Paul was elected as a director in 2025 having served previously as described below.

Paul Abrahams has been an active member of the international fencing community for over four decades, achieving medals in all three weapons at the Commonwealth Fencing Veteran Championships, including three golds, and representing Great Britain in sabre and foil at the Veteran World Championships.

Paul’s contributions to BF include serving as chair of the Foil Committee, as foil coordinator on the International Youth Committee and organising cadet and junior squads. He previously spent eight years on the British Fencing Board, chairing the Audit Governance and Risk Committee and overseeing the organisation’s finances. Most recently, he worked with Brian Brittain to develop and promote the British Fencing rating system, which has increased competition opportunities and participation across the UK.

Paul continues to referee domestically and has officiated at numerous European Fencing Confederation cadet competitions, including finals. He was also part of the British Fencing refereeing body responsible for international allocations.

Paul is a member of the senior leadership team at RELX, a FTSE 100 data and analytics company, where he has served as Chief Communications Officer since 2012. He leads an award-winning team in marketing, communications, social media, and corporate reporting.

Tabatha Joined the Board in 2022. Tabatha has been fencing since 2006, and started competing in 2015 after moving from the states to the UK. Tabatha loves fencing and has found competing to be a fun and rewarding part of the sport. As such, Tabatha has been trying to get more involved in the fencing community, including becoming a team captain for Milton Keynes Fencing, and running for the board of directors.

Tabatha is the Board Equality Champion: https://www.britishfencing.com/board-equality-champion-role/

Tabatha is also the Board Environmental Sustainability Lead and sits on the BF Environmental Sustainability Working Group:

ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY WORKING GROUP

My professional experience includes executive level roles leading large, diverse product, technical, and operational teams in various industries including Events (RX Global), Logistics (FedEx), and Telecommunications (Verizon). I serve as Chief Operating Officer for RX Global, a leading event organiser in the business of building businesses for individuals, communities and organisations. RX has over 400 events in 22 countries across 43 sectors generating over £1B in annual revenues. With my teams, I am responsible for:

Creating company, product, operational and technology strategies with a strong focus on innovation and customer value.
Delivery of strategic objectives, maintaining proper risk and financial management.
Building customer focused digital solutions to augment our face to face events. Focus on user experience and design of our digital assets (websites and applications) ensures ease of use, getting key information to our customers as quickly as possible. We could use the same techniques to simplify and improve the British Fencing website as needed.
Responsible for all technical platforms globally: Customer Products, Back Office Systems (Sales, Marketing, Finance), Cloud Infrastructure, and Cyber Security.
Board Member representing RX Global for startups: Feathr and Grip. Responsibilities included:

Help setting the strategic direction for the companies, establishing corporate objectives.
Monitoring delivery of strategic objectives and fiscal performance.
Helping the executive team define balanced and specific objectives.
I have been a fencing parent for the last 9 years in the United Kingdom and the United States. This creates a unique experience of living grass roots and international fencing through their respective governing bodies and programmes. I have also taken up the sport personally as a veteran in the past year, competing the 2022 and 2023.

Brian is the Board Safety and Welfare Lead:

BF BOARD SAFETY AND WELFARE LEAD – ROLE DESCRIPTION

Jade was re-appointed to the board in 2022 and qualified as an ICAEW Chartered Accountant in 2020 after starting a big 4 degree apprenticeship in accounting in 2015. She has worked in financial services, specialising in investment banking and insurance. Jade started her career in banking audit at KPMG and is currently the technical accountant at the UK’s largest pensions insurance specialist who manage over £60bn in assets and secure pensions for over 800,00 people. Jade is also an advanced level examiner for the ICAEW.

Jade is a foilist who occasionally picks up an epee. She started at age 10, competing internationally from age 13 and representing Great Britain on the cadet and junior circuits. Jade qualified for the cadet and junior European and World championships in Jerusalem and Plovdiv and won a team silver medal at the junior Commonwealth championships in Cape Town. She also has a couple of age group British Championship titles, represented Durham university 1st team, and won gold at the senior 5 nations with team England.

Tommy has fenced Epee internationally since the age of 14, representing Great Britain at Cadet, Junior and Senior levels, winning the Junior and Senior Commonwealth Games. He continues to compete on the Senior domestic and World Cup circuits. While at university, as well as competing in BUCS, Tommy helped to create and chair the Youth Panel and the Senior Athlete Representative panel. These two bodies provide representation for the interests of elite fencers across Great Britain. Professionally, Tommy works for Ogilvy, one of world’s largest advertising agencies. He specializes in PR, representing some of the nation’s best-known brands, helping them to develop communication strategies and creative ideas across old and new media.

Tommy is a member of AGRC.

Tom Nippress was elected as Director in 2024.

Tom has over 17 years of experience of training, competing in and coaching fencing at multiple levels,
including 8 years as treasurer of his club. As club captain he enjoys motivating/driving/encouraging fencers to excel at competition, and this has resulted in fencers across all weapons and ages regularly competing, including at the national youth championships.

Tom has completed BF Coach Course ITCF1 and is working towards Level 2 foil and joining the BF coaching register, working with fencers that have competed in the British Youth Championships and made it into British Fencing’s Athlete Development Programme.

He is a Level 2 foil referee, regularly refereeing in Yorkshire and supported others to start to work towards refereeing qualifications within and around Hull.

Tom is a qualified solicitor, working in the legal industry in a variety of roles for the past 10 years and have been a qualified clinical negligence solicitor. He acts for a wide range of clients, including children and vulnerable adults. His work involves risk assessment, tactical decisions, strategic planning, building a team of experts to succeed in the case. I also work with a number of charities, to assist with fundraising, campaigning and service signposting.

Nick was elected as a director in 2025.

The founder of Sword Fighting International, Nick is former British No1 and England Captain, he was reserve for the Barcelona Olympics and is a Commonwealth bronze medallist. He is an International Referee and was one of the assistant referees for the Men’s Foil Final at the London 2012 Olympics, and refereed one of the Finals of the Junior World Championships in 2017. Nick restarted his competitive career in the Veteran category and won Gold in the Team foil event in the 2022 Commonwealth Championships and Silver medal in the World Championships in Daytona Florida in 2023. As current British No1 in his age category, he will be competing in the World Championships in Bahrain this year.

Nick also has plenty of corporate experience, working in Business Information, Anti-Money Laundering and Risk Management in some of the world’s largest financial centres.

Nick has been on the Surrey County Committee for over 10 years. He is the Founder of Epsom Fencing Club.

John Troiano’s professional background is in finance, corporate governance and risk. John joined Schroders as a graduate and worked for the firm for 38 years before retiring in 2020. During his career he worked for the first 20 years as an investment analyst and fund manager, and subsequently managed several of their largest international businesses.

John has competed internationally for Great Britain in a long and successful fencing career at Junior, Senior and Veteran level.

John previously sat on the Board of British Fencing for eight years from 2011 to 2019 as an elected director, overseeing the financial aspects of the national governing body as Chair of the Audit, Governance and Risk Committee.

John is a non-executive director of Hargreaves Lansdown plc, a FTSE-100 financial services company, an board director of British Equestrian and and sits as a trustee on both the Professional Footballers’ Pension Scheme, and the British Fencing Charity.

Chris has been involved with fencing since 2003 when his son started fencing at Brixton Fencing Club. As Chair of the club between 2012 and 2023 his focus was on increasing the diversity of fencing (with free sessions being offered to local state school children), establishing and keeping the club at the forefront of epee fencing while keeping the cost to members as low as possible. Chris has been a board member of London Region Fencing since 2015.

Outside of fencing Chris has board experience as a trustee of the Bar Council Pension Scheme, as a member of the UCU (university college union) Specialist Group on the USS (university superannuation scheme) and as member for 3 years of the executive committee of his chambers.

Chris is a barrister and was called to the bar in 1985, becoming a QC (now KC) in 2002. He has a wide ranging practice but specialise in trusts, tax and pensions.

Over the years assisted informally with many legal questions relating to fencing and other sports – his aim is to find reasonable and practical solutions and approaches.

Sara brings a wealth of experience to the position, with a strong track record in global affairs and international development. She has held a range of senior leadership positions with the United Nations, the not-for-profit sector and academia, including latterly as the chief executive of the ODI, one of the world’s leading think tanks. Sara was made a Companion of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in the 2024 New Year’s Honours List.

Sara is Chair of the Board: http://britishfencing.com/uploads/files/bf_chair_responsibilities_v2.0.pdf

Yashmin was appointed to the Board in 2018. In March 2019 she was appointed as the Board Safeguarding Lead.

Yashmin has had an extensive career in Banking including roles in Personal Banking, Multi-National Corporate Banking, Credit Analyst and now works in Wholesale Banking where she manages numerous Credit Policies introduced from Tokyo to be applied in UK banking. She was also Secretary for the Credit Risk committee and responsible for organising Board papers.

Yashmin revived her love for sports in 2008 when she volunteered for Muslim Women’s Sports Foundation. She organised Basketball sessions aimed at increasing BAME Female participation.

In 2014, Yashmin established Muslimah Sports Association (MSA). Through this work she has delivered sporting opportunities to BAME women including coaching courses and tournaments working in collaboration with Sporting Equals, Badminton England, Mind Charity, Bangladesh Football Association and Dagenham & Redbridge FC, London Sport, The FA, Essex FA , BACA and British Fencing.

In 2017 she was nominated for numerous awards including Sporting Equals, Women’s Sports Trust and Muslim News Awards. She won the Muslim News Award which recognised her achievements to increase BAME female participation and in 2018 won the London Sports Work Force Award. She also became a Trustee at Muslim Women’s Sports Foundation (MWSF), working to raise awareness of the barriers faced by Muslim Women in Sports. Yashmin is regularly involved in consultations including England Hockey, England Cricket and The FA. She has also worked with the charity Mind to identify the link between sports and Mental wellbeing.

Yashmin has recently been appointed Council and Inclusion Advisory Group Member of the London FA and is currently completing a Masters in Global Policy.

Yashmin is the Board Safeguarding Lead (originally called ‘Safeguarding Champion’: https://www.britishfencing.com/welfare-zone/board-safeguarding-champion-role/

Yashmin is the interim Senior Independent Director: https://www.britishfencing.com/about-us-zone/the-board-zone/board-senior-independent-director-role/

Alex O’Connell was appointed to the Board in 2024 as Senior Independent Director

Alex O’Connell enjoyed a successful fencing career from 1996 – 2012, competing in the 2008 Olympic Games for Team GB. Stepping away from the sport he has trained as a solicitor, working for seven years at a top London law firm before moving in-house in the drinks industry for the last five years. He is currently General Counsel and Company Secretary at Fever-Tree, where he also serves as secretary of the Board and each of its Committees.

Responsibilities of the Senior Independent Group can be found here: https://www.britishfencing.com/about-us-zone/the-board-zone/board-senior-independent-director-role/

Pat Aiyenuro joined the Board in 2020, was re-elected in 2024. She was subsequently appointed as BF President at the October AGM in 2024 and in accordance with the articles stepped down from her Director Position.

Pat joined the Board after 17 years of volunteering in the sport at all levels from running one of the UK’s most successful community clubs to team managing GBR teams. Awarded a BEM for services to sport in 2017, Pat has been active in community projects to make fencing more accessible and inclusive. Pat’s other roles include Weapon Manager, Chair of Sabre Selectors, and BF International Liaison Officer. Outside of fencing Pat brings her experience as a school governor and charity board trustee.

During her time on the Board Pat served as the Board Anti-Doping Lead: https://www.britishfencing.com/about-us-zone/the-board-zone/board-anti-doping-lead/ and International Relations Director.

Francesca was appointed to the Board in 2022 and served until November 2023. While not a fencer herself, Francesca has a deep interest and respect for the discipline and has, since 2019, been the Chair of Trustees of the British Fencing Charitable fund. As Chair of the BF Charity, Francesca attends the BF Board meeting in observer status.

Francesca is Chief of Staff (Health &Life Sciences) at King’s College London, working with colleagues across King’s College London and the partner Trusts to drive the Health strategy.

Since 2019, Francesca has also been the Director of UK Advanced Therapies, a UK-wide initiative that brings together the academic community working in the field of Cell and Gene Therapies. Previously she was Director of Grants at Barts Charity and Head of Strategic Development at Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, Queen Mary University of London. Her academic background includes an MRes degree in Industrial Chemistry, and a PhD in Structural Biology, in addition to being an awardee of EMBO and EU Marie Curie research fellowships.