The core purpose of the Scott Trust is to secure the financial position and editorial independence of the Guardian in perpetuity.
The subsidiary purpose is, to the extent consistent with the core purpose, to promote the causes of freedom of the press and liberal journalism both in Britain and elsewhere.
Conclusions of the Scott Trust’s 2021 governance review
The Board
Ole Jacob Sunde, Chair of the Scott Trust
Ole Jacob joined the Scott Trust in 2015. He was appointed as senior independent director in March 2020 and chair in June 2021. He has been associated with the Schibsted Media Group ASA for more than 30 years, having been elected to the Board in 2000 and serving as chair from 2002 to 2022. He is a founding board member of the Tinius Trust, owner of Schibsted, serving as chair for the last 20 years, and a member of the Board of Visitors at Columbia University, School of Journalism. He is the founder and a board member of Formue AS, the leading independent private bank in Scandinavia. He also invests in start-ups and works with initiatives related to sustainable development goals.
Katharine Viner, editor-in-chief, Guardian News & Media
Katharine Viner is the first female editor-in-chief of the Guardian, a position she has held since June 2015. Under her leadership the Guardian created its reader revenue strategy, which has led to millions of supporters funding the Guardian from around the world while keeping the website free to all. She restored the Guardian’s finances, described as “one of the most significant turnarounds in recent British media history”, while making the Guardian a truly international voice through world-leading investigations, on-the-ground reporting on people and power, environmental journalism, culture, sport and multimedia — during her tenure the Guardian became the first news organisation in the world to win an Oscar, a Bafta and three Emmys. She has also championed diversity in the newsroom, dramatically increasing representation and driving the Legacies of Enslavement programme, a 10-year restorative justice initiative in response to the Guardian founders’ links to transatlantic slavery.
Previously, she was deputy editor 2008-2015, launched the market-leading Guardian Australia in 2013, and was editor of Guardian US 2014-2015, based in New York. She launched a fifth edition of the title, Guardian Europe, in 2023. She is the winner of the Diario Madrid prize for journalism for her 2016 long read, How Technology Disrupted the Truth and continues to write regularly about how technology is changing the face of journalism and society. Katharine is based in London.
Tracy Corrigan
Tracy Corrigan joined the Scott Trust in December 2022 and is chair of the Scott Trust Endowment board. She was previously chief strategy officer of Dow Jones and has held a range of senior editorial positions including editor in chief of the Wall Street Journal Europe, editor of the Financial Times’ Lex column, and editor of FT.com. Tracy is currently a non-executive director of Barclays Bank UK PLC and Domino’s Pizza Group PLC.
Dr Sam Gregory
Sam is an internationally recognised technologist, researcher and human rights advocate. He is executive director of the global human rights organisation WITNESS, a global organisation which helps people everywhere harness the power of video and audiovisual technology to tell their stories, document the truth, and defend human rights. In 2024, WITNESS received the first-ever Peabody Global Impact Award.
He holds a PhD focused on participatory media, AI and trust. As a leading authority on deepfakes and other forms of AI-generated misinformation and disinformation, Sam has testified to both Houses of the US Congress on AI and synthetic media, and in 2025 delivered the Gruber Distinguished Lecture on Global Justice at Yale Law School, focused on ‘Fortifying Truth, Trust and Evidence in the Face of AI.’
Jane Martinson
Jane is a highly-respected journalist, academic and author, with a career in journalism spanning more than 25 years. Jane spent 18 years as a journalist at the Guardian, where her roles included head of media and women’s editor, and she continues to write an opinion column for the Guardian on media matters.
Alongside her journalism career, Jane is the Marjorie Deane Professor of Financial Journalism at City St Georges, University of London, and is a regular contributor to news outlets on media, business, finance and women’s issues. Jane is also the author of ‘You May Never See Us Again - the Barclay Dynasty: A Story of Survival, Secrecy and Succession‘, telling the story of David and Frederick Barclay - commonly known as the Barclay brothers.
David Olusoga
David Olusoga joined the Scott Trust in June 2018. He is a historian, writer, broadcaster and filmmaker, who has produced and presented documentaries for more than 20 years. David is an award-winning author and wrote Black & British, which was awarded the Longman-History Today Trustees Award and the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize in 2017. He writes regularly for the Guardian, the Observer and BBC History Magazine. David is a patron of the Wimpole History Festival and a member of the advisory panel for the Imperial War Museum’s Second World War Galleries.
Dr. Jonathan Paine
Dr Jonathan Paine is an investment banker and academic. He was a managing director and senior adviser at Rothschild & Co., where he worked for 25 years as a specialist in the telecoms, media and technology industries.
He is a supernumerary fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, where he chaired the development committee and sits on the investment committee. He is also an independent council member at the University of East Anglia. Jonathan holds a D.Phil from Oxford University and is a published author of works on the economics of literature and economics. He describes himself as a serious scholar of narrative and its importance in today’s society.
Jonathan is also a member of the Scott Trust Endowment board and sits on the joint audit committee.
Matthew Ryder
Matthew Ryder KC is a barrister and founder member of Matrix chambers in London, specialising in human rights, media, data and information, crime and regulatory law. He was deputy mayor of London for social integration between 2016 and 2018 overseeing the mayor’s community engagement, diversity and equality work, and use of data. He has worked on a number of influential reviews including the Lammy Review into racial bias in the criminal justice system, and has held numerous board positions including chair of the UK’s Black Cultural Archive and governor of the University of the Arts in London.
Russell Scott
Russell Scott joined the Scott Trust in 2015 and is the Scott Trust’s senior independent director. He runs a consultancy business specialising in content and commercial strategy in sport, he is chief commercial officer for Mavis, a platform that democratises live video production in the cloud and is a director of The Guardian Foundation. Previously he held multiple senior roles in publishing, digital and broadcast sectors including content director of The Football League, commercial director of Northcliffe media and managing director of fish4, a digital classified joint venture between 5 major UK regional press groups.
Haroon Siddique
Haroon Siddique joined the Scott Trust in 2022 as its journalist director. He has worked at the Guardian for over 15 years and is currently its legal affairs correspondent, previously serving as a reporter and senior reporter in the Guardian’s newsroom.
Margaret Simons
Dr Margaret Simons joined the Scott Trust in 2022. She is an award-winning journalist, author, and journalism academic. She is Honorary Principal Fellow at the Centre for Advancing Journalism, part of the University of Melbourne. She was director of the centre from 2012 until 2017, and was a founding director of Australia’s Public Interest Journalism Initiative from 2018 until 2021. She is also a founding director of the hyperlocal journalism startup *PS Media. Over a four-decade journalistic career, Margaret has written for The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, The Monthly, Crikey, and the Guardian, among others. She holds a Doctorate in Creative Arts from the University of Technology Sydney.
Nabiha Syed
Nabiha is chief executive officer of The Markup, an award-winning journalism non-profit. Prior to launching The Markup, Nabiha spent a decade as an acclaimed media lawyer working at the frontier of technology and newsgathering, including at the New York Times and more recently at BuzzFeed where she was associate general counsel.
She has extensive experience of working at the frontier of technology and newsgathering, advising on publication issues with the Snowden revelations and the Steele Dossier, litigation around police disciplinary records, as well as privacy and free speech issues globally.
In 2023, Nabiha received the NAACP-Archewell digital civil rights award. She serves on the executive committee of the New York Civil Liberties Union and on the boards of The New Press and Upturn.
Stephen Godsell, company secretary
Stephen Godsell joined GMG in 2017 as general counsel and company secretary. Prior to this he was group general counsel and company secretary at PA Group, and has held senior positions at The Economist Group and Clifford Chance. Stephen is a board director and trustee of The Economist Educational Foundation, a member of the Joint Committee on Legal Deposit and a freeman of the City of London.