in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Oxford in 2021, also finishing first in his year for Sociological Theory. 

Non-Executive Director

Ash Alexander-Cooper

Ash Alexander-Cooper OBE is a former Gurkha officer, combat helicopter pilot, Specialist Military Unit officer, wounded veteran and former Senior Partner at McChrystal Group.  Currently, Ash is responsible for developing international business and strategic partnerships for Palantir Technologies.

With a focus on leader development, talent management, and team-building solutions, Ash draws upon lessons learned from over 25 years’ experience leading and managing diverse multinational military, civilian, government, sports and other elite teams. Ash joined Gatehouse Advisory Partners as Non-Executive Director in 2018.

Director

Basil Towers

Basil is a researcher and adviser on organisational reputation and the development of high performing Corporate Affairs or Communications functions.

He founded Hesleden Partners in 2005, acquired by Blue Rubicon in 2014, to help companies build strategic, operational and organisational approaches to reputation as a source of value, and to help Corporate Affairs to become the high performing function that enables this.

The research programme sits at the heart of the Blue Rubicon Institute for business reputation, an international centre of excellence for research, thinking and strategic consulting. Its core principles are that reputation is a precondition for strategic and operational success, and the outcome of organisational ambition, decisions, actions, performance and behaviour.  The programme, which is in its 11^th year, is undertaken in Europe, the US, the Middle East and Asia amongst multi-national corporations. The research informs the development of proprietary models, tools and benchmarks.

Basil began his career at Burson Marsteller before moving to Shandwick (now Weber Shandwick), where he ultimately became Managing Director of Shandwick Communications and a Director of Shandwick UK, the holding company for 14 public relations consultancies. He established Christow Consultants, a corporate communications consultancy, in 1989. Christow subsequently developed a significant bank of reputation data and knowledge shared through research papers and the publication, Corporate Affairs.

Basil is a graduate of Exeter University, a Fellow of both the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) and the Public Relations Consultants Association. He is an Honorary Fellow of Glyndwr University, Wrexham where he was a Governor for six years and an Associate Fellow of Oxford University’s Centre for Corporate Reputation at the Saïd Business School.

Hesleden Partners established the Corporate Affairs Academy in partnership with the Saïd Business School’s Centre for Corporate Reputation in 2012.

Finance

Nick Ashford-Hodges

Nick is a Chartered Accountant and Financial Director with 50 years experience in practice, consultancy, project management and various board level appointments, the latter primarily in the financial services sector in Africa and Mediterranean. His career and board committee roles have covered wide ranging remits including financial systems, corporate governance, strategic planning, performance management and M&A.

He has been providing financial guidance and oversight to Gatehouse since 2016.