About The Foundation

Alan is a Chartered Accountant with over 30 years’ experience holding senior management roles in a wide range of businesses primarily in media and technology. Alan first met Hugo in 2011 when working for 6 years as CFO of Momondo Group, a travel search business where Hugo was the CEO. Alongside Hugo, Alan helped to substantially grow revenues, integrate a significant overseas acquisition, and led the sale of the business to Booking Holdings in 2017. Hugo and Alan then established Marchmont Ventures in 2018 to invest in and support high-growth, disruptive technology businesses and manage a large portfolio of public and private market assets. Alan is also a founding trustee of The Hugo Burge Foundation and holds directorships for Motorway Online Limited, GetAgent Limited, The Float Yard Limited, Bird Sunglasses Limited and CheckMyBus GmbH. Alan hopes that the Foundation will help to inspire creativity in as many people, young and old, as possible and truly make a difference to their lives.

Starting out in community education 30 years ago, Hazel set up, developed and managed organisations and projects combatting exclusion and inequality working with third sector and public sector services and economic development agencies. Much of the work has focused on children, young people and women: managing Youth Agencies and Women onto Work in Edinburgh; working with the European Commission on research and development projects that promoted women’s and young people’s participation in education, enterprise and employment. Eight years ago, after a stint volunteering in rural Senegal with women and children’s charities, she returned to Berwickshire and set-about developing social enterprises that supported women and families. One of those enterprises has won numerous awards for promoting egalitarian values and empowering vulnerable women to be leaders in their lives and communities. She is a former Board Member of a number of charities working on behalf of women, children and other disadvantaged groups and currently holds a public appointment with the Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration. Hazel is a former care-experienced child and young person and someone whose career path has primarily focused on working with disadvantaged groups and communities. That commitment was informed by her first 18 years in care; starting out youthwork in her late teens through to setting-up and managing local, regional and national initiatives that focused on equality, inclusion, wellbeing and care for those who are most vulnerable, including our children and young people. She is currently developing a legacy of 130 registered tartans, including the “Tartans for Africa Collection,” bequeathed by a talented philanthropist, David McGill – under the banner of Tartans for Social and Humanitarian Good.

Dr James Fox is an art historian, writer, curator and multi award-winning, BAFTA-nominated, broadcaster. After positions at Harvard and Yale, he is currently Director of Studies in History of Art at the University of Cambridge, where he has taught for fifteen years. He specialises in British art, modern art, the cultural history of colour, and British craft traditions. His most recent book, The World According to Colour: a Cultural History, was published by Allen Lane in 2021. He is currency writing another book called Craftland: In Search of Britain’s Vanishing Trades, which explores the country’s lost and endangered crafts. Convinced of art’s huge social importance, James works with museums, schools, charities and the media on both sides of the Atlantic to engage broader audiences in this most life-enhancing of subjects. He is currently Director of Education at the Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park in Canada, one of the largest sculpture parks in North America. James is perhaps best known for his broadcasting work, where he has established himself as one of the country’s best-loved arts presenters. Over the last fifteen years he has made many documentaries for BBC television and radio, including the BAFTA-nominated British Masters (2011), Royal Television Society-nominated A History of Art in Three Colours (2012), Forest, Field & Sky: Art out of Nature (2016), The Art of Japanese Life (2017) and The Age of the Image (2020).