A lifetime of charitable service
It was with great sadness that we received the news of the death of Kay Glendinning MBE who died peacefully at home in Sussex on 8 December 2025. Kay was the great niece of our founder, Herbert E. Dunhill, and went on to work as Executive Director of The Dunhill Medical Trust, the charity established as a result of Herbert Dunhill’s legacy, for almost 20 years.
Kay started her career working on the ‘shop floor’ in the family business. When she returned to work after maternity leave, she was greeted with a new plan for her career. Her mother, Mary Dunhill Lane, decided that Kay should learn how to run the charity and learn about medical research. She told us that she found herself addressing a toppling pile of paper and then, shortly afterwards, standing in an operating theatre watching a procedure on a baby. She admitted to fainting, but didn’t look back. Kay went on to become an energetic and knowledgable champion of her great uncle’s legacy.
When Kay’s mother died in 1988, Kay took over as Executive Director of The Dunhill Medical Trust (as the Vivensa Foundation was then called). She continued until her retirement in 2005. She served on our Board of Trustees in a non-executive capacity until 2019. At that time, she became the charity’s first Patron, a duty she carried out until 2023.
In addition to her lifetime of service to The Dunhill Medical Trust, Kay served on the boards of a number of charitable organisations and was awarded an MBE in 1993 for charitable services.
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Our recently published conversation with Professor Tom Kirkwood CBE FMedSci contains his recollections about Kay choosing to fund his research project. You can read the piece here.