Three Lancaster graduates have received Alumni Awards during this summer's degree ceremonies.

Joe Gordon

BSc (Hons), Business Studies, Lonsdale College, 2004

As Head of First Direct, the telephone and online bank, Joe Gordon is one of the youngest people ever to make it to the top of the UK banking industry. He was appointed to his current role just 24 months after securing his first job in banking.

His career post-Lancaster started with a place on Sainsbury’s coveted graduate programme. Beginning on the shop floor, his first role was in the grocery section stacking carrots. After working his way through various management roles with the supermarket, he moved to BT on a fast-track management programme. Joe’s experience with these two companies shaped his passion for customer service through positive relationships. From BT he joined HSBC where he became Head of UK Contact Centres, before moving to First Direct.

Joe has built a strong reputation as a champion of good customer service, underpinned by high levels of staff satisfaction.

Donna Munday

BA (Hons) Theatre Studies, Pendle College, 1992

A highly respected theatre manager and producer, Donna Munday’s career spans a quarter of a century and encompasses London’s West End and leading provincial repertory theatres. The list of her successes as an executive producer includes Billy Elliot the Musical for the theatrical arm of Working Title Films, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Funny Girl, starring Sheridan Smith and Benedict Cumberbatch’s Hamlet at the Barbican.

She has worked as Executive Director of a number of leading venues, including the Apollo, Lyric and Garrick theatres in London and the Sheffield Theatre. She also produced a moving community theatre tribute to the MP, Jo Cox, Hear the People Sing, in West Yorkshire, and is a long-serving trustee of the Sunday Times National Student Drama Festival.

Donna is currently working as Executive Producer and General Manager of The Grinning Man, which opened at Trafalgar Studios in December 2017.

Tony Heaton OBE

BA (Hons) Visual Arts, Pendle College, 1989

Tony Heaton is a highly acclaimed sculptor, performance artist and champion for disability rights, having worked in the fields of disability, diversity and social justice for his whole career. Between 2008 and 2017, he was Chief Executive of Shape Arts, and now serves as its Chair. Prior to Shape, Tony spent a decade as Director of Holton Lee, a 350-acre campus in Dorset offering short-stay residential facilities for disabled people.

Since 1997, Tony has mounted more than 20 exhibitions of his work, and won competitive commissions including works for the 2012 London Olympics and Paralympic Games. He has also served as a board member for a variety of creative arts organisations, including the Tate Modern Access Advisory Group, the National Archives User Committee and the Arts Council England Diversity Task Group.

Tony received an OBE in the 2013 Queen’s Birthday Honours, for services to the arts and the disability arts movement.