John Wilson
Head of the
Examination Board

John Wilson has worked as an information professional for over 35 years and since 1994 he has worked as an independent trainer and consultant specialising in information management with particular emphasis on knowledge sharing, document and records management, indexing and taxonomy.

John has developed and delivered many training courses on information and records management in Europe and the Middle East. He has undertaken consultancy projects for clients in a wide range of sectors including central and local government, banking, energy, biotechnology and utilities in the UK, Europe and the Caribbean. John has worked in both the public and private sectors and was Head of Information Services with BP Exploration before re-training as an in-house information management consultant with BP.

He is a founder member and past Director of the IRMS. In 2011 he was appointed IRMS International Officer and in May 2013 he was awarded Fellowship of the Society.

Elizabeth Barber
Records Manager
Kent County Council

Elizabeth Barber is Records Manager for Kent County Council where her principal responsibilities are to ensure that KCC’s record keeping systems are compliant with the current legislative framework. Elizabeth has also been a Chair of IRMS Public Sector since April 2003. Elizabeth is an accredited member and Fellow of the IRMS and was the recipient of the IRMS Lifetime Achievement Award for records management in 2009.

Elizabeth qualified as an archivist in 1987 and after spending time dealing with records created by the GLC and a short spell in the record office in Hertford, Elizabeth became Kent County Council’s records manager in 1993. Elizabeth is responsible for coordinating records management provision which involves all aspects of records management. Elizabeth is the general editor of the IRMS Toolkit for Schools and is also responsible for the creation and maintenance of the LG Inform Plus retention tool.

Colin Crooks
Fellow
IRMS

Collin Crooks is a Fellow of the Information and Records Management Society which gave him a Lifetime Achievement award. He is also a Fellow of the Institute of Information Management.

Since 1990 Collin has acted as an adviser on projects to restructure government records and information services in the judicial, hospital, education and central government sectors in many African and Caribbean countries. He is currently working with the Nigerian Court of Appeal to explore computerisation of case records and is advising on improving Nigerian prisoner records.

In 2009 he was honoured by the Queen and awarded an MBE for his work in helping developing countries with their information management improvement projects.

Claire Johnson
Fellow
IRMS

Claire Johnson has been an information management professional since 1990 and has worked in both the public and private sectors. She has been an independent consultant since 2009 and has worked on consultancy projects in a range of sectors in the UK and Europe - these include; banking, social care, higher education, and, energy. She gained a LL.M in Internet and Telecommunications Law from the University of Strathclyde in 2011.

In 2013 Claire was awarded Fellowship of the Information and Records Management Society (IRMS) and was Chair of IRMS Scotland from 2012-2017. Since 2016 she has been a member of the Law Society of Scotland’s Privacy Sub-committee. She has contributed to several publications and most recently has written a paper for the European Association of Banking History (EABH) on the challenges brought by the GDPR.

Fiona Kearney
Archivist & Records Manager

Fiona Kearney has worked in the information profession for the last 10 years. She is a qualified Archivist & Records Manager from UCD. She became a Fellow of the Information and Records Management Society in 2019 and received Accreditation in 2015. She has worked in Information Governance in Australia, the UK and North America. She was Secretary of the Information and Records Management Society UK & Ireland between 2015-2019 and is actively involved in the Irish group. She is currently  Information Officer in Galway City Council working in Records Management, FOI and Data Protection.

Alison North
Consultant

Alison North has had her own business since 1969 establishing her company on a full-time basis in 1986. Since then she and her teams have worked extensively on the management of information with global clients across Europe, USA and Middle East.

In recent years Alison has provided leadership and education in records management and information governance to colleagues both within businesses and on a personal basis. She is the patron of the Alison North Award for New Professionals, now in its 10th year, in partnership with the Information and Records Management Society.

She is a director on the Swindon and Wiltshire Local Enterprise Partnership Board as well as area lead in Wiltshire for the Federation of Small Businesses. Until recently she was chairman of a London Hospital charity standing down in February 2019 to focus more on local businesses and charities in Wiltshire.