Petr Fiman is a 2004 ECP graduate and the first alumnus to become a member of the Board of Governors, which he joined in 2016, also serving on the Finance Committee. Petr first started volunteering for the ECP in 2012, serving until 2019 as a Director of the English College Foundation, the UK charity that founded and still supports the College. 

Petr has a BSc in Economics and an MSc in Finance from the London School of Economics and Political Science and started his professional career in 2007 at Deutsche Bank in London on a graduate scheme in Credit Risk Management. In 2010, Petr joined Bank of America Merrill Lynch where he covered hedge funds from the counterparty risk perspective, most recently as a Director in the Global Markets Risk area. In 2019, he relocated from the UK back to the Czech Republic and joined Ezpada Group, a commodities trading company. In May 2023, Petr left Ezpada Group for another position with a private investment company based in Prague.

Barbara came to Prague to study Czech theatre in the mid-1960s, after graduating in Drama from Manchester University. She then worked in theatres in London, Bromley, Stoke on Trent and Bristol, and in drama in education, before completing a PhD at Bristol University on the Czech theatre of the 1960s. In 1985 she organised the Bristol Czechfest to celebrate independent elements of the Czech arts such as the Theatre on a String, Chorea Bohemica, Magdalena Jetelová and Jiří Stivín. After moving to London she worked for the Jan Hus Educational Foundation, which provided lecturers, books and other materials for the underground seminars in Prague, Brno and Bratislava, and supported the samizdat press (in 1988 the secret police described the JHEF as “a highly dangerous organisations of an ideologically subversive nature operating from Great Britain against the CSSR”.) After 1989 Barbara moved with the JHEF to set up its office in Brno, and since 1994 has lived in Prague, teaching at SIT, CERGE-UPCES and DAMU, translating for Prague Castle, Charles University, Museum of Czech Literature, Czech Academy of Sciences, National Gallery, and writing – alongside academic papers and articles her work includes Czech Plays (1992), The Velvet Philosophers (1999) and Trial by Theatre: Reports on Czech Drama. She received the Commemorative Medal of President Václav Havel in 1998 and an MBE in 2002 and one of USTR’s (The Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes) awards for Freedom. Democracy and Human Rights for 2022.

Barbara is a Founder Governor of the English College and serves on the Education Committee.

After completing her teaching degree, Elizabeth taught at a preparatory school in Suffolk and then at Highgate Junior School in London. There, she had responsibility for the French and PSHE departments, as well as being Assistant Principal (Pastoral) for her final five years at the school. Following a move out of London, she was first a Governor for two years and then Chair of the Governing Body of a primary school in Essex. Her father, Nicholas Morris, was both a Governor of the ECP and also a Director of the English College Foundation and Elizabeth’s first official involvement with the College was also as a Director of the ECF, taking over as Chairman in 2017. She became a Governor of the ECP in 2011 and is now Deputy Chairman (UK) and a member of the Finance Committee. Her interests include travel, downhill skiing, reading and spending time in France.

Former Czech Minister of Education, Youth and Sports and a graduate of Charles University, Miroslava has a lifelong interest in competitiveness, education and development of human resources. 

After the Velvet Revolution, she completed internships at the European Commission, the OECD, a course on Effective Top Management – Henley Management College, UK, a study stay at the Field Institute in the USA, an intensive course on ESF in France, the Netherlands and Germany and an intensive course on EU policies and institutions at the European Centre for Public Administration. She worked as an analyst in the qualification department of the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs and the State Commission for Scientific, Technical and Investment Development.

Since 1991, she has prepared and managed European education and employment programmes on a national level. In 1994, she became the first director of the National Training Fund. She participated in the formulation of decisive Human Resources Development policies by managing the most important programmes of European assistance to the Czech Republic in the field of education, employment, social policy and management. More recently, she has been working on human resources issues for Industry 4.0; Work 4.0; Mapping the innovation environment in the Czech Republic in the period of 2014+. She has represented the Czech Republic in a number of European institutions, such as the ETF, EFMD. She has worked as an EU expert in Kosovo, an expert at USAID, OECD LEED Committee and an external examiner for the MBA at Sheffield Hallam University, in the UK. She was 1st Vice-Chair of the Government Council for Human Resource Development.

Miroslava also deals with research management issues. For eight years, she was 1st Vice-Chair of the Government Council for Research, Development and Innovations. She led the preparation of the reform of the research system in the Czech Republic, managed the work on the National Policy on Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) and co-authored the Priorities of Applied Research of RDI, etc.

During her working life she has been an advisor to two Prime Ministers and for two periods she was Secretary General for the preparation and negotiation of Structural Funds documents with the EC.

She is the chairperson of the Board of Trustees of the Anglo-American University in Prague, a member of the governing bodies of the Prague University of Economics and Business,  Brno University of Technology and Pardubice University.

Miroslava became a Governor of the ECP in 2019.

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Zdeněk Tůma graduated from the University of Economics in Prague, completing his postgraduate studies at the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. At the beginning of the 1990s, he participated in the reintroduction of Economics education at Charles University where he was appointed an Associate Professor. He continues to lecture at Charles University, specialising in central banking and financial regulation. He was Chief Economist at Patria Finance and in 1998, moved to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development as a member of the Executive Board. In February 1999, Zdeněk was appointed Vice-Governor of the Czech National Bank and in December 2000, became Governor, serving in this position until 2010. He was a partner at KPMG Czech Republic from 2011-2019, focusing on consulting in the financial sector. He is currently a member of the Supervisory Board of ČSOB. He is also a member of the scientific and statutory boards of several universities and a member of the Czech Economic Society, of which he was President from 1999-2001.

After grammar school and university in Leeds and four years in Finland, Ann joined the Foreign Office.  She spent most of her diplomatic career on the Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe, serving at Embassies in Moscow (until expelled in 1971 in retaliation for the UK’s expulsion of 105 Russian spies), Helsinki and East Berlin, and on secondment to the Cabinet Office.  A long stint in Eastern European Department (non-Soviet Warsaw Pact countries) straddled the events of 1989 and included the invention and early running of the Know-How Fund. She retired as Head of Cultural Relations at the FCO.

Ann is a Founder Governor of The English College in Prague, becoming Deputy Chairman and then Chairman of Governors in 2017.

Since retirement Ann has edited books on the EU’s relations with Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova, and two books on the history of the English College. She is also a long-standing Trustee of The BEARR Trust, which supports health and welfare NGOs in the former countries of the Soviet Union.