Karen Stanton, Vice Chancellor

After a significant career in higher education, Professor Karen Stanton joined York St John University as Vice Chancellor in September 2015, one of the few female Vice Chancellors in the UK. In 2017 still only 1/5th of universities were led by a woman. As the head of one of York’s key anchor institutions, Karen Stanton […]

Margery Gertrude Willoughby, Headteacher

The photograph of Mill Mount School, York has a special memory for me. I am a chronically too early person and used to stand alone at the pupils’ entrance at the left of the picture. Every morning I heard Miss Willoughby tapping along, I looked down not wanting to have eye-contact. One morning the tapping […]

June Hutt (Ayres), Sportswoman

June Hutt June Hutt (née Ayres) has the gift of unusually good hand-eye coordination; she sees the ball before other people. She also plays the piano and draws (and her grandfather, Arthur, was a concert pianist, music teacher and composer).  As far as June knows, her sporting talent was not inherited from a particular family […]

June Hargreaves, Town Planner and Conservationist

Dr June Hargreaves: Planning Officer, conservationist and history enthusiast It was a love of history that prompted June Hargreaves to come to York in 1961 as a Senior Planning Officer. Later, she became Assistant City Planning Officer, responsible for Development Control and Conservation. Born in 1937 she grew up in Cowling, West Yorkshire and, after attending […]

Elizabeth Hartley, Archaeologist

Elizabeth Grayson Hartley (1947 – 2018) As the first ever-Keeper of Archaeology at the Yorkshire Museum, Elizabeth held a key role in the City of York. She had responsibility for possibly the largest and best collection of Roman-British antiquities outside of London and for the Yorkshire Museum’s vast archaeological collection drawn from the City of […]

Canon Linda Ali, York Minster

Linda Ali, born in Trinidad and Tobago, travelled to Britain in 1961 to study Beauty Therapy and Electrolysis. As a result of sustained discrimination, she decided to follow a different career path in Trade Marks management working in the City of London for over 30 years. After a personal tragedy, Linda embraced education as her […]

Helen Cadbury, Author

Helen (1965 – 2017) was born in Birmingham into the Quaker family of chocolate fame, later moving to Oldham with her older sister and brothers. As a child she loved books. Helen had three main ambitions at this time, which included being a writer or an actor. Her father advised her not to start writing […]

Juliet Forster, Theatre Director

Juliet Forster became Associate Director of York Theatre Royal in 2007. She has a degree in Theatre from the University of Birmingham. At first she was more interested in the acting side but as she continued she found “the other side of things” more intriguing with directing the most enjoyable. She started as a lighting designer […]

Yvie Holder, Founder, York Race Equality Network

Yvie has been promoting diversity and equality for over 30 years, in both a personal and a professional capacity. Born in London, to a Trinidadian father and English mother, and raised in Kingston Upon Hull, Yvie came to study at the University of York, where she graduated in 1976.  She became a teacher of English and […]

Joyce Pickard, Peace Campaigner

Joyce Pickard (1921- 2017), Quaker, peace campaigner, and educator, was born in Derby in 1921, and educated at the University of London Westfield College, taking a modern language degree and then a teaching certificate. She moved to York when she was appointed head teacher at the Mount School in 1960, the youngest ever, and she […]