CBE for Penarth man in recognition of decades of charitable work (From Penarth Times)
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CBE for Penarth man in recognition of decades of charitable work
8:50am Saturday 5th January 2013 in News
HONOUR AND A PRIVILEGE: Geraint Davies.
A PENARTH resident, who has given more than three decades of dedicated service to the Aberfan Disaster Fund, has been made a Commander of the British Empire in the New Year Honours List.
Geraint Davies, Grant Thornton senior partner Wales, has received the CBE in recognition of his decades of voluntary work for charitable services in Wales.
The Cardiff-born son of a bank manager, he was educated at Cardiff High School.
His relationship with the Aberfan community, which lost 116 of its children and 28 adults in the 1966 disaster, has been an especially close one, and he has dedicated more than 32 years as Chief Advisor to the Aberfan Disaster Fund (now the Aberfan Memorial Charity and Aberfan Education Charity).
A Board member of the Arts Active Trust (formerly the New Theatre and St David’s Hall Trust) for 21 years, the last three as chairman, Geraint was a member of the Board of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama for 14 years, and served five years on the Board of the Wales Millennium Centre.
He was made a Fellow of The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and an Honorary Vice President of the Wales Millennium Centre.
He is chairman of Music Theatre Wales, the award-winning and leading European contemporary opera company, and has also been a Board member of Chapter Arts in Cardiff.
An economics and statistics graduate of Exeter University, Geraint qualified as a chartered accountant at Deloitte, Haskins and Sells in Cardiff before working in London and overseas. He joined business advisory specialists Grant Thornton at their Cardiff office in 1988, and will be retiring as a senior partner from the company next June.
Geraint, 58, who lives with his family in Penarth, described being awarded the CBE as a "humbling experience".
"I feel deeply proud and incredibly fortunate to have been recognised in the New Year Honours list," he said.
"I also feel very privileged to be in the company of so many exceptional people from Wales who have been honoured in this way in the past."
