Kathryn Bishop CBE

She has over 35 years’ experience working with organizations undergoing major change, in both the public and the private sector – and with individuals leading those changes. Her background includes IT and HR and she has worked as a line director and manager, a project manager and as a consultant; she has also taken on a number of non-executive directorships. She received a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in June 2021 for services to diversity and public administration.

Kathryn was appointed as the first Chairman of the Welsh Revenue Authority in April 2017, a new public body set up to collect taxes in Wales for the first time in 800 years, when some specific taxes were devolved to Wales. She served as a Civil Service Commissioner from 2012 to 2017, as one of 11 Commissioners in the UK with responsibility for regulating all appointments into the Civil Service. She has also held a number of non-executive directorships within Government, including at the UK Border Agency, part of the Home Office, The UK Intellectual Property Office and at the Welsh Assembly Government.

Before Oxford, Kathryn led and managed multi-million pound transformation programmes in various businesses and a number of merger projects in the financial services industry. From Accenture, where she specialized in financial services and change management, she joined BAT Industries and became HR Development Director at Allied Dunbar and went on to manage various large change projects for the Eagle Star Group. As a Director in Eagle Star’s Commercial business, she was responsible for a major transformation programme and for the merger of that business with Zurich Financial Services.

Kathryn has a BA (Hons) Summa Cum Laude from Wellesley College, USA, and an MPhil from Oxford.