Charity Governance Summit

Sarah joined the Social Mobility Foundation, a London-based charity working to support disadvantaged young people to achieve their potential, in January 2020. She was previously Executive Director for Strategy, Policy and Communications at the Charity Commission. Her background is in corporate communications and policy. Before joining the Commission as Head of Corporate Affairs she worked in the private sector, including roles with Nationwide Building Society and in public affairs consultancy.

Her non-executive experience includes membership of the NCVO Charity Tax Commission and board roles at Endometriosis UK, the Professional Association of Childcare and Early Years, and Womankind Worldwide. She is a Leadership Fellow at St George’s House, Windsor and a mentor on the Leaders Plus fellowship programme.

Caron joined the Charity Finance Group in 2010 from the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) where she was Head of the Charity and Voluntary Sector. In addition to supporting several small charities and community organisations, Caron has been a member of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) National Assembly, and the Charities Statements of Recommended Practice (SORP) Committee. She has also sat on several government working parties, is a member of the Church of England Pension Board’s Audit and Risk Committee, and as Chair of the Board of the Directory of Social Change (and her local hockey club). She was named in the top 30 UK social influences in Risk, Compliance and Regtech 2017.

Caron is a trained Barrister and has a wide array of experience across the charity, regulation/law, policy, member support, and professional ethics. In 2015 she was named Charity Principal of the Year at the Charity Times Awards. In 2016 she received the Association Excellence Award for Leadership. Caron is an avidly ‘social’ CEO and has been named in the top 30 social CEOs in 2013, 2014 and 2015.

Vicky has headed up ACEVO, the network of civil society leaders, since February 2017. ACEVO wants to see civil society leaders making the biggest possible difference. Together with their network, they inspire and support civil society leaders by providing connections, advocacy and skills. Vicky works with the ACEVO team and trustees to support, represent and encourage ACEVO’s members in their ambition to create change and serve communities.

Vicky joined ACEVO from CharityComms, the membership network for communications professionals in UK charities, where she was director since March 2010. A former magazine journalist, editor and publisher, Vicky worked at Haymarket Publishing, the UK's largest privately owned publishing company for 16 years during the nineties and noughties. She was publishing director of a host of business titles including Third Sector and ad-industry bible Campaign, as well as spending two years in New York heading the launch team of internet marketing title Revolution US. Vicky then enjoyed six years as an independent publishing consultant, offering management consultancy, product development and marketing services to a range of clients, before joining CharityComms and ACEVO.

Dave has been Head of Counter Fraud for two major international charities, including his current role in the British Council, where he was recruited to design, build and then run their global counter fraud functions.

In both organisations, Dave had global responsibility for fraud and crime management, including awareness-raising, reporting and detecting, responding and prevention – plus leading on investigations. He devised and implemented the key strategies which allowed for this risk to be managed in hostile environments, and on occasions during the worst humanitarian disasters that have occurred in modern times. Travelling extensively, Dave built a global team to support the operational function, to provide reassurance to trustees and donors, and to ensure compliance with legal and regulatory responsibilities.

The majority of Dave’s career was spent within the City of London Police, where he served for 14 years, rising to the rank of Detective Chief Inspector. Most of this time was spent as a detective investigating serious and major crime, including homicide until he moved into the Economic Crime Directorate of what is the national lead force for fraud. Here he specialised in international fraud, especially those involving organised crime groups targeting UK banks, while head of the specialist unit, the Dedicated Cheque & Plastic Crime Unit.

Dave is a member of the Charity Commission’s Charities Against Fraud Group and a Special Advisor to the Fraud Advisory Panel.

Rita joined the Small Charities Coalition in July 2019 as Chief Executive Officer.

Starting at the age of 15 as a volunteer, Rita has worked for several local and national charities on issues related to inequality and social justice and also remains a volunteer and trustee of some organisations. In her spare time, she also is a keen challenge event enthusiast, raising funds along the way for good causes.

Erica works with charities and social and creative businesses, and leads on Bates Wells’ culture and creative work. Her work predominantly covers commercial and regulatory law, and she has vast experience working in a general counsel role for her clients, such as giving advice to large charities on contracts, governance and international legal structures and partnerships. She also often works with clients to put in place charitable or hybrid structures for UK and international work, as well as negotiating the publishing of music deals where profits and royalties are paid to charity.

Erica is particularly interested in internet protocol, intellectual property and intangible assets, and how clients can use and harness these to do good and generate income. She is a trustee of Unitas Shakespeare’s Globe and Stone Nest, three charities using education, culture and the arts to make a positive contribution to our society. She also acts as company secretary for the Association for Cultural Enterprises.

Patrick is an experienced Chair and serial social entrepreneur who has extensive experience of working with boards in Europe, Asia and North America. He is currently Chairman of board consultancy Boardelta, the charities The EY Foundation and ESSA - Education Sub Saharan Africa as well as Chair of the oversight board for the Chartered Management Consultant.

His executive experience includes 26 years in a variety of investment and management roles with 3i Group plc where, until 2012, he was Communications Director, a member of its Operating Committee and Chairman of its Operational Risk forum. As a member of the Higgs review, Patrick has also played a role in shaping governance policy for UK listed companies.

The author of ‘Boards’ and three other successful books on the subject, he has helped to establish many successful courses on board skills over the last 20 years.

Paul Farmer has been Chief Executive of Mind, the leading mental health charity working in England and Wales since May 2006. Paul is Chair of the NHS England Independent Oversight & Advisory Group, which brings together health and care leaders, and experts to oversee the current mental health long term plan for the NHS in England. He co-authored ‘Thriving at Work’ for the government, setting out how to transform mental health in workplaces.

Paul is a Commissioner at Historic England. He has an Honorary Doctorate of Science from the University of East London, is an Honorary Fellow of St Peter’s College, Oxford, and The Royal College of Psychiatrists, and was awarded a CBE in the New Year’s Honours 2016.

Cecile leads the Company Secretarial services at Bates Wells to support charities, social impact and commercial organisations in their effective core legal administration. She loves seeing organisations thrive and bring benefits to the wider community in which they operate.

Cecile is a Professional Affiliate of the Governance Institute and co-tutor for the Institute’s Certificate in Charity Law and Governance, a regular events contributor and has several published titles. She is also a voluntary director of a Community Interest Company which seeks to empower people to reach their potential, particularly focusing on young people and those who face particular challenges in their lives.

Andrew is a Senior Associate with the Good Governance Institute and Managing Director of ANHH Consulting.

He has worked extensively and at a senior level in the public, commercial, academic and third sectors. Andrew is Chair of Partners in Paediatrics; Safeguarding Trustee and Chair of the Risk Committee at Teenage Cancer Trust; and Interim Chair of The Donna Louise Children’s and Young People’s Hospice.

Andrew has held Executive Director responsibility for strategy, service and capital planning, strategic development, estates, communication, media management, fundraising, and business and commercial development. He has led on several major projects and has always ensured that the voice of the public, service users, carers and their political representatives has driven decision-making processes. He has been a non-executive director on seven different boards.

As a Director at the Good Governance Institute, with multiple prestige clients in the public and third sectors, Andrew has worked across the country to facilitate collaboration and system working. In recent months, the COVID-19 experience has hastened this approach, formally or otherwise, as all sectors work together to respond to these unprecedented times.

Malcolm is a passionate advocate of social justice, particularly around equality and diversity. He is leading a campaign to increase the racial diversity of charity trustee boards across the UK, on which people from black and Asian backgrounds have been significantly under-represented. His campaign is gaining significant support. He is also currently Chair of the Young Harrow Foundation, an umbrella body set up to support charities working with children and young people in Harrow, and a trustee of the Association of Chairs, a new umbrella body supporting chairs of charities across the UK.

Previously a Vice-Chair of both Anti-Slavery International and Nacro, then the largest crime reduction charity in the UK, he led the open recruitment of new trustees. He has also worked in three government departments on policy, social and economic regeneration programmes, and in the private sector as social policy adviser to National Grid Transco.

Mandy is the Founder of GreatCharitySpeakers.com. She was named the second most influential fundraiser by the readers of ‘Fundraising’ Magazine and one of the top 25 #SocialCEOs in the UK in 2018. She has worked for a wide variety of organisations, including the Small Charities Coalition, Cancer Research UK, Marie Curie, Change.org, NCT and Deloitte. Mandy sits on the Herts Funding Network Committee and is a Trustee for Bedfordshire and Luton Community Foundation. Mandy has a Masters in Charity Management (with a specialism in Fundraising and Marketing).

Alice is Director of Future Inclusion, working across sectors, increasing inclusion through improved leadership and governance.

Alice is a Non-Executive Director on the boards of the Financial Conduct Authority, HMRC and Transport for London. She was a member of the Committee on Fuel Poverty and the Human Genetics Commission and chaired a NICE guideline committee on improving the experience of adult social care users.

She has been board chair for several charities including Scope. She has overseen merger and turnaround. She has led significant improvements in governance by building on her leadership experience, using her understanding of how business works and what makes businesses thrive on driving improvements. She is currently a trustee of a small local grant-giving charity and a volunteer mentor to the chair of a local music group.

Mair has 13 years of working in the sector, and this has given her a passion for supporting the people who run voluntary organisations to achieve their aims and deliver their amazing work. In her role at Wales Council for Voluntary Action (WCVA), she helps organisations build firm foundations in key areas such as governance, safeguarding and measuring impact. Prior to this, she worked for the Women’s Equality Network (WEN) in Wales, Race Equality First, as well as in community development and communications roles for the Terrence Higgins Trust Cymru and Stonewall Cymru.

Claire has worked for Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity since February 2016. Claire acts as the Company Secretary and Data Protection Officer and is their appointed Head of Governance, Legal and Compliance. Prior to that, she spent 11 years in the health sector specialising in Information Governance.Initially starting her career as a Chartered Secretary, qualifying with the The Chartered Governance Institute in 2003, Claire first started specialising in Data Protection around 2000, implementing the Data Protection Act 1998.

She completed a specialist Masters Degree in Information Rights Law and Practice in 2008 and has qualifications in Computer Forensics and Information Security. In December 2010, Claire had a Case Study Article published called “FOI Requests at an NHS Trust” in PDP’s Freedom of Information Journal. In June 2017, Claire completed the Institute’s Certificate in Charity Law and Governance and joined the Chartered Secretaries Charitable Trust as a Trustee in May 2019. Claire has wide and extensive knowledge within the field of governance and is leading GOSH Charity in their Governance, Legal and Data Protection Programme.

Rob Shapland is an ethical hacker, specialising in simulating advanced cyber attacks against companies, combining technical attacks with his other hobby of dressing up and tricking his way into company headquarters using social engineering techniques.

He is also a regular speaker at events and conferences around Europe and has appeared on both BBC and ITV as a cybersecurity adviser.

Shivaji is a charity lawyer - he advises on the creation of charities, their dissolution, and most of the issues they encounter in between. He works with a wide variety of local, national and international charities. Independent sources describe him as ‘very knowledgeable’; ‘expert’; and ‘very enthusiastic’. Shivaji has worked with a range of environmental and transport charities throughout his career and has a particular specialism in advising faith charities on complex governance issues including internal disputes and charity proceedings.

Away from his desk, Shivaji is a serial charity trustee and an occasional transport campaigner, currently promoting ‘Low Traffic Neighbourhoods’ to provide people-friendly streets and safer routes to school in Birmingham.

Kim has been the CEO at The Cellar Trust, a Bradford based mental health charity, since November 2014.

Kim has an MSc in Leadership and is an ILM qualified Coach. She began her career as Women’s Officer at Leeds University Union before working in a range of communications, organisational development and employee wellbeing roles in the public sector. She joined the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) following her time as Vice Chair of the Board at Leeds Women’s Aid.

Kim is Chair of the Bradford VCS Assembly which is the voice and influence structure for the sector. She represents the VCS on several key local boards, has been part of the Gold Command structure in the response of the local system to COVID-19 and is a member of the NHS England/Improvement Adults Mental Health Task Force.

Precious Sithole is the founder and Chief Executive of Social Practice ENT – a not-for-profit accounting and consultancy social enterprise that is built on strong social and environmental principles.

Precious began her career working as an external auditor in Birmingham where she qualified as an ICAEW chartered accountant. As part of the audit team, she worked with a range of clients including charities, multi-academy trusts, housing associations and large corporations with group income over £500m. She then subsequently went on to work as an accounting and strategic consultant in London, before forming Social Practice ENT.

In addition to being a chartered ICAEW accountant, Precious holds a Master’s degree in Charity Management and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Precious is passionate about inclusive governance, and through Social Practice ENT, she helps charities to build racially inclusive board cultures. She also oversees the organisation’s flagship Beyond Suffrage programme – the aim of which is to increase the number of women from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds serving on charity boards by 2030.

Louise has extensive knowledge of governance issues garnered from her 20-year career in the not-for-profit and public sectors, including education and the NHS, complemented by her experience as a school governor, pension and charity trustee.

Her work has covered the development of the code of governance for charities and voluntary organisations, board training, reviews and development, research into sector governance and the production of over 100 guidance notes aimed at the sector.

Leon Ward is a trustee of Brook Young People, the UK's largest sex and relationships charity for young people. He is also an Ambassador for the Young Trustees Movement. Previously, Leon was a trustee of Plan UK, Interact Worldwide and Leap Confronting Conflict. He is author of the Young Trustees Guide, published in the UK to encourage the charity sector to increase the number of young trustees serving on charity boards.

Penny started her career at the Association of Charity Shops and Barnet Voluntary Service Council. She was then Head of Community Affairs at the University of Cambridge for several years, overseeing large public events like the Cambridge Science Festival and promoting volunteering by university students and staff. Most recently, she was Director of Partnerships for national charity The Brilliant Club and CEO of disability charity, Styleability.

Penny has been a trustee of several charities and is currently a trustee of the National Migraine Centre.