Our People

Alan Bookbinder was the Master of Downing College, Cambridge from 2018 to 2023. One of the highlights of his tenure was the college’s annual Festival of New Writing, which staged
the work of budding student playwrights. From 2006 to 2018 Alan was Director of the Sainsbury Family Charitable Trusts, the largest family philanthropic office in the UK, which
made grants to charities in the arts, environment, scientific research and disability. Prior to that he was a television documentary producer and commissioner at the BBC, working
extensively in the Soviet Union in the 1980s, and in anthropology and science programmes in the 1990s. His last BBC role was Head of Religion and Ethics from 2001 to 2006.

From 2016 to 2019 he chaired the Trusts and Foundations section of the National Theatre’s Development Board.

He has also been a Board member of the Advertising Standards Authority, on the panel that decides whether ads have broken the advertising rules, and he served on the Marshall Aid
Commemoration Commission, overseeing the appointment and wellbeing of American Marshall scholars studying at British universities.