Lord John Nash
Entrepreneur and Philanthropist
Lord John Nash is the co-founder of Future; a charity committed to supporting less advantaged children and young people. Through Future Academies, it currently supports 11 schools across Hertfordshire and London, including a new primary free school established by the charity. Future Academies most recent success is Phoenix Academy in Hammersmith. In special measures when the charity took it on, it is now ranked as Outstanding in all categories by Ofsted and is in the top 2% of secondary schools, by progress, in the country.
Future also supports several organisations that work with young people, including the Hammersmith and Fulham Youth Zone, the Social Mobility Foundation, the Pimlico Musical Foundation and the Royal National Children’s Springboard Foundation. The latter aims to improve social mobility by giving young people access to great educational opportunities. The charity – to which Lord Nash serves as an adviser – works with the UK’s independent and state boarding schools to broaden access to fully funded bursary places for the children who need them most, including young people with experience of the care system and those from underserved communities.
Ministerial Career
Between 2013 and 2017 Lord Nash was a schools minister, having formerly been a non-executive director of the Department for Education since 2010. During his tenure the number of academies in the UK increased from approximately 2,000 to around 7,000, and hundreds of free schools were created. Furthermore, Lord Nash took five acts of parliament through the House of Lords, including the Children and Families Act.
Children and Families Act
The Children and Families Act 2014 changed the law (and introduced new legislation) to improve the way children are treated. The act aims to, among other things, make it easier to find new parents for children needing to be adopted, shorten the time it takes for a family court to decide about a child’s future, and ensure that different organisations work together effectively to help children and young people with special educational needs.
Venture Capital and Investment
An early entrant into the world of venture capital in the UK, Lord John Nash joined Advent in 1983 and became chairman of the British Venture Capital Association in 1988. The BVCA is the public policy advocate and industry body for the UK’s private equity and venture capital sector. The organisation supports and engages with the private capital community, connecting fund managers, institutional investors, advisers, portfolio companies and service providers. Its membership is currently comprised of over 600 firms, including more than 100 institutional investors and over 200 professional service firms.
