Margaret Casely-Hayford CBE is a lawyer, governance expert, and champion of diversity, education, and the arts. Since 2025, she has served as a Non-Executive Director on the Board of the Department for Education, and from 2026, as a member of the Oxford Street Development Corporation (OSDC) Board. Until recently, she was a longstanding member of the Board of the Co-op Group (2016-2024).
Margaret’s executive career includes nine years as Director of Legal Services and Company Secretary at the John Lewis Partnership, where she initiated legislative changes that helped shape the UK’s employee ownership landscape. Prior to that, she spent twenty years as a partner at City law firm Dentons, jointly leading an award-winning planning and development team. Now retired from executive roles, she maintains an active portfolio focused on governance, education, diversity and the arts. She is an ambassador for Valloop, an enterprise that supports the transition of entities towards employee ownership.
Her leadership roles have included Chair of Shakespeare’s Globe (2018-2024), where she led the organisation through successful pandemic recovery and reopening, Chair of international development charity ActionAid UK, and Chancellor of Coventry University (2017-2024)-the university’s first female Chancellor. She received an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from Coventry University in 2025 in recognition of her seven years of service.
In direct response to the murder of George Floyd, Margaret co-founded the charity Gallery of Living History with actor Andy Serkis and film producer Jonathan Cavendish, dedicated to telling the stories of unsung contributions to communities and society so that the value of each of us and our forebears can be properly understood.
Margaret is a Trustee of the Radcliffe Trust, which supports classical music and traditional arts and crafts. Her patronages include Girls’ Brigade Ministries, Urban Synergy, and the John Staples Society, which promotes social mobility across the Leathersellers’ Federation of Schools in Lewisham. She is an adviser to Ultra Education, an award-winning enterprise teaching entrepreneurial skills to primary school children.
As a champion of diversity and inclusion, Margaret advises organisations on governance and actively supports women, BAME, and LGBTQ+ individuals pursuing board and professional careers. She serves as an ambassador for Board Apprentice and the Better Business Initiative, is a Fellow of the Centre for Public Impact, sat on the Institute of Directors’ Governance Advisory Board (where she participated in Lord McNicol’s establishment of a code of conduct for directors), and advises both the Institute of Business Ethics and the Black Talent Charter.
Her commitment to diversity across sectors led her to chair the diversity review of the Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Awards for CILIP (the Libraries Association), for which she was awarded a Fellowship of CILIP. She has served on a panel overseeing the 2018 strategic review of the British Council, making recommendations to the Foreign Secretary, and participated in the Rhodes Commission at Oriel College, Oxford, reviewing Cecil Rhodes’ statue and his legacy.
Margaret was awarded a CBE in 2018 for services to charity and promoting diversity, is an Honorary Bencher of Gray’s Inn (2021), was added to the Powerlist 2022, and holds an Honorary Fellowship from Somerville College, Oxford.
