Dame Ann Limb DBE DL

In position 2023 – 2024

Dame Ann is Chair of the City & Guilds of London Institute and from 2015-2021 was Chair of The Scouts, the UK’s largest youth engagement charity. She is the first woman, and openly gay, to hold both these roles. She is also Chair of the UK Innovation Corridor, the country’s globally significant life sciences cluster stretching form from London to Cambridge and Chair of The Lloyds Bank Foundation.

Between 1976 and 2001 Ann enjoyed a successful career in Further Education as a College Principal in Milton Keynes and Cambridge and in the civil service, where she was responsible for the UK government’s flagship digital learning initiative, learndirect. Dame Ann is Deputy Chair of The Prince’s Foundation, a heritage-led regeneration charity, and Vice President of the social justice charity she founded in 1998, the Helena Kennedy Foundation.

In the 2011 Birthday Honours, Ann was awarded the OBE, in 2015 ‘upgraded’ to CBE, and in Jubilee Honours 2022 elevated to the rank of Dame Commander of the British Empire, DBE.

In 2019, Dame Ann was named #1 LGBTQ+ public sector role model in the OUTstanding List and one of the 50 most influential women born in the North of England in the Northern Power Women Power List.