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
John Beverley - Tropical Health & Education Trust (Treasurer)
John has been Finance and Administration Director with Tropical Health and Education Trust since 2010. Most of his career has been spent in the voluntary sector, mainly in finance, but also in IT and fundraising. John has worked for British Red Cross, Oxfam Hong Kong, WaterAid and Shelter amongst others. He has also worked as a consultant with central and local government. He is a fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants.
Neil Casey – Independent (Chair)
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Neil is Director of Wild Goose Consulting, a company providing consultancy support and interim management to not-for-profit organisations. 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.
Harriet Dodd – Plan International
Harriet Dodd was most recently the Director of People & Culture in Plan International where she joined the team of executive directors in 2010. Harriet has over 20 years' experience in the INGO sector and has worked in 12 countries in the Middle East and Africa as a senior manager leading development and emergency work for ActionAid, VSO, Oxfam, Save the Children, and CARE. She has been a consultant for IPPF, Agrisystems and Mercy Corps among others. Recognising the vital role that the strategic management of human resources makes to the success of NGO operations she made a shift from programme delivery to human resource management.
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 was most recently the 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
Karen is a medical doctor and currently serves as one of 5 members of The Green Mountain Care Board in Vermont, USA. She is the Immediate Past President of the William T. Grant Foundation (1998–2003). She was the Executive Officer at the Institute of Medicine (IOM) 1995–1998 at The National Academies, and is currently Adjunct Professor in the Department of Family & Community Medicine at Dartmouth Medical School and Visiting Fellow at Tufts University's Feinstein Int'l Center, both in USA. During the past 30 years, Karen has assumed a variety of roles related to health and health policy through her activities in programme development, teaching and clinical research. In 1987, she founded the world's first comprehensive adolescent HIV/AIDS programme. In 2003, she shifted her scope of activities to promote global peace through volunteer work related to international health and to youth development, focusing on Asia and Africa. Currently her foremost efforts centre on the professionalisation of humanitarian assistance. She is a Board member of 8 national and international organisations, including IRC Board of Overseers. Karen graduated from the University of Wisconsin, attended Dartmouth Medical School and received her medical degree from Columbia University, College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York. She is the Chair of People In Aid USA Board.
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.
Girish Menon – WaterAid
Girish heads WaterAid's International Programmes Department which oversees WaterAid's programmes in 23 countries through four regional teams (Asia, West Africa, East Africa and Southern Africa). He joined WaterAid in January 2005 from the Department for International Development (DFID) India, where he worked as a Social Development Adviser for two and a half years. Prior to this, he worked with international NGOs - Plan International and ActionAid for four years and ten years respectively.
Girish is currently WaterAid-UK's representative on the Board of Water and Sanitation for Urban Poor (WSUP), an international alliance of NGOs, private sector and academic institutions.
Kirit Naik - British Red Cross
Kirit joined the British Red Cross as Head of Risk and Assurance in March 2011. He has extensive external and internal audit experience, both in the public and private sectors. He trained and qualified as a certified chartered accountant with KPMG before joining the National Audit Office where he was responsible for managing external audits of various government departments and agencies. Prior to joining the Red Cross, Kirit was Head of Internal Audit at the Central Office of Information (COI) where he set up a framework for risk management in line with guidance issued by HM Treasury. He was also responsible for providing assurance to the Cabinet Office on information risk management. He has facilitated risk workshops for the board and senior management and has undertaken external quality assurance reviews of other internal audit functions in central government.
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 – Oxfam GB
Sue is Deputy International Director at Oxfam GB, before which she was the Executive Director of Womankind Worldwide from January 2007 until February 2012. 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)
Willem is a development economist. He built his experience in various UN agencies and NGOs before turning to consultancy work. Most of his current work is related to programme evaluations, change management and capacity building. Willem is a visiting lecturer at the University in Birmingham. He spends his summers in Bosnia, where he co-owns Green Visions, the Balkans’ liveliest adventure tourism company.