Nominet Trust has a board of six trustees, who are responsible for its oversight and decide how to distribute the funds. They meet quarterly to consider applications for grants.
The trustees are:
Jonathan Welfare (Chairman) is the Chief Executive of Elizabeth Finn Care, a charity that provides support and care to a wide range of individuals and families. He is also a director of English Community Care Association and a member of the Commission for Social Care and Inspection Mental Health Improvement Board.
Jonathan has extensive experience of the charity sector as a trustee and chairman of a range of charities. He has also held board-level appointments in both the public and the private sector. He has most recently established Turn2us, an online and helpline charity, to direct those in need to the charities and state benefits most appropriate to their individual circumstances.
Lesley Cowley (Nominet Board representative) joined Nominet UK as Operations Director in April 1999 and has extensive management experience in both the public and private sectors together with an MBA, with distinction.
She was appointed Managing Director in 2002 and Chief Executive in 2005. She is responsible for leading the development of Nominet and the senior management team. She is particularly involved in looking after the relationships with Nominet's members and stakeholders, developing company performance and representing Nominet nationally and internationally.
In 2007, she won the CBI First Women award for Technology. In 2006, she was a top five finalist in Britain's Best Boss awards and received a special commendation. She was also a finalist at the 2005 Blackberry Women in Technology awards.
Lesley is an elected Council Member of the Country-Code Names Supporting Organisation (ccNSO) of the world governing body of the Internet (ICANN), where she represents Europe and she is Chair of ICANN's ccNSO Participation Working Group. Lesley is also a trustee of Kennet Housing, part of the Guinness Trust, which is a charitable housing association.
Steve Dyer (Nominet membership representative) is Chairman and founder of Energetics Ecology Ltd., a director of Namegate Ltd., and a director of UKIF Ltd. that runs the UK Network Operators' Forum. He was previously Chairman and founder of Mailbox Internet Ltd., one of the UK's longest-established profitable business-to-business Internet Service Providers, and a former non-executive director of Nominet.
He has many years of experience of working in the domain name industry, with a number of registries, registrars and Internet service providers.
James Kemp (Nominet staff representative) has several years' experience as a fundraiser, researcher and project manager with Oxford Research Group, an award- winning UK-based charity. In this role James worked closely with decision makers, independent experts and the media to develop and promote policies relating to UK and international security strategy.
In 2007 James joined Nominet as the technical department Project Coordinator, with responsibility for producing and maintaining project development and implementation plans, and coordination between projects. James is Nominet's staff trustee for the Foundation.
Vanessa Miner is a marketing professional with a significant record of accomplishments in marketing, communications and campaigning in the UK and across global markets. She has experience in sponsorship and commercial partnerships, technology marketing, media, PR and issue-based campaigning.
Vanessa has senior management experience via direct interaction at board level and with Government. She has worked for companies such as BT, Vizzavi, Endemol, Edge Foundation (an independent charity foundation that focuses on vocational education for young people) and is currently an advisor to the DCSF on new school partnerships.
Ian Ritchie is the non-executive Chairman of Iomart plc, Computer Application Services Ltd., Scapa Technologies Ltd., Caspian Learning Ltd. and the Interactive Design Institute Ltd. He founded a technology start-up company Office Workstations Ltd. in 1984 and has been involved in the establishment of many new interactive technology businesses.
His experience in the field of charitable activities includes being Chairman of Connect Scotland, a not-for-profit business that links academic researchers with entrepreneurs and professional advisors in regular networking events.
He is a board member and trustee of Dynamic Earth (Edinburgh's Science Centre) and Bletchley Park (the centre of wartime code breaking and the birthplace of electronic computation). He is a board member of the National Museums of Scotland, the Chairman of Generation Science and a non-executive director of the Edinburgh International Film.