FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2025
6:30 P.M.
THE HONOURABLE SOCIETY OF LINCOLN’S INN
THE PATRONS
Sir Lenny Henry
Co-Patron
Baroness Floella Benjamin
Co-Patron
Dr. Shirley J. Thompson
Co-Patron
Honourees
2025
Ms. Sonita Alleyne, OBE
In May 2019, Sonita Alleyne was elected the Master of Jesus College. After attending Cambridge, reading philosophy, Alleyne followed her passion for music, joining Jazz FM before setting up a media production company, Somethin’ Else. It grew from a five-hundred-pound start-up to one of the UK’s major cross-media production houses and the BBC’s biggest multi-platform supplier.
She is currently: a Non-Exec on FTSE 250 Wickes PLC, a board member of the Screen Academy Foundation, which raises money from the film industry to support the London Screen Academy and East London Arts and Music, Chair of Kettles Yard Gallery and Museum, Chair of the Cambridge Centre for Music Performance, Chair of the Cambridge University Careers Syndicate and Co-Chairs the Cambridge University Black Advisory Hub.
Alleyne has had an impressive and varied career, covering education, employment, and the arts. She has sat on the board of an extensive list of organisations including the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the National Employment Panel and the London Skills and Employment Board, The Local radio Company, The Cultural Capital Fund and Archant newspaper Group. She also served on the BBC Trust for five years and was the Chair of the British Board of Film Classification. Alleyne was governor at the Museum of London and sat on the board of the London Legacy Development Corporation, regenerating the Olympic Park post 2012, and the Main Advisory Committee of the arts focused Freelands Foundation.
Sir Trevor McDonald, OBE
Sir Trevor McDonald, OBE, was born and educated in Trinidad in the West Indies, where his career in the media began, first as a radio reporter, news presenter and sports journalist. He came to London in August 1969 to work for the BBC WORLD Service and has held leading roles at ITN and Channel Four News.
His awards include the Richard Dimbleby Award for Outstanding Contribution to Television from BAFTA, the Royal Television Society Gold Medal for his Outstanding Contribution to Television News (1998), the National Television Award for Outstanding Commitment to Television (2003) presented to him on live television by the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and the Royal Television Society’s Judges’ Award (2005). He was named Newscaster of the year in 1993, 1997 and 1999 and has regularly topped the polls as the most authoritative and trustworthy news presenter. McDonald has received Honorary Degrees from at least eight Universities.
VM Group
The establishment of the VM Group is the latest chapter in the storied history of the organisation that first opened its doors in 1878 as Victoria Mutual Building Society (VMBS). Led by the Reverend G.W. Downer, the Rector of the Kingston Parish Church, a group of clergymen formed VMBS with a mission to, through the power of mutuality, empower economically marginalised Jamaicans to pool their resources to save and to acquire homes.
Today, VM Group Limited is a global financial institution with offices in Jamaica, the wider Caribbean, the United States and the United Kingdom.
It is the mutual holding company of VM Financial Group Limited and VM Innovations Limited, which offer a transformational suite of products and services via the VM Building Society; VM Investments; VM Wealth Management; VM Property Services; VM Money Transfer Services; VM Pensions Management; and VM Finance (UK). VM Foundation is the Group’s philanthropic arm and British Caribbean Insurance Company (BCIC) and Carilend are affiliate companies.
Baroness Patricia Scotland, PC, KC
Patricia Janet Scotland, Baroness Scotland of Asthal, PC, KC, is a Dominican-British barrister and politician who served as the sixth secretary-general of the Commonwealth of Nations from 2016 to 2025. She was the first woman to hold that post.
After working as a barrister in London, she was appointed as a life peer in 1997 and, as a British Labour Party politician, served in ministerial positions within the UK Government, most notably as Attorney General for England and Wales and as Advocate General for Northern Ireland. She is a dual citizen of the United Kingdom and Dominica, where she was born.
Scotland was decreed and invested by Prince Carlo, Duke of Castro, as a Dame of Merit with Star of the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George in 2003. In 2014, she was appointed to the Council of the British and Irish Delegation of the Constantinian Order and promoted in rank to Dame Grand Cross of Merit.
Scotland has been voted Peer of the Year by Channel 4, The House magazine, Parliamentarian of the Year by the Spectator and the Political Studies Association, and received a number of other awards for her contribution to law reform in the UK and abroad. Scotland was awarded an honorary degree from the University of East London in 2005. Powerlist ranked her as the most influential Black Briton in 2010, 2007 and 2008. On 1 January 2014, she was appointed chancellor of the University of Greenwich.
Ambassador Theresa Roberts
Theresa Roberts is an art collector, philanthropist, and the founder of The Jamaica Patty Co. (est. 2013), a Jamaican restaurant with four sites in London. She was born in in Black River, St. Elizabeth, Jamaica, and lived there until the age of 8. Roberts later moved to the UK and grew up in London and entered the business world. From 1999, she began to travel back to Jamaica more frequently and started to collect Jamaican art. She became friends with the important British-Jamaican writer and art historian, Edward Lucie-Smith. Lucie-Smith supported Roberts’s art collection and provided advice, and she has now amassed an art collection of Jamaican art of international quality. She is married to businessman, Andrew Roberts.
Robert’s charitable roles include sitting on the board of historic Devon House, Kingston, the Friends of the Edna Manley Arts Foundation, Kingston, and supporting Prince Charles by providing a residency at her Jamaican home, Hanover Grange, for his Royal Drawing School. The residencies are funded and provide two artists each with two-week residencies annually. She was also involved in the establishment of the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool in 2007. Roberts also founded the Black Circle Gallery, which is her international art collection. Here, she promotes international artists.
Her activities to promote Jamaican culture were recognised formally in 2023, when she was appointed as Ambassador and Special Envoy for Culture and the Arts by the Jamaican government.
University of Glasgow
The University of Glasgow is a public research university in Glasgow, Scotland. Founded by papal bull in 1451, it is the fourth-oldest university in the English-speaking world and one of Scotland’s four ancient universities.
The university is a member of the Russell Group of research-led British universities and was a founding member of the organisation Universitas 21, an international grouping of universities dedicated to setting worldwide standards for higher education. The university currently has fifteen Regius Professorships, more than in any other UK university.
2024
Baroness Floella Benjamin
Baroness Floella Karen Yunies Benjamin, OM, DBE, DL, is a Trinidadian-British actress, singer, presenter, author and politician. She is known as presenter of children’s programmes such as Play School, Play Away, Jamboree and Fast Forward. On 28 June 2010, Lady Benjamin was introduced to the House of Lords as a life peer nominated by the Liberal Democrats. In 2024, she was honoured with the BAFTA Fellowship award for her services to television.
Benjamin was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2001 New Year Honours for services to broadcasting. At that time she was chairperson of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. She has also won a Special Lifetime Achievement award from BAFTA. She was chairperson of the Women of the Year Lunch for five years and a Millennium Commissioner. She is president of the Elizabeth R Commonwealth Broadcasting Fund and a governor of the National Film and Television School.
Dr. Donette Chin-Loy Chang
Dr. Donette Chin-Loy Chang is a distinguished communications leader, accomplished public affairs strategist, prolific philanthropist and chancellor of Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU).
Chin-Loy Chang has created and managed successful strategies for countless corporate, government, not-for-profit and institutional clients. She and her late husband, G. Raymond Chang, have been dedicated to transforming lives through education, health care, social justice and the arts, in Canada and globally.
She is co-patron of the University of the West Indies Toronto Benefit Awards, a board director for the BlackNorth Initiative and the Toronto International Film Festival, and chairs TMU’s Alumni Council. She also sits on the advisory boards of the Onyx Initiative and TMU’s Anti-Asian Racism Taskforce.
Sir Lenny Henry
Sir Lenworth George Henry, CBE, is a British comedian, actor and writer. He gained success as a stand-up comedian and impressionist in the late 1970s and early 1980s, culminating in The Lenny Henry Show in 1984. He was the most prominent black British comedian of the time and much of his material served to celebrate and parody his African-Caribbean roots.
In 1985, he co-founded the charity Comic Relief with the comedy screenwriter Richard Curtis. He has appeared in numerous other TV programmes, including children’s entertainment show Tiswas, sitcom Chef! and The Magicians for BBC One, and in his later years has transitioned toward acting roles on stage and screen.
Dr. Willard Wigan
Dr. Willard Wigan, MBE, is a British sculptor, the son of Jamaican immigrants, who makes micro miniature sculptures. His sculptures are typically placed in the eye of a needle or on the head of a pin.
Told by his school teachers that he would amount to nothing, he was used as a warning to others what academic failure looked like. Unable to read or write and with his social and academic confidence broken, Willard ran away from school. Whilst hiding at home from the world that taunted him, he discovered his hidden talent and began a new journey to greatness.
Wigan has achieved two Guinness World Records and an Honorary Doctorate from Warwick University. He’s been the subject of an award-winning Channel 4 documentary, the guest of international TV, radio and talk shows and his art has been exhibited across the globe, attracting celebrity collectors.
Lord Simon Woolley
Simon Andrew Woolley, Baron Woolley of Woodford, is a British politician and activist. He is the founder and director of Operation Black Vote (OBV) and Trustee of the charity Police Now, and has been Principal of Homerton College, Cambridge, since October 2021.
Woolley has been included in the Powerlist – which features the 100 most influential people of African or African Caribbean heritage in the United Kingdom – every year since 2012.
Woolley was nominated for a life peerage to sit as a Crossbencher in the House of Lords in 2019. He was created Baron Woolley of Woodford, of Woodford in the London Borough of Redbridge, in October 2019. He was chair of the Government of the United Kingdom Race Disparity Unit Advisory Group until July 2020.
Mr. Peter Cohen
The Edmund Cohen Laboratory for Vascular Research (ECOVAR) laboratory was opened on March 31, 2004, by Edmund Cohen, father of Peter Cohen and past chairman of Courts furniture retailer. The laboratory has since established itself as the leading vascular research centre in the Caribbean under the joint leadership of Professor Clive Landis and Dr. Kim Quimby.
Since the passing of Edmund Cohen in July 2013, the laboratory’s operations have been maintained through the generous support of the Peter D. Cohen Charitable Trust.
Professor Landis says of Peter Cohen: “Like his father Edmund, Peter Cohen is much more than a philanthropist. He has taken a personal interest in the activities of the laboratory and its staff. I have greatly benefited from Peter’s extensive business acumen and mentoring approach, as have other staff in the laboratory who have been hosted by Peter when passing through London.”
bp p.l.c.
BP p.l.c. (formerly The British Petroleum Company p.l.c. and BP Amoco p.l.c.) is a British multinational oil and gas company headquartered in London, England. It is one of the oil and gas “supermajors” and one of the world’s largest companies measured by revenues and profits. It is a vertically integrated company operating in all areas of the oil and gas industry, including exploration and extraction, refining, distribution and marketing, power generation, and trading.
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