The Faces Behind the Fund
Our Team
While we do offer the best quality products and services, what really makes The Tourist Guide Benevolent Fund great is our incredible team. Passionate, experienced, talented and friendly, we truly have the best of the best. Get to know the people behind the business, who are dedicated to making sure your needs are not only met, but exceeded.
Tim Hudson
Chairman and Trustee
Tim Hudson is a member of the Richard III Society and the Official Elvis Presley Fan Club. He is a devoted follower of Fulham FC, and designated dog walker to a golden cocker spaniel called Dougal, whom he delights with recitals of Tennyson on muddy walks in the Chilterns. Before the pandemic struck he was a busy London and Heart of England Blue Badge guide, except when pursuing his other career as an actor on stage, radio, tv, and film. He spent 4 years with the Royal Shakespeare Company, played Officer Krupke in West Side Story in the West End, and starred as Toad in Wind in the Willows at the Old Vic. Veteran of 21 pantomimes, playing an assortment of dames, ugly sisters, villains and silly kings, he occasionally gets the chance to portray historical figures, including Hitler and Boris Johnson, and appears as Winston Churchill in the films De Gaulle, Sardar Udham and Bonhoeffer. He is about to reprise the role of WSC on stage in The Lion and the Unicorn. This year he was delighted to assume the role of Chairman of the Guides Benevolent Fund. . Last year he was delighted to assume the role of Deputy Chairman of the Guides Benevolent Fund. Currently he is honing his rudimentary IT skills with online lectures and play readings, and home learning with his two sons.
Carole Hiley
Trustee
Carole Hiley has worked in travel and tourism since graduating from the university of Bath in the mid seventies, with a degree in European Studies. Before becoming a Blue Badge London Guide in 1988, and a City of London Green Badge Guide in 1990, she worked throughout Europe and the Soviet Union. She guides regularly in French and Italian. Carole is a part of the team of guides at the All England Lawn Tennis Club and at Spencer House. Carole joined the Benevolent fund committee in 2005 and served as Chairman until 2024.
Dr Barry Walsh
Trustee Secretary and in front of Trustee
He is from County Mayo Ireland and qualified in medicine at the University College Cork, Ireland in 1981. He specialised in medical microbiology first at St Mary’s Hospital Paddington and then at the John Radcliffe Hospital Oxford. He worked as a Consultant in Public Health in London for 24 years before retiring in 2015.
He has a BA in History of Art (Birkbeck 1988) and completed an MA in Persian Art at the Courtauld Institute in 2020. He won the Osler Gold Medal in Medical History at the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries in 1991. He has worked as a professional Blue Badge tour guide in London since 2000 specialising in medical history. He guides and lectures on Asian art history and specialises in tours at the Victoria and Albert Museum and British Museum. He joined the Benevolent Fund in 2012 and was nominated a Trustee in 2016. He has supported pro-active work of the Committee on Mental Health and Wellbeing initiatives for guides from 2019 and through the COVID Pandemic 2020/1.
Susan Jenkinson
Guide Representative, Trustee and Secretary until 2023
Susan has been a London Blue Badge Guide in English and German since 1999 and she began her guiding career as a Greenwich Guide in 1993. She has been a member of the Benevolent Fund Committee since 2008 and a Trustee and Secretary since 2012.
For many years, Susan worked part-time as a tourist information assistant in Greenwich. She has also been a teacher of English in Germany and of German in England, as well as a translator from German into English of texts about classical music, and a research assistant on human rights in Eastern Europe in the 1980s.
In 2019, having guided for nearly twenty years, Susan decided it was time to retire from full-time guiding and give younger, fitter guides more opportunities. She wishes to help those guides less fortunate than herself by continuing to serve on the Benevolent Fund Committee.
Jane Hickey
Treasurer and Trustee
Jane grew up in Dublin, Ireland where her father had a hotel business, moving to London after graduating from university. Despite early attempts to branch out, she has consistently returned to the hospitality sector in various guises. She qualified as a chartered accountant with Coopers & Lybrand (now PWC), where one of her clients was the InterContinental Hotel Group and subsequently worked in the PWC consultancy arm looking at investment opportunities in the tourism and leisure sector. Following a career break during which she raised her 3, now grown up children, she qualified as a London Blue Badge guide in 2011. She has since worked across the sector, both guiding clients and as a tutor on the London course. She was Treasurer of the Guild from 2013 to 2016 and joined the Benevolent Fund as Treasurer in 2020. She brings her financial skills to the Benevolent Fund as well as a sympathetic ear and looks forward to helping as many guides as possible.
Charlotte Thurlow
Guide Representative
The Ben Fund is such a valuable part of the Blue Badge guiding world and I am happy to be on the committee doing what I can to help.
Karen Sharpe
Guide Representative
I am a Londoner 'born and bred' having spent most of my life in West London and then working South of the River.
I took up guiding as a second career, and, having tried the City of London and Greenwich Courses decided to become a London Blue Badge Guide, qualifying in 1999. I subsequently also became a South East Blue Badge in 2015.
I have been a member of the Benevolent Fund Committee since late 2016 and am currently the joint Course Director for London Training
Emily Dell
Deputy Chair and Guide Representative
Emily grew up enjoying the sound of the sea on the Isle of Wight. but it wasn't long before London came calling.
She felt very quickly at home in the capital and immersed herself into London's rich history, this set her onto a pathway in tourism, which quickly moved into a guiding career.
Emily received her accredited Blue Badge in 2018 and adores telling the City's incredible stories. When she's not guiding, she can often be found with a paint brush in her hand, as she enjoys to sketch her most favoured sites.
Emily recently joined the committee at the start of 2021 and is really looking forward to help in any way she can.