Our people
Board of Trustees
Ian Comfort (Chair)
Ian has extensive experience of working as a chief officer for local authorities and academy trusts including a number of years as Director of Community Education for the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea. As a Government Accounting Officer, he has been responsible for budgets in excess of £300 million. He has acted as an education adviser to senior politicians both nationally and internationally. In addition to his career in education, Ian is a lawyer and currently chairs regulatory tribunals for a range of professions. He has been involved in Carnival since 1980, when he worked with the late Randolph Baptist of Stardust Steelband and Carl Gabriel. In addition to chairing the Carnival Village Trust and Notting Hill Carnival Ltd, he has been chair of the Ebony Steelband Trust since 2003. His other board roles include executive chair of Cognus Ltd, an education services company and trustee and chair of the Middlesex Learning Partnership.
Imani Douglas-Walker
Recognising the importance of stronger resilient communities, Imani’s NED experience spans across housing, philanthropy, social regeneration, people and diversity and community engagement. Chair of a £3.8m philanthropic foundation, Genesis Community, Imani oversees the strategic remit to disperse grants within communities investing in organisations and individuals to develop capacity building skills to reduce poverty and increase entrepreneurial and employment opportunities for sustainable resilient communities and neighbours. Working as a freelancer, Imani has worked supporting hard to reach marginalised groups either educationally, socially and economically to rebuild their lives and advance within adverse times.
Alan Edwards
Alan is a consultant in Russell-Cooke LLP (a top 100 legal firm). Until 1 September 2015 he was the founding and senior partner of Alan Edwards & Co until his firm merged with Russel-Cooke. Alan is a director of Mangrove Community Y2K Ltd which is the company under which the Mangrove Steel Band operates. Alan chaired the Project Board which oversaw the successful development of the Yaa Centre as part of Carnival Village, which was delivered on budget and on time. Until December 2017, Alan had been a trustee of the Paddington Development Trust for many years and remains its legal adviser. Alan has been a board member of Kensington and Chelsea College ending his appointment in 2012 in the capacity of vice-chair. Alan sat on the Project Board which steered through the development and completion of the new Kensington and Chelsea College building in Hortensia Street. He was also one of the founding trustees of Action for Victims of Medical Accidents.
Mary Genis
Mary has an impressive record of achievements and pioneering work in the arts that enriches and widens the governance of the Carnival. She coordinated the One World Stage at WOMAD Reading for seven years from 1997 to 2003 and worked as the UK Cultural Olympiad Launch Co-ordinator. Mary’s other non-executive roles include previous roles as a board member for South Hill Park Arts Centre and Readipop music projects and current roles as a governor for Theale Primary CE School, chair of black mentoring charity Reading Refocus, trustee for the Jelly art group and a member of the Consortium Programme Board for the Museums Partnership Reading (ACE NPO). In 2017, she was awarded a Hall of Fame Lifetime Achievement Award from the British Association of Steelbands.
Levi Naidu-Mitchell
Levi is an artist whose practice centres around the Carnivalesque, its dynamism as an artistic medium and the plethora of ways in which it can be translated as a tool for positive elevation. Levi creates costumes for the Notting Hill Carnival and is currently a Youth Work Project Co-Ordinator for Wac Arts Performing Arts and Media College. She has combined her background in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins and experience working with young people to deliver vibrant, elevating and educational Carnival workshops to the communities that she frequents in.
Laila Shah
Laila is a final year chemistry student at King’s College, University of London. She has participated in Notting Hill Carnival since 11 months old and played steelpan with Nostalgia Steelband since the age of 7. Inspired by a trip to Trinidad in 2013, she arranged her first piece of music for the band winning them their first NHC award in fifty years. She has since toured Europe, China and Trinidad with the band. As of 2018, Laila has played panorama with Mangrove Steelband. She has also both presented and helped organise the Biennial Steelpan Conferences since 2012 and is currently preparing for the 2020 conference.
Ansel Wong
Ansel’s wide-ranging career has given him experience of working at the most senior levels of the public and third sectors and management positions: Caribbean Advisory Group to F&CO, Windrush Commemorative Committee, NHS, Prisoners of Conscience, Community Assessor to the Metropolitan Police Service, Deputy Education Officer of Lambeth and Vice Principal of Savile Row Academy. He has written and lectured widely on Carnival plus serving on several organisations involved in Carnival: Elimu Mas Academy, EMCCAN, Flamboyan, NHCT & Commonwealth Arts and Cultural Foundation.