Our Chair and Founder

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Science and technology can have an extraordinary impact. We want to help drive Africa’s development by inspiring and unleashing the next generation of female scientists and engineers”.

— Tom Ilube CBE
Chair, African Gifted Foundation

Tom Ilube CBE

Tom Ilube CBE is the Chair of African Gifted Foundation and Founder of African Science Academy.

He is a technology entrepreneur and educational philanthropist. Tom is the founder/CEO of London based Crossword Cybersecurity plc, a Non-Executive Director of FTSE100 company WPP, the world largest advertising group and the Chair of the Rugby Football Union (RFU). Previously he was on the Board of the BBC and was Managing Director of Consumer Markets at Callcredit Information Group, a UK credit reference agency. Prior to Callcredit, he founded Garlik, a venture capital-backed identity protection company and prior to that served as Chief Information Officer of Egg plc, the pioneering British internet bank. His career has also included Goldman Sachs, PwC and the London Stock Exchange.

In his education work, Tom is an Advisory Fellow at St Anne’s College, Oxford and an Honorary Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. He was also the founding Chair of the Hammersmith Academy, a state secondary school in Hammersmith, West London, which opened in September 2011 and which has become one of the UK's "most innovative” technology schools. Tom was also the chair of Ada, the National College for Digital Skills, which opened in 2016 as the first brand new UK further education college in 23 years.

In 2017, Tom ranked first in the Powerlist 2017, an annual listing of the UK's 100 most powerful people with African or Afro-Caribbean heritage. In 2018 Tom was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2018 Birthday Honours for services to Technology and Philanthropy and has received Honorary Doctorates from City, University of London, University of Wolverhampton, University of Portsmouth, University of Coventry and the University of Benin, Nigeria.