Governor Biographies
Mr Paul Raynes MA (Cantab)
Paul Raynes was educated at the Salesian College in Farnborough, Hampshire, where he was head boy, and at Downing College, Cambridge, where he took the Triposes in English Literature under David Holbrook and Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic under Simon Keynes, as well as devoting time to the Cambridge Union, the stage, and rowing.
His career, which has mostly been in public service, began at HM Treasury, where he was private secretary to three Cabinet Ministers, and included a posting as Financial Attaché at the British Embassy in Paris where he supported the Prime Minister’s office and the Treasury in discussions about the Euro. He has worked as a Chief Officer in local government, including at Essex County Council, and worked at the Local Government Association, where he was councils’ national representative at the government’s COBR meetings. Paul has also been a financial journalist; his market-moving commentary was published in the Wall Street Journal, La Repubblica and Le Monde. He is currently a Director at the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority, where he heads its work as the Local Transport Authority responsible for public transport and a £200 million capital programme of transport investments. He has previously been Chair of Governors at a large multi-site comprehensive school in Central London, where he oversaw a transition to Academy status.
Paul is a catechist at his local parish church and a candidate in formation for the permanent Diaconate. He is married to Sarah and has four children.
Paul has been a governor of St Edmund’s College since 2018 serving on the Finance and Academic sub-committees; he was appointed as the new Chair of Governors with effect from 1st January 2021.
Mrs Jane Ranzetta BA Hons, PGCE
Jane is rooted in Catholic education. Attending an Ursuline Convent school then completing an honours degree in Religious Studies at Lancaster University. She completed her PGCE at Cambridge and also gained the Catholic Teaching Certificate. After many years of teaching in a variety of Catholic schools as Head of RE in both prep, independent and state schools, she became a Section 48 Inspector for the Brentwood Diocese. Jane is a trained catechist and Eucharistic Minister.
Jane is currently teaching RE and is a lay chaplaincy co-ordinator at a large State Catholic school in Suffolk, where she is also involved with committees on staff welfare. She is studying part-time for an MA in Catholic School Leadership application and practice at St Mary’s University in London. Jane has been a governor of St Edmund’s College since 2015.
Since 2017 she has chaired the Academic sub-committee and was appointed as Deputy Chair of the Full Board in 2018. In her spare time, Jane enjoys charity fundraising, cooking, and looking after her selection of rare breed chickens.
Mr John Bryant BA
John was educated both at St Edmund’s College Prep (then St Hugh’s) and at St Edmund’s College, from where he won an entrance exhibition in Classics to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. After graduating, he read for the Bar and has been a practising barrister for some forty years, now specialising in professional negligence and property work.
John has been a governor of St Edmund’s College since 2012 and currently serves on the Prep and Finance sub-committees. Since 2018 he has chaired the Prep School sub-committee.
John is married with three children and has three grandchildren. In his spare time, John enjoys rowing, playing cricket, birdwatching, reading and tackling crosswords.
Mr Stephen Grounds BSC, DPhil
Stephen was educated by the Oratorians at St Philip’s Grammar School, Edgbaston. He studied physics at London and Oxford Universities and holds degrees from both universities.
Stephen has worked in industry, and the civil service taught in schools and lectured in higher education. Subsequently, and for 17 years, he was one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Schools specialising in the training of teachers. He continues to do some inspections and consultancy.
Stephen has been a governor of St Edmund’s College since 2015 and currently serves on the Prep and Academic sub-committees.
Stephen is an avid reader focusing on current and past events, he also enjoys languages, music and walking.
Fr Alban McCoy OFM Conv, BA (Kent), MLitt (Oxon), MLitt (Cantab)
Fr Alban is a Fellow, Dean, Praelector and Second Bursar of St Edmund’s College, Cambridge. He was educated at St Bede’s College, Manchester and the Universities of Kent and Oxford.
After ordination as a priest in the Franciscan Order, he served as a curate in a far-flung rural parish in Lincolnshire, where he was also for three years a Chaplain in the Royal Air Force. After three years at Oxford as a graduate student, where his thesis was on the philosophical problem of evil, he became Guardian, Master of Clerics and Dean of Studies at the Franciscan Study Centre, Canterbury, where he taught philosophy and, at the University of Kent, where he taught Medieval Theology.
Moving to London, he became Dean of Philosophy at Allen Hall, London, the Westminster Diocesan Seminary, before moving to Cambridge in 1998, as Catholic Chaplain to the University, a post he occupied for fifteen years from 1998-2013. Since 1995, he has been the Religious Books Editor at The Tablet, the London-based international Catholic weekly newspaper, and is their wine columnist. He teaches philosophy part-time at Allen Hall. He is the author of An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Catholicism (Bloomsbury 2001) and An Intelligent Persons Guide to Christian Ethics (2006) and numerous reviews and articles.
Fr Alban has been a governor of St Edmund’s College since 2014.
In his spare time, Fr Alban enjoys travel, music history and wine.
Ms Nicola Walsh BA(Hons), MA
Nicola Walsh was born in London and is the Vice Principal of St. Dominic’s Sixth Form College, Harrow. She is an Associate Inspector Section 48 for the Westminster Diocese, a Dominican associate, and this is her first year as a governor of St Edmund’s College.
Nicola has been involved in Catholic education her entire career, is a practising Catholic and is a Eucharistic Minister. She studied Theology at St Mary’s College, Twickenham, and attended the Institute of Education, London University, where she was awarded her Masters degree in education.
In her spare time, she is an avid sports fan, following football, rugby, cricket and boxing; and regularly attends concerts with tastes ranging from Bach to U2.
Dr Veronica Fulton FCA MA and DSG
Veronica was educated mainly abroad but her final years at school were spent at a Sacred Heart convent. Following school, Veronica went to work and qualified as a Chartered Accountant. She spent some years working in general practice being appointed as a partner in a top twenty firm in 1980. After ten years, she decided on a change in direction and went to work in the City for a trust corporation as a trustee of defined benefit pension schemes for large blue chip companies. Her next appointment was as the Secretary of the General Practitioner Board at the Institute of Chartered Accountants. In this role, she had responsibility for 40,000 practising members. She returned to the trust corporation to help with the winding up of a number of pension schemes.
During the later stages of her career, she did an MA at Heythrop College and upon taking retirement, she completed a Phd which examined the relationship between ecclesiology and canon law.
Veronica has for many years volunteered for Catholic charities and institutions. Amongst her appointments have been as a governor of St Mary’s College, Strawberry Hill (1999-2008) and she is currently a trustee of the student body. She was on the Finances Committee at Cafod for a number of years and was Chairman of the Cardinal Hume Centre. In her parish, she has been an RCIA and a Confirmation Catechist. As well as doing the accounts for her parish, she also did the accounts for five other parishes in the Diocese of Westminster. Currently, she is the treasurer of the Catholic Union, a governor of Allen Hall seminary and a foundation director of the Diocese of Westminster Multi Academy Trust. In the secular world, she is a trustee of the pension scheme of the Institute of Chartered Accountants.
For her services to the Catholic Church, she was appointed a Dame of the Equestrian Order of St Gregory in 2020.
