Dame Sandra Dawson, Professor Emerita and former Director of Cambridge Judge Business School, and Dr Katy Steward have been appointed as Governance Expert Witnesses by the Inquiry Chair Sir Wyn Williams, and will be producing 2 reports addressing issues relating to leadership, management, culture and governance.
These will be considered in evidence by the Inquiry into the scandal that saw many sub postmasters wrongly accused of theft based on information from a faulty IT system used by Post Office Ltd.
Dame Sandra Dawson is KPMG Professor Emerita of Management Studies and former Director of Cambridge Judge Business School. She is also a Member of the Advisory Board of Cambridge Judge and is a Fellow in the Organisational Theory and Information Systems subject group at the Business School. Dr Katy Steward is a Cambridge alumna who is a specialist in corporate culture and governance and who in 2022/23 was a Visiting Scholar at Cambridge Judge.
How corporations responded to the scandal
The work of the Governance Expert Witnesses “will include evidence addressing the corporate responses to the scandal and what arrangements were in place within the Post Office and Government (including UKGI) to ensure appropriate governance, management and oversight,” said an announcement by the Inquiry.
About the Governance Expert Witnesses
Professor Dame Sandra Dawson
Dame Sandra, who is also Fellow and formerly Master of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, was an expert member on organisation, governance and leadership on the Expert Advisory Group on the Windrush Lessons Learned Review that examined the UK’s Windrush scandal involving the UK Home Office. She has for the past 3 decades served as a board member of listed and private companies, public institutions and charities as well as being involved in teaching and scholarly studies of leadership and governance.
Dr Katy Steward
Dr Katy Steward is a College Research Associate at Sidney Sussex. She is a specialist in corporate culture and governance. Dr Steward has worked with the Foundation Trust regulator, Monitor and The King’s Fund, and has sat on a number of charity and public sector boards.
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The announcement of the appointment of Dame Sandra and Dr Steward was made on the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry website in January 2024.
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