It has been a busy and exciting first six weeks for me as chief executive at BAB; I have attended nearly a dozen events in New York and London and have tried to meet as many of our members as I can. There is a terrific level of energy around the organization and it has been wonderful to hear from both the UK and US governments how much they appreciate what we do and how much they want to get involved.

Sadly, in my first six weeks, Wendy Mendenhall made the decision to move on from BAB after 17 years of service and I would like to publicly thank her for everything that she has done and for making my transition so smooth. I am happy to say that Wendy will be working for us as a consultant so you will continue to see her from time to time.

With Wendy leaving, I have been delighted to be able to appoint Tamra Eker as Executive Director of our New York office; Tamra has fantastic experience of the organization and will be a brilliant leader for our team in New York.

I am also happy to tell you that we have published our 2018 Policy Agenda this week which sets out the issues that we will be focusing on in our programming and in our policy discussion with government for the year ahead. All feedback will always be welcome.