Farewell to our founding Chair, Denise Le Gal
We are hugely grateful (and more than a little emotional!) to bid farewell to Denise Le Gal, our Chair, after an exceptional two terms helping to guide our partnership from inception.
Denise was among those to sign Brunel Pension Partnership into existence and has been core to the company’s growth and culture ever since.
She helped to define Brunel’s values and culture in several ways but two stand out.
Denise was determined to place Responsible Investment (RI) at the core of Brunel’s priorities – despite one councillor asking her, before she was appointed to the role: “What will you do about those tree huggers?!” Her vision on RI has been crucial to Brunel’s direction and ethos.
So has her enthusiasm about Brunel’s team and gift for people. Many of us found her to be a real personal support and, in this way, she helped to shape a strong culture of partnership. Working with the Board, she’s seen Brunel through some volatile and uncertain times, wars, COVID, and the cost of living crisis, to name but a few. She always leads with humour and calmness, which is a rare gift.
Before Brunel…
Denise was appointed Chair of the Surrey Pension Fund Committee in 2009, and in 2013 was also made Counties representative to the Scheme Advisory Board. It was at this point that she realised pooling was on the agenda – and that she wanted to be part of shaping it. She was Chair of the Local Government Pensions Committee from 2016 to 2019. Coupled with her earlier background in financial services – often as the only woman in the room – these experiences made her uniquely qualified for her role at Brunel.
…and beyond…
She remains Chair of Brightwell and of JP Morgan Chase UK Retirement Plan – and who knows what else awaits. But she has an exceptional place in Brunel’s story, as it does in hers. In her own words…
“What I am most proud of at Brunel is the culture we all built together based on our shared commitment to ‘forging better futures by investing for a world worth living in’ – and I know how committed the staff are to that vision, too. Long may it continue.”
You may also like to read Denise’s retrospective on her time at Brunel in Local Government Chronicle, published on her final day as Chair of Brunel: