From the Development Director

Matthew Moss MVO, Director of External Relations and Development

Keeping the Development team together and in good heart has felt like its own victory this year. Over the COVID period, one critical post was vacant, another for a time furloughed. Every member of the team has caring responsibilities of one sort or another, which had to take priority at unpredictable times. Like most of the country, we all spent many months working from home, with all the emotional and practical swings and roundabouts that brings. (We saved some commuting time, for example, but lost it again tackling databases with moody remote connections, failing to read body language on Zoom, watching mesmerised as webcams turned on and off as if controlled by poltergeists.)

The greatest loss for a department that thrives on connecting people has been the cancellation of most in-person events, from MA graduation ceremonies to alumni reunions and social events in Cambridge and elsewhere. Around us, too, the rhythm of student comings and goings was pulled apart, and we lost our usual sense of closeness with the student body. And fundraising without face-toface meetings, it turns out, is a real challenge!

But the frustrations were more than balanced by the glories. Staff and Fellows were able to gather in Easter term to say farewell to Geoff Ward, our Principal since 2013 – all the more moving because seeing colleagues in real life was such a treat – and to take stock of how the College had matured into a confident, ambitious and purposeful organisation under his leadership. Those Homerton attributes, always so well articulated by Geoff, were at the forefront of the College’s thinking as we recruited his successor (hold that thought).

Also among the glories was the discovery of the power of online seminars for alumni. Having launched our first in 2020, we continued to develop the series throughout 2021. It seems extraordinary that two years ago we would have scorned this format as second-best. Now, we as producers and our alumni as audiences are so comfortable with online events that viewing numbers dwarf what we might expect for an inperson event – and as the latter return, the former will most definitely stay.

And of course, these webinars give us the chance to show off our exceptional academic Fellows. Over the year we heard Dr Will Fawcett and Dr Amelia Drew on new challenges to the Standard Model of physics; Dr Beth Singler on AI and machine learning; Professor Kamal Munir on racial diversity in institutions and corporations; and Dr Alison Wood on the future of education. I had the great pleasure of interviewing Professor Ravi Gupta and Dr Julia Kenyon on COVID-19 and HIV for the Cambridge Alumni Festival, in an empty lecture theatre, for an online audience of nearly 300 – which we discovered in Q&A included the head of the Clinical School at Oxford. They have been superstars throughout the pandemic: Ravi as a near daily expert voice in the global media, and Julia as an authoritative voice on how we handle COVID safety in our own College community. We are hugely fortunate to have such brilliant colleagues.

As for fundraising: as Cambridge’s newest College and with a young Development Office it’s fair to say that Homerton’s best fundraising days are ahead of us. We don’t yet have the reliable income stream from philanthropy that other Colleges can count on for student support – but this year we received the most extraordinary shot in the arm. Miss Jean Robinson, whose obituary appeared in last year’s Annual Review, studied

at Homerton in the last years of the Second World War. Her career mirrored that of many of our alumni: a teacher, school leader and later HM Inspector of schools. She had few needs and lived modestly; and died leaving an estate of £2 million, of which she directed half to Homerton and half to her old school. It really is the most extraordinary and emotional legacy, and a tribute to the transformative effect of a Homerton education on Jean’s life and career.

We continue to strive for that impact, in the Development Office as in every other part of the College’s activity. The student mentoring programme, managed by the Development team with Homerton Changemakers, goes from strength to strength, with 39 new matches created between students and mentors this year. Tarquin Bennett-Coles (BEd 1989), one of our dedicated alumni mentors, says of the programme: “I wanted to put something back into the College that helped positively shape my career path and choices. I believe the talent of the future has so much to offer and, as mentors, we can help prepare them by focusing on the skills that they will need to adapt to our rapidly changing working environment – and also help open some doors that would otherwise be closed to them.”

This acute sense of engagement with the world around us is part of what makes Homerton distinctive, and it has been turbocharged by the arrival of Simon Woolley as our Principal (did you hold that thought?). Even before his installation on 1 October, he was making plans to invite HRH The Prince of Wales, and soon afterwards he seized a passing opportunity to bring the Reverend Jesse Jackson to Homerton.The Development Office was in the forefront of organising both these ‘pinch me’ visits – the most senior royal to visit Homerton ever in our history, and a civil rights campaigner who has enriched countless lives.

“Give me a lever and a place to stand, and I will move the world”, said Archimedes, and Simon brings that same ambition, and that same appreciation of good tools.

In that quotation, Archimedes the mathematician surely did not intend to glorify himself as the person who moves the world, but to draw attention to the power of levers. Homerton’s community – students, alumni, donors, staff, and Fellows – are the lever here, and through it – through you and with your help – we will change the world n

David Johnson

The Development Office team: Laura Kenworthy, Christopher Hallebro, Matthew Moss, Joseph Saxby and Sally Nott