Management Team
Led by Executive Director Nina Camilleri, LYC’s professional management team looks after our day-to-day organisational business and underpins all areas of LYC’s work and activity.

NINA CAMILLERI
Executive Director
Formerly Director of Development and Planning for the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain, Director of Development and PR for the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain and Senior Development Manager for Scottish Opera and Opera North, Nina brings a wealth of experience to the London Youth Choir in the fields of strategic planning and development.
Read more
In her positions with both the National Youth Choirs and National Youth Orchestra Nina has been responsible for the creation and implementation of new philanthropic strategies which have played a critical role in their development and growth. Alongside these roles, Nina has also worked as a consultant to Help Musicians UK, Longborough Festival Opera and Gabrieli Consort & Players, providing business development support and advice on fundraising and governance. In 2018, Nina became a Trustee of the D'Oyly Carte Charitable Trust.

RACHEL STAUNTON
Artistic Director
Rachel Staunton co-founded LYC in 2012 with Suzi Digby. Having gained a first-class honours degree in music at Royal Holloway, University of London, Rachel continued her studies at the Royal Academy of Music, graduating with numerous awards and an LRAM in Choral Conducting.
Read more
She held the post of Vocal Director for In Harmony Opera North (Classic FM’s Music Education Project of the Year 2014) and spent several years establishing the Opera North Children’s Chorus. Rachel has also worked as a conductor with the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain for over a decade.
In 2014, Rachel was made Associate of the Royal Academy of Music, in recognition of her contribution to choral music and work with young people. She is passionate about using choral music to inspire young people from all backgrounds and dedicates her career to this mission.

JAMES PRESCOTT-MARTIN
Finance Director
James has worked for over 35 years in both the Arts (English National Opera, Contemporary Dance Trust, Birmingham Hippodrome Theatre and the National Youth Orchestra) and the Voluntary sector (Age Concern and Surrey Community Action) in both Finance and General Management positions and now part time at LYC as Finance Director.
Read more
He now spends the majority of his spare time playing tennis. He also enjoys swimming, Pilates, reading, cinema, theatre and of course music. He is a member of Epsom Choral Society as a first bass.

ISHANI O'CONNOR
Head of Engagement
(she/her)
Ishani joined LYC from the Chineke! Foundation where she was Learning and Participation Manager for nearly five years. She brings an understanding of the wider music education sector, creative learning, partnerships and development of community outreach programmes to the new role of Head of Engagement.
Read more
At Chineke! Foundation, she worked with the musicians of Europe's first majority Black, Asian and ethnically diverse professional and junior orchestras, nurturing young talent, providing the Chineke! Juniors with a welcoming environment to confidently perform at prestigious venues, such as Royal Festival Hall and Kensington Palace. Ishani developed multiple learning partnerships with music hubs, venues and other charities across England, taking Chineke! Orchestra professional musicians into primary and secondary schools to lead workshops in performance and creative composition.
She is a Trustee for the charity Music for All and a member of Dulwich Symphony Orchestra, playing second violin, where she ran an orchestra outreach programme and is also a Trustee. Ishani established a new charity, Draper Together with the residents of the Draper Estate in London SE1, bringing a diverse community together through arts-based events such as cultural festivals, a theatre season and concerts in the community hall. In 2016, she achieved a Masters (Distinction) in Arts Administration and Cultural Policy from Goldsmiths, University of London and was a Development Placement with the London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT). Ishani has been a TV Researcher for BBC Specialist Factual Arts and an independent educational film producer.

Tom Hansell
Head of Operations
(he/his)
Tom joined LYC as Head of Operations in September 2022. Born in Yorkshire and raised in Surrey, Tom gained a BA in Music and MA in Music Composition from Durham University and has worked in the arts for over a decade: initially in secondary education and as a freelance arranger and orchestrator, before moving into arts management with various roles at the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and, latterly, the Monteverdi Choir & Orchestras.
Read more
Before joining LYC, Tom spent five years at the Monteverdi Choir & Orchestras – running their young artist development scheme, fixing and managing John Eliot Gardiner’s Monteverdi Choir and undertaking various fundraising roles. Outside office hours, he can often be found racing across the country on his bike, singing in various choirs around London, or indulging his love of cats and other animals.

ALISON BASTABLE
Head of Safeguarding & Pastoral Care
(she/her)
Alison started her nursing career at age 18 at St. George’s Hospital in London. She has experience in many different specialities but when her two daughters were young she became a school nurse at a boys prep school in Surrey. The boys’ wellbeing took front and centre of her work and she was a member of both the pastoral and safeguarding teams. She is delighted to have found LYC and to be able to bring her commitment to young people's wellbeing to the LYC family.

ALICE BEVERLEY
Head of Development
(she/they)
Alice joined the LYC team as Memberships and Projects Administrator before taking up the role of Development Manager in Autumn 2021 and Head of Development in Autumn 2022. Prior to joining LYC Alice was at the V&A Museum, programming and producing events including the Exhibition Road Day of Design at the London Design Festival, the V&A’s 2018 Christmas festival, and the 5-month programme of concerts and events which ran alongside the Opera: Passion, Power and Politics exhibition.
Read more
A keen singer, Alice was the singing teacher at Princess Frederica primary school for three years, and enjoys singing with choirs around London as well as putting on the occasional recital. They studied English literature at university, graduating with a first from Bristol and going on to complete a masters at UCL, and is fascinated by interdisciplinary study, leading to her dissertation on poetry and music in the work of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Outside of work, Alice enjoys reading feminist literature, and spends most of their time coercing people into reading more Sylvia Townsend Warner and Ursula le Guin.

FREDDIE AITKEN
Membership and EDI Manager
(he/him)
Freddie joined LYC in summer 2021 having previously worked for a music charity in Manchester, the city in which he studied and founded his own record label. In his spare time, he hosts monthly radio shows, DJs, produces/composes and is a keen photographer & obsessive vinyl collector.
Read more
Freddie currently sits on the Board of Trustees at The National Foundation for Youth Music and is a member of the Music Cities Network’s European Music Business Task Force.

Zoe Nendick
Operations & Communications Executive
(she/they)
Zoe joined LYC in 2021 as the Operations Assistant. She studied music as an undergraduate student at the University of Nottingham, where she conducted several choirs including the music society’s chamber choir, Viva Voce. She sang in as many choirs as she could while she was there, and held a Choral Scholarship at St Mary’s church, Nottingham.
Read more
While studying music, Zoe was fascinated by the link between music and emotion, and decided to make this the subject of her dissertation, before studying an MSc Psychology (conversion), also at the University of Nottingham (but entirely online, due to the pandemic). Outside of music and psychology, Zoe is a keen cricket fan and plays for St. Alban's Women.

JULIAN FORBES
Marketing & Communications Consultant
Julian is a freelance Arts consultant specialising in management and communications. From 2014-2018 he was Marketing Manager for the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain where he transformed communications, audience acquisition and multimedia production and distribution, instigated new performance initiatives, and was a key contributor to the organisation's successful National Portfolio renewal bid, new website and CRM, and new learning programmes and supporting partnerships.
Read more
Julian was a member of the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain at the same time as LYC Artistic Director Rachel Staunton. A former professional singer with an MA from the Royal Academy of Music, he switched to Arts administration in 2013, working initially for Decca Records and Classic FM. Since 2019 he is General Manager of the GRAMMY-nominated Baroque ensemble Arcangelo, supporting and developing the group's UK and worldwide concert and recording activities under its Artistic Director Jonathan Cohen.

WILL HARRISS
Associate Development Director
Will is an experienced arts fundraiser with a significant track record of securing major gifts through philanthropy, trusts and foundations, corporate partnerships, and public funders. He began his fundraising career in 2007 at the London Sinfonietta, before being appointed Development Director at Britten Sinfonia and subsequently at Saffron Hall where he launched the Hall's first fundraising programme.
Read more
Shortly after leaving Saffron Hall, he became Development Director for Music Masters, a position he held for five years, before going freelance in June this year. Having been a chorister from a young age, Will is a passionate advocate for the importance of music and the arts in the lives of young people.