Peter Buckley, Investment Banker

After a degree in Accounting and Finance, Peter Buckley has worked for two Investment Banks, SG Warburg and Deutsche Bank. He is currently responsible for a European team that provides equity and private equity advice to smaller institutions and high net worth individuals.
There is a desire amongst many Corporates and individuals to support the children of Afghanistan, and he believes that the particularly focussed aims and financial efficiency of this charity will distinguish it from many others.

Sarah Katherine Fane MBChB

Inspired by a gap year working in rural India, Sarah Fane decided to switch from her degree course in French and Latin to study medicine at Bristol University. Her elective was spent in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan, where she met with the Guildford Surgical Team. She returned with them the following year to Pakistan, and worked from a Mujahideen border camp, seeing female patients from the surrounding refugee camps.
Ten years later, having married, had four children, and done various in hospital jobs between children, she was asked to go to the Panjshir Valley, Afghanistan, to assess a mother and child clinic. The visit and the people she met inspired her to set up this charity.

William Reeve, Journalist

William Reeve is a journalist who first reported for the BBC from Afghanistan in 1988 as the Soviet Red Army began its withdrawal from the country. Since then he has had two tours of duty as the BBC Afghanistan correspondent. He witnessed the destruction of much of the capital, Kabul, during 1993 and 1994, as warlords vied for ultimate power. His second tour as BBC correspondent was in 1998 and 1999 during Taleban rule. He has also reported from Afghanistan on several other occasions, notably during the fall of Kabul in November last year. He was the only Western broadcaster in the capital in the final days of Taleban rule. For his coverage of the events, he won a Royal Television Society award and a special Sony radio prize. He was also nominated for a BAFTA award.

Earlier this year, William Reeve set up and ran a training programme for Afghan journalists in Kabul, a BBC initiative funded by the Department for International Development. He is due to continue the programme in other parts of the country in July.

Before his journalistic career, William Reeve qualified and worked as a civil engineer in Iran and Africa. He also has a degree in Persian literature from Oxford. For ten years he was chairman of the board of governors of a school he attended as a boy.

Clive Anderson

Clive Anderson has been our host at 6 Literary Lunch Events which raised a total of 120,000 since 2002. A former barrister, he is now famous for being a successful comedy writer as well as a radio and television presenter in the United Kingdom. Winner of a British Comedy Award in 1991[1], Anderson began his success during his 15-year law career with stand-up comedy and comedic script writing, before starring in Whose Line Is It Anyway? on BBC Radio 4. He was also successful with a number of radio programmes, television interviews and guest appearances on Have I Got News For You and QI.[2] He recently presented “Maestro” and The Last Night of The Proms.

Colin Peter Jardine Brown FRCS FRCOG, Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist

Professionally, Colin Jardine Brown has worked as a generalist in both branches of the specialty, with particular interests in labour ward management, gynaecological oncology and colposcopy. In the last ten years, he has been involved in improving postgraduate medical education and the quality of teaching within the profession. He is keen to see isolated doctors within developing countries have access to keeping sensibly up to date and the wherewithal to practice safe, affordable medicine and surgery

Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is the first non-American journalist to be awarded the prestigious Livingston Award and the youngest recipient of the One World Media broadcast journalist of the year award in the United Kingdom.

In the last seven years she has produced and reported on 13 films for major networks in the United States and Britain including CNN, PBS, Channel 4 (U.K.) and the Discovery channel. Her work has earned her major awards in broadcast journalism including the Overseas Press Club Award, The American women and Radio and Television award, The Cine Golden Eagle Award, The Banff TV Rockie award and the South Asian Journalist Award.

Sharmeen’s work has taken her to over ten countries around the world. Her career in documentary filmmaking began when she examined the plight of Afghani refugee children in Pakistan for one of her articles. Their situation was so dire, and their stories so compelling, that Sharmeen decided to return to Pakistan and create a film about them. She petitioned Smith College and New York Times Television production division for the grants that would allow her to accomplish her goals. Intrigued by her story, both organizations gave her the funds as well as production equipment and training.

Born in Karachi, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy was the first woman in her Pakistani family to receive a Western education. Obaid graduated from Smith College with a bachelor of arts in economics and government and then went to complete two master’s degrees from Stanford University in International Policy Studies and Communication. 

Professor R J Heald OBE MChir FRCS, Surgical Director of The Pelican Centre

Bill Heald has a personal chair at the University of Southampton. He is Director of the Pelican Centre and Colorectal Research Unit at the North Hampshire Hospital.

His main interest for the past 20 years has been the research and development of the Total Mesorectal Excision (TME) technique for rectal cancer. He is a former Vice-President and currently a Member of Council and Director of International Affairs at the Royal College of Surgeons of England. He is past-President of the Section of Coloproctology at the Royal Society of Medicine and of the Association of Coloproctology. He has recently received honorary degrees or professorships in Sweden, Holland, Switzerland and Yugoslavia. During 2001 he has received The Gold Medal of the Society of Surgery of the Netherlands and in July the Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Society of Medicine and the Association of Coloproctologists of Great Britain and Ireland.

He remains essentially a practical operating surgeon with a primary interest in the detail of the surgery of colorectal cancer.


Sophia Bergqvist MBA, Managing Director, Quinta de la Rosa

In 1988 Sophia Bergqvist set up a company, Quinta de la Rosa, producing port and wine from the family vineyard in Northern Portugal. Prior to this, she spent fifteen years working for the strategic management consultants, Booz.Allen & Hamilton in London, Paris and Lisbon as a Principal responsible for marketing and media.
She has always been particularly interested in education and economic development having studied Geography at Cambridge University. She is a Governor of a secondary school, Fitzharrys, in Abingdon and sits on the Council at the University of Buckingham. She has become moved by the plight of the Afghanis and strongly believes that we have a responsibility to help them since our involvement in the country post September 11th.

As a patron, she hopes to bring her entrepreneurial, business and marketing skills to Afghan Connection.

Sir David Manning GCMG CVO

Educated at Ardingly College, Oriel College, Oxford, and the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of the Johns Hopkins University, Manning began his career as a civil servant in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in 1972. He has served in embassies in Poland, India, Paris, and Moscow, and within the FCO he has worked on the Central American desk, the Russian desk and held several senior positions. He has represented the UK in Brussels and also at the International Conference on the former Yugoslavia in 1994.

Between 1995 and 1998, he was British ambassador to Israel; from 2001, he was a foreign policy adviser to British Prime Minister Tony Blair. During this time he developed a close relationship with his counterpart, then US National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. Blair selected him to replace Christopher Meyer as the British Ambassador to the United States. Manning took up the post in 2003. Ambassador Manning visited numerous states, as well as the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, during his term as Ambassador to the United States and was instrumental in planning Queen Elizabeth's most recent visit to her thirteen former colonies.

He was appointed Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George (GCMG) in the 2008 New Year Honours.