Governance

The members decide People In Aid's strategy and direction. An Annual General Meeting of members elects a Board of Trustees of up to fifteen individuals, which oversees the organisation on members’ behalf. Our present Board members are listed below. Up to five Trustees can be from non-member organisations (listed below as ‘Independents’) to ensure the necessary diversity of skills, experience and views. Vacancies for Trustees will be advertised here and in selected media, and selection is through competency-based interviews.

Our Memorandum and Articles, updated in 2008, can be found here and members can view minutes of our Board meetings in the box to the right.

Our Trustees

 Neil Casey – Independent (Chair)

Neil is Director of Wild Goose Consulting, a company providing consultancy support and interim management to not-for-profit organisations for the last three years.  He has over 20 years' experience of charity management at either senior management or director level.  His latest consultancy projects have included a governance review for an international development organisation. This has resulted in the Board adopting a new governance manual, a new framework for their strategic plan and a recruitment campaign for new Trustees which sourced three new Trustees. He has particularly strong skills in strategic planning, income generation, financial planning and management, and inter-agency networking nationally and internationally. He has been a Trustee for People In Aid since 2006 and has been Chairman since 2009.

Joan Coyle – Save the Children International

Joan has worked in senior HR roles with Save the Children for the past three and a half years.  Most of her career has been spent in the voluntary sector, as Head of HR with ACORD; Deputy HR Director with the British Red Cross, and Director of Central Services at Macmillan Cancer Support. Earlier in her career Joan taught English as a foreign language in France and Spain, worked for a global shipping company, and spent several years in international conference organising. Joan was involved in the development of the People in Aid Code and has previously served on the Board as a Trustee. She is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, and volunteers on the Red Cross Psychosocial Support team.

Olawale Fajobi – British Red Cross (Vice-Chair)

Most recently, Ola was the Corporate Head of Human Resources with the British Red Cross, being responsible for developing and implementing HR strategy and policy in the UK and internationally. He was also responsible through a team of senior managers for setting and delivering HR and volunteering policy, advice and standards through a geographically dispersed team of approximately 70 staff. Prior to his appointment, he was the Deputy Director of Human Resources at the Children and Family Court Advisory Support Service (CAFCASS) for 5 years including a 1-year stint as HR Director.  CAFCASS is a non-departmental public body responsible for safeguarding the welfare of children involved in family court proceedings across England and Wales.

Ola is a member of the Institute of Fundraising Finance & Resource Committee. He is also a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (FCIPD) and brings several years of senior operational and strategic HR experience from the National Health Service.  

Paula Feehan – ActionAid UK

Paula is currently the Senior Strategy Planning Manager at ActionAid UK.  She has over fifteen years’ human resource, organisational development and change management experience career in the private sector (financial services, media, law), and she moved to ActionAid UK in 2009 in order to realise a long-held ambition to work in the international development arena. She has been seconded to the position of Senior Strategy Planning Manager whose role it is to review the 2005–2011 strategy and develop the new 5 UK year strategy. At university, Paula completed a Master’s in International Political Economy and has experience of being a Trustee on two Boards: on a Board of Trustees for TradeAid New Zealand, responsible for the HR and Education portfolio, and currently on a Board of Directors of Republic, a campaigning organisation with special portfolio for Strategy and Planning. 

Nick Gallagher – VSO International 

Nick is Head of Volunteering at VSO International. Previously he has held the positions of International Recruitment Manager, Director of UK Volunteer Recruitment and Deputy Director of VSO Canada and has also worked in VSO’s programme in Eritrea.  Before joining VSO, Nick worked in the Health and Education Management spheres.  He holds a degree in Biomedical Sciences from King’s College, London where he also studied Dentistry. 

Jacquie Heany – CAFOD

Jacquie is the Director of Organisational Development and People at CAFOD. Her early and varied career included training as a teacher, packing humbugs in a Blackpool rock factory (summer time only!) and working in a South Yorkshire benefit office during the 1884–85 miners’ strike. She has worked in the field of organisational development for over twenty years, much of which has been spent in the private sector as a Change Management consultant. Before joining CAFOD in November 2010, she worked in the Cabinet Office helping to develop a framework for improving capability, performance and collaboration across the 20+ departmental HR functions within the Civil Service. She is a chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development and is involved in a number of HR networks.

Karen Hein – Independent

 

Richard Marshall – World Vision

Richard has over 20 years' experience in Human Resources Development spread between the UK and Asia. His current role is the Strategy Director for Organisation Development and Change with World Vision International, before which he was the Director of People and Culture with World Vision UK. Having started out in a range of HR roles within the Pharmaceutical Industry (AstraZeneca), he moved to Asia in 1995 to work with the United Mission to Nepal as Training & Development Manager, and later as Regional HR Director for World Vision, based in Thailand. He is a Chartered Occupational Psychologist, and is involved in a number of networks for HR and OD professionals in the Charity Sector.

Duncan Milroy – Independent (Treasurer)

Duncan’s career has been in financial management, with 20 years in the international oil and gas industry. He moved to the charity sector in 2002, working as Director of Corporate Services for Norwood, a charity providing a wide range of social services in the London area. Pursuing his interest in international development, he moved to take the role of interim Finance Director of World Jewish Relief in 2005, and now works as a consultant with medium-scale charities and social enterprises in the UK, and on international assignments with organisations involved in development and relief. Duncan is a qualified accountant (ACMA), and has experience of managing HR, IT and Internal Audit functions.

Ann Start – Retrak

Ann is Learning & Development Director for Retrak, a medium-sized NGO working with street children in Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia. Having lived in a number of different countries (Europe and the Middle East) since 1988, she is also a Director of Start Development Services, a small company offering management consulting and executive coaching services to clients in the private, public and voluntary sectors, where her main involvement is in volunteer management training. Ann started out her career working as a nurse and midwife both in the NHS and independently overseas. She holds an MSc in Voluntary Sector Management from the City of London CASS Business School. In her spare time she is involved in local community fundraising for Retrak.

Simon Thompson – Independent

In October 2011 Simon joined WM Morrisons Supermarkets PLC charged with setting up an online food service from scratch that consumers can afford. Previously he was World-Wide Customer Experience and Strategy Director for Apple Inc online business following several years as their General Manager in EMEA. As European Managing Director of lastminute.com and senior roles at Motorola and Honda, his experience covers many product categories and consumer groups. Formally educated in Computer Science, Simon has progressed his career from a singular technical discipline to senior leadership roles with a focus on change, innovation and e-commerce.

Sue Turrell – Womankind Worldwide

Sue has been the Executive Director of Womankind Worldwide since January 2007. She caught the development bug in the early 1980s when, at 18, she taught sciences in a remote rural secondary school in Kenya for a year. She lived and worked overseas for eight years, as a teacher, trainer, project manager and researcher in Kenya, Indonesia, Australia, the Gaza Strip and Zambia. After returning to the UK in 1997, she worked for Education Action International and Christian Aid where she managed programmes and teams in Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. Sue worked her way up through the development sector gaining skills and experience in programme management; working with and through partner organisations; advocacy and campaigning work; fundraising; financial management; strategic development and leadership; governance and accountability. She has a BA, a Masters in Development and an MBA (Masters in Business Administration).

Willem van Eekelen – Independent (Vice-Chair)