Our Costa Foundation store Champions

Kate has worked for over 20 years across the private, public and not-for-profit sectors, in both international and national organisations, predominantly with a focus on enabling children and young people to thrive. She has a passion for education as a key vehicle for children to achieve this, driven by her parents who were both teachers.
Prior to joining the Costa Foundation in June 2023, Kate worked as a freelance consultant through her own consulting company. Previously, Kate was Director of Business Development & Programmes at the kinship care charity, Kinship, where her team was highly commended at the Third Sector Awards in September 2021 for their response to supporting kinship families during the pandemic.
Prior to joining Kinship, Kate worked at Mentor UK, developing programmes for young people to build resilience and prevent substance misuse. She spent 11 years at Save the Children UK, mainly focused on humanitarian capacity building and child protection, and was part of the senior team that set up the £50m Humanitarian Leadership Academy, a charitable subsidiary of Save the Children UK. She also worked for Cancer Research UK securing corporate sponsorship for events such as Race for Life.
Kate studied International Studies with French at the University of Birmingham, where she spent a year living in Belgium and worked at the European Parliament in Brussels. Kate also speaks Spanish, is a keen runner has raised over £40,000 for charity personally, through events such as the London Marathon. She has travelled the globe extensively, which has helped to cultivate her love of coffee! Kate is passionate about female empowerment and sits on the board of the City Women Network.

Rob joined the Foundation in June 2023.
He brings a wealth of retail and commercial experience to the board, having spent over 30 years working in senior roles for companies including Mars, ASDA, Pets at Home and Halfords. For the past 9 years he has also been an advisor to the British Heart Foundation Retail Committee.
Rob retired from his full time executive career in 2018. He is married with 2 grown up sons and enjoys an active outdoor life in the Lake District. He is also a Gold Duke of Edinburgh expedition assessor in Cumbria and business mentor for the Prince’s Trust.
Rob is looking forward to continuing the amazing work of the Costa Foundation charity. The legacy that has been created is awesome, and he hopes that with his drive and determination the charity will continue to change the life story of children in coffee growing areas of the world.

Amit qualified as a Chartered Accountant with PwC in 2000, before joining the Australian Government’s International Trade Agency in London. He volunteered for the No Smoking Day charity before being recruited to the position of interim Chief Executive, tasked with securing the future of the annual Department of Health-sponsored campaign. He subsequently became the Head of Corporate Partnerships at the British Heart Foundation, and in 2015 was headhunted for the role of Director of Corporate Partnerships at Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity. In 2020 Amit was asked to be the interim Director of Fundraising for NHS Charities Together’s Urgent National Covid Appeal which raised £150m. Amit was previously a Trustee of the UK Friends of the Abraham Initiatives

Charlotte is Costa Coffee’s Global Chief Digital and Information Officer, leading the company’s technology delivery and driving the digital transformation agenda, as a member of Costa’s Global Exec. An experienced digital leader, with roles spanning over 22 years across multiple industries, her career has focused on delivering digital transformation and complex technology-enabled business change.
She has driven business value through digitally enabled business models, complex integration and merger experience. Scope of roles have included Client/Customer facing digital product teams as well as delivering enterprise technology and all aspects of infrastructure across global organisations.
Being able to contribute to and be part of an organisation that really changes lives in the communities within which it operates and partners, was too good an opportunity to miss. I am passionate about the role and impact that education can have on people’s lives, and in particular, the importance that this has in helping advance more women into jobs and being able to influence and improve outcomes for them. The number of people positively impacted by the work of the foundation is truly inspiring!
Outside of work, Charlotte is kept busy with her 3 young children; she is passionate about supporting women in Tech and actively participates in mentoring and network initiatives. She also loves her Peloton bike, when she can find the time to go for a spin!

Charlotte has over 17 years experience in the humanitarian sector and is currently Head of Coaching with the Humanitarian Leadership Academy in Save the Children. She leads an ambitious and complex Senior Leadership and Coaching portfolio spanning both internally and externally developing and ensuring a strategic and comprehensive coaching offer is available across the humanitarian sector.
Previously Charlotte was Global Head of Humanitarian Education for Save the Children (SC) and the Director of the Humanitarian Technical Unit. Charlotte began her career as a Humanitarian Education Response Advisor deploying to a vast array of complex, protracted and sudden-onset humanitarian crises as part of SC’s Global Emergency response team designing, delivering, coordinating and monitoring high quality and appropriate education responses in humanitarian settings.
Charlotte is passionate about education and leadership (especially girls Education & Women in Leadership). She is a qualified Coach, as well as an Associate Trainer with RedR, Mentor and facilitator, focused on individual, team and Leadership Coaching. She is currently studying for a Postgraduate Diploma in Leadership Coaching and also holds an MSc in Child Development and Postgraduate Certificates in Humanitarian Leadership, and Leadership Coaching.

Emily is an Internal Controls Senior Manager at Costa Coffee. Having joined Whitbread (Costa’s previous owner) in 2014, Emily has seen how the Foundation has grown over the years and opened
up opportunities to thousands of children. Emily is a Chartered Management Accountant and volunteers to help with the Foundation’s finance. Throughout her time working with Costa, Emily
has been in numerous Finance roles across Whitbread, Coca-Cola and Costa Global. “I’m so happy to have the opportunity to help at the Foundation. What amazes me about the work the Foundation does is not only the life changing impact on the children, but the ripple effect of that education on their wider communities and future generations – truly powerful change”

Gordon is the Managing Director of Costa Coffee in Europe, Middle East and North Africa. Gordon has previously worked across a number of businesses including Procter & Gamble, McKinsey & Co., WM Morrisons and M&S. He joined Costa in November 2019 and became a trustee of The Costa Foundation in 2021. Having worked as a teacher, he understands the benefits of education and in giving back to those, who have less opportunities than we do. “What I love about the Costa Foundation is that there is a clear, tangible and unarguable link between the donations and thousands of children in coffee growing areas being educated and having opportunities. The Costa Foundation is making a real difference every day. It is incredible”

Hannah Bellamy is Managing Director, UK at charity: water. Focused on creating a world where everyone has clean, safe drinking water, they’ve funded clean water for 17 million people and Fast Company, Forbes, and the New York Times have all recognised their innovative approach. Hannah brought the charity’s radically transparent model to the UK and Europe, launched subscription giving, and forged partnerships with fashion, retail, and other brands to catalyse change. She mentors women through FemMentored, is an avid fiction reader and mother to two kids.

Hayley Finn is the Global People Partnering Director at Costa Coffee. Hayley has previously worked in Finance and Audit roles at PwC (including charity and education sector clients), Tesco and
Whitbread. Since joining Costa Coffee in 2016, Hayley has worked in various roles including Financial Reporting & Control, Finance Business Partnering and Reward. Hayley is keen to help inspire Costa’s customers and team members to get involved with the Foundation and maximise the impact it can have on changing children’s lives and supporting coffee growing communities.

John joined Whitbread in early 2014, to take on a new role as Head of Charity Partnerships, for Premier Inn and Restaurants, managing our hugely successful national charity partnership with Great Ormond Street Hospital. John has previously spent most of his career in retail operations working in the discount sector, ASDA, shopping centres and as Head of Retail at Stansted Airport, developing the retail and eating offers across the airport. He first started working in the charity sector as Head of Regional Fundraising for Macmillan Cancer Support, where his key focus was to develop new income streams and build relationships with local communities, service providers and corporate organisations. In October 2018, John joined Costa as Charity and Community Manager, he is responsible for building on the great achievements of the Costa Foundation.

Laura works as a Professor of Development Research and Evaluation in the School of International Development at the University of East Anglia (UEA) and is currently Head of the School. She has two daughters, aged 4 and 10, and consequently doesn’t have time for much else! Before she came to UEA she worked with Young Lives (Oxford University), a study of children’s lives over time, and the Wellbeing in Developing Countries Research group (Bath University), and has a keen interest in education and social mobility. Her research interests centre around methodologies for doing good, ethical research and generating data for evaluation. Laura became a Costa Foundation Trustee in 2019 as she wanted to do something relating to education where you could see an immediate difference.

Rory Blyth is a Chartered Accountant who has worked at PwC, Tesco and Whitbread. He is currently the Director of Finance and Business Services at a Department for Education organisation responsible for skills in Engineering Construction. He helps the Foundation with Monitoring and Evaluation of our projects. “I volunteer because the Foundation and its team change thousands of young lives a year and I continue to be inspired by their efforts to put every pound raised directly back into schools and projects