Board of Governors
Mathew Gollop - Board Chair
Mathew joined the board in November 2020 after his daughter joined ICHK from the Japanese International School (JIS). Mat was a member of the Strategic Steering Committee at JIS for three years.
Mathew has been in the executive search industry since 1997 and in Asia since 2001 with ConnectedGroup. In addition to leading a 45-person business, Mathew engages with clients to discuss their operational and market strategy from CEO’s office down through the business. He aligns ConnectedGroup’s service offering across all functions and often operates as an account manager for all key clients. Mathew has helped define and shape his businesses’ social purpose and his team support the not for profit community in Hong Kong, connecting talent to help amplify worthy causes including the launch of www.Recruit4Good.com
Outside of his business, he supports the Fair Employment Agency as a volunteer board member and ChickenSoup Foundation as a Professional Ambassador.
Doug Clark
Doug Clark is the father three children who attended ICHK Primary and Secondary. He also has an older daughter who works in the financial services industry.
Originally from Australia, Doug studied on exchange at high school in Kobe, Japan and at Fudan University in Shanghai. He moved to Hong Kong in 1993 before transferring to Shanghai in 2000 where he established and was Managing Partner of the Shanghai office of Lovells, an international law firm. He returned to Hong Kong in 2011 to commence practice as a barrister. Since 2020, he has re-qualified as a solicitor and been Global Head of Dispute Resolution with intellectual property firm, Rouse.
Doug was chairman of the ICHK Secondary board from 2016-2022. He joined the ICHK Kindergarten and Primary board in early 2017.
In his spare time, Doug enjoys cycling or hiking the many and varied trails around the New Territories. He has also published a number of legal texts (with titles too boring to mention) as well as a trilogy telling the history of British and American courts that previously operated in China and Japan, Gunboat Justice.
Emily Ngan
Emily Ngan has been a dedicated educator for more than 22 years. She is the founder and CEO of Kingston Children’s Centre, Kingston International Kindergarten and Kingston International School. Kingston was the first Authorized International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme School in Hong Kong and came into prominence through its English and Putonghua Bilingual Program in Hong Kong.
Kingston International School is one of the founding partner schools of International College of Hong Kong and Emily has been a Board Member of ICHK since 2009.
As an ardent supporter of sports for youth, she is committed to the development of training programmes, sporting facilities and international competitions for young athletes in Hong Kong. Outside of her professional interests, she enjoys travelling, reading, yoga, photography, scuba diving, shooting sports, and spending quality time with her family and three grown daughters.
Eliza Wong
Eliza Wong has been working in education for the last 33 years and in 1997 she joined the family of Kingston International School as a Head Teacher. She was promoted to Kindergarten Principal in 2001, and by 2008, she took on the additional role of Primary School Principal at Kingston International School. In the latter half of that year, the School Board decided to promote Ms. Wong to the Head Principal position over both the Kindergarten and Primary Schools of Kingston. From 2009 onwards, she became a Board member of the International College of Hong Kong, the through-train high school division of Kingston International School.
Ms. Wong was heavily involved in the expansion of Kingston, as the demand for admission spots far exceeded its supply. Seeing the pressing need for expansion, she dedicated tremendous effort towards it and was rewarded when Kingston opened up its Lower Primary division in 2001 and its Upper Primary division in 2010 to allow more students to join the Kingston family. In regards to learning, Ms. Wong demonstrated great initiative in paving the way for the school’s further academic development by receiving training on the IBPYP curriculum, prior to establishing Kingston’s Primary School. In order to prepare herself for this step, she participated in numerous IB workshops and visited IB schools in various places such as Switzerland, Australia, Thailand, Shanghai, Beijing, Vietnam, India, and Singapore for academic exchange with the management levels. As for the linguistic aspect, she emphasized the need for a strong and solid Chinese curriculum on par with their English counterpart program to maintain a bilingual curriculum of the highest caliber across the international school stage in Hong Kong.
Sylvian Ho
Sylvian is a father of two daughters. Sylvian has received tertiary education in Hong Kong. With past experience working as a corporate secretarial officer, he has also worked as a senior accounting officer for over 10 years. He now works as a corporate secretarial officer in an international accounting firm.
Sylvian is an Associate Member of the Hong Kong Institute of Chartered Secretaries & the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators in United Kingdom.
In early 2018, Sylvian joined the ICHK Secondary Board as a member of the Finance Committee.
Derek Pinchbeck
Derek has been teaching for 30 years. Having begun his teaching career at an inner city school in the UK, he has been involved in international education since 1993. As well as Hong Kong Derek has worked in Dominican Republic, Papua New Guinea, Brunei, Italy, China and Singapore. In addition to his teaching and leadership roles in schools Derek is a global consultant for the IB and has presented at a number of international education conferences. Derek strongly believes that the purpose of education is to empower children to think and act creatively and ethically to improve the world for themselves and others. Derek enjoys spending time with his family, exploring the walking trails of Hong Kong, golfing very badly and playing squash.
Joshua Blue
Josh Blue is the Principal of the Japanese International School in Hong Kong and has served on the ICHK Board since 2022. He has a Masters in Educational Leadership and Change from the Education University of Hong Kong. Josh has been in Hong Kong over 21 years, working across the education sector in a number of local and international schools. He also works for the IB across Asia-Pacific consulting for schools, running workshops and leading school evaluations. Josh has a passion for Children's Literature and Translanguaging. When not working, Josh enjoys treading the boards with the Hong Kong Players and is known to appear as the Dame in the annual Christmas Pantomime. He also enjoys spending time in the kitchen and entertaining at home. Josh lives in Hong Kong with his partner and son.
Sarah Zhao
Sarah Zhao is the mother of Henry who is in ICHK Secondary.
Sarah has been working in education since 2000. She worked for the British Council China on education reform projects for fourteen years, where she was responsible for projects of teachers professional development and establishing school partnerships between the UK and China. She later joined the Cambridge International Examination in 2014 and worked as School Development Manager for South and West China, where she had opportunities to work closely with international schools on curriculum development and assessment.
Sarah moved to Hong Kong in 2017 due to her cross-sector work in charity and voluntary services. She used to lead teams of volunteers and travelled to Japan, Thailand, Sri Lanka and India for services and study purposes. Sarah is currently working for The Hong Kong Bodhi Society Limited as Director for Cultural Events.
She has been voluntarily teaching Chinese culture and literature to children aged 5-12 since 2018. She is also involved in curriculum development of Life Education with local charitable organisations, promotion of going vegetarian, and caring of the senior citizens in local communities. In her spare time, Sarah enjoys hiking, swimming, and meditation. She also loves cooking and playing the piano.
Marianne Atkins
Originally from Scotland, Marianne set out to Shanghai with a degree in textile design to fulfill an ambition in fashion knitwear. Twenty years later, now based in Hong Kong, Marianne’s knowledge spans from raw material through to production and she works directly between Asian suppliers and International customers. A recent decision to do a Master’s degree in Supply Chain Management, Logistics & Procurement was to dive deeper into how innovative thinking and critical analysis contribute to motivate change and question the way we problem solve within the industry.
Married to Richard, with a daughter, Pippa and a son, Sebastian. Both children attended local school in Sai Kung from kindergarten to primary in order to experience different ways of learning, both from a local perspective as well as international.
The decision to join ICHK board is for the opportunity to support creative thinking in our future generations. As a true optimist it is important to give back and embrace the community we choose for our children to be influenced by.
Marianne enjoys everything outdoors, especially running and hiking Hong Kong’s amazing trails, with family and friends in tow.
Edward Lau
Edward, married to Circle, has a daughter attending ICHK Kindergarten and Primary. Edward grew up in Hong Kong and received tertiary education in England. He worked and practised as an accountant in London before returning to Hong Kong to work as chief finance officer in various companies of different sizes and businesses, one of which was eventually listed in the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
Other than his every day routines including tax, accounting and auditing by his profession, Edward is currently working for his own company in business and corporate services.
Edward is a practising member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales and the Hong Kong Institute of Certified Public Accountants and a fellow member of the Taxation Institute of Hong Kong.
Edward is an enthusiastic fan of sports cars and enjoys driving. He also enjoys gardening and lawn mowing at home when the weather is not too hot.
Paul Crow
Paul Crow is the father of Jake and Douglas who are both at ICHK, and Rebecca who is primary age. He has worked as a Senior Conservation Officer at Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Gardens since 1997 and has a long history of involvement and interest in nature. Growing up and being schooled in Hong Kong, he is intimately familiar with the territory’s wildlife and regional conservation issues.
His career in wildlife and biodiversity conservation, education and management has included field-based biodiversity monitoring in Southern China and Hong Kong. Away from nature and in more recent years as his children transition through school life, Paul has become involved in their own extra-curricular activities, hiking, biking, camping and in particular the sport of rugby. He has contributed to the local rugby community as both a player and a coach for several years. He also holds a voluntary post with the Hong Kong Poison Information Centre assisting with advice and identification in local human animal related envenomation.