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Maeve Sherlock OBE (Chair)
Maeve Sherlock is currently based at Durham University where she is researching for a doctorate on the role of religion in the public sphere. Alongside her studies, Maeve has a portfolio career involving board appointments and consultancy. Her board appointments include being a Commissioner on the Equality & Human rights Commission, a Director of the Financial Ombudsman Service and a member of the Carnegie Commission of Inquiry into the Future of Civil Society. Until 2006 Maeve was chief executive of the Refugee Council, the largest charity working with refugees and asylum-seekers. Before that, she spent three years as on the Council of Economic Advisers in the Treasury, advising Gordon Brown as Chancellor of the Exchequer on a range of policy issues including child poverty, welfare reform and the voluntary sector. Before moving to the Treasury, Maeve was chief executive of the National Council for One Parent Families and, prior to that, director of UKCOSA, a charity focusing on overseas students and international education. She is a former President of the National Union of Students.
Dame Jo Williams
Dame Jo Williams moved into the voluntary sector nearly four years ago when she joined Mencap as chief executive. She had spent her career until then in the public sector, starting off as a social worker at Shropshire County Council in 1971. She moved to Cheshire County Council in 1973 and spent the next 19 years in a variety of operational roles, before leaving to join Wigan Metropolitan Borough Council as director of social services in 1992. Five years later, she took up the equivalent role back at Cheshire County Council and remained there until joining Mencap in March 2003.
Jo was president of the Association of Directors of Social Services during 1999 and 2000, and was a major contributor to the National Service Framework for Children, Young People and Maternity Services.
As an advocate for partnership working across different agencies and someone who is passionate about involving service users, she has served on several government taskforces. She is a trustee of the EveryChild Board, and chair of the Research in Practice Partnership Board.
She is currently a member of the National Learning Disability Taskforce and co-chaired the Third Sector Taskforce with health minister Ivan Lewis.
She received a Damehood in the 2007 New Year Honours for services to learning disability.
John Low
John Low is currently Chief Executive of the Charities Aid Foundation, which works with individuals, companies and charities to stimulate giving, social investment and the effective use of funds. He is also Chairman of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (ACEVO).
Prior to joining CAF, John was Chief Executive at the Royal National Institute for the Deaf (RNID) the national charity for deaf and hard of hearing people.
John moved to the voluntary sector after pursuing a 20 year career in the technology industry. He holds a PhD in Bio-Medical Physics, is a Chartered Engineer, a Companion of the Institute of Management and a fellow of the RSA.
Dame Mary Marsh
Dame Mary is founding Director of the Clore Social Leadership Programme, a new initiative of the Clore Duffield Foundation. The programme’s aim is to identify, develop and connect aspiring leaders in the wider third sector working for the benefit of individual people and progressive social change in communities across the UK.
Before joining the Clore Social Leadership Programme in October 2008, she was Chief Executive of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) for eight years. Prior to this, her career was in education. She was headteacher of two large comprehensive schools in the 1990s, the second being Holland Park School in inner London.
Dame Mary was appointed a non-executive Director of HSBC Bank plc with effect from 1 January 2009. She was also appointed by the Government in January as the interim Chair of Skills-Third Sector (the new third sector skills body). She has been a member of the National Council of the Learning and Skills Council since 2005 and she is a Trustee of Young Enterprise. She is co-Chair of GRIT, the alumni voluntary sector interest group, London Business School and a Governor of Shooters Hill Post 16 Campus school near her home in Greenwich.
Dame Mary was born in Liverpool and has four grown up sons.
Sir Christopher Kelly KCB
Chris Kelly joined the board of the NSPCC in 2001 and became its chair in January 2002. He was appointed chair of Compact Voice, formerly the Compact Working Group, in June 2005. He is also chair of the Financial Ombudsman Service, a board member of the National Consumer Council and an adviser to KPMG. In December 2007 he was appointed as chair of the Committee for Standards in Public Life.
His previous roles included director of monetary and fiscal policy and director of the budget and public finances at HM Treasury, where he spent 25 years from 1970 to 1995. After leaving the Treasury he became head of policy at the then Department of Social Security and in 1997 was appointed Permanent Secretary to the Department of Health. Since leaving the civil service in 2001 he has chaired various reviews, including one on paying for the cost of long-term care for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and another on the arrest to sentence part of the criminal justice system which led to the creation of the Office for Criminal Justice Reform. In 2004 he also chaired the serious case review commissioned by the North East Lincolnshire Area Child Protection Committee into the Ian Huntley case.
Venu Dhupa
Venu recently stood down from her post as the British Council's arts director. Former posts include: Director of the Creative Innovation Unit at London’s Southbank Centre, Europe’s largest cultural centre; Fellowship Director at The UK’s National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts; Chief Executive at the Nottingham Playhouse; Producer (Mobile Touring) at the Royal National Theatre; Inaugural Chair of the East Midlands Cultural Consortium appointed by the Secretary of State at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. She has been awarded the prestigious Asian Woman of Achievement Award for her contribution to the Arts and Culture.
She is or has been a: Trustee of the Theatres Trust, a Governor of Guildford Conservatoire, a Council Member of Loughborough University, a Member of the Institute of Ideas; a member of Chatham House; a member of the London 2012 Culture and Education Committee and the European Cultural Parliament. She is a patron of the Asha Foundation and the Minorities of Europe.
Paul Winter
Paul Winter taught at schools in England and Scotland before becoming deputy head at Wells Cathedral School and then headmaster at King’s School, Worcester while still in his early 30s. In 1982, Paul was appointed as executive director at The Leadership Trust leaving in 1990 to run his own consultancy. He returned to The Trust in 1994 as chief executive.
Since that time, he has led the organisation through an extended period of growth; expanding both its range of activities and product portfolio, including the introduction and development of the Centre for Applied Leadership Research and The Leadership Trust’s grantmaking work.
Paul is also a skilled Course Director with particular expertise in the philosophy of leadership, strategic change and executive development programmes for boards of directors. He also chairs Hereford & Worcester Connexions, The Teaching Awards Company Ltd and Ready Steady Win Ltd (promoting young people in sporting excellence).
Dorothy Dalton
Dorothy Dalton is editor of governance: essential information for effective trustees and author of several publications on governance. She advises a number of professionally managed charities on their governance and was until recently the independent chair of the Scope Governance Working Group.
With a “first” in mathematics, Dorothy, a former headteacher, was Chief Executive of ACEVO, the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisation from 1992 to 2000. From 2000 to 2003 she was a Non-Executive Director of the Inland Revenue. She is a trustee of International Students House and chairs their Governance Advisory Committee. She is chair of trustees of the Journey of a Lifetime Trust (JoLt) and until very recently chair of trustees of Orley Farm School Trust. She is a governor of Northwood College. She is on the Advisory Boards of the Leadership Trust and the Institute for Global Ethics UK Trust. She has just completed a six-year term of office as trustee of Marie Curie Cancer Care. She founded the Network of Women Chairs and JoLt and co-founded Groundbreakers: Voluntary sector women leaders.
During her spare time, Dorothy organises and leads month-long challenging expeditions for disabled and disadvantaged teenagers to remote corners of the world as well as organising and participating in fundraising expeditions such as crossing the Jordanian Desert by camel or canoeing, kayaking and white-water rafting the Zambezi between Zimbabwe and Zambia.
Fiona Ellis
Fiona Ellis was, until March 2009, Director of the Northern Rock Foundation, the foundation set up by the bank of the same name in 1997. NRF funds exclusively in the North East of England and Cumbria, in which it has invested over £175m in the eleven years of Fiona's stewardship.
FE worked previously for the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation where she was Assistant Director (Arts) for almost six years and, in a freelance capacity, for the Baring Foundation and the - then - Esmee Fairbairn Charitable Trust. Prior to her career in philanthropy, she worked in the arts as, at various times, a community arts worker, stage manager, theatre director, funding officer and director of a rural arts centre. She is joint author of Fairness in Funding, an equal opportunities guide for grant-makers published by the Association of Charitable Foundations.
Other current and previous posts have included: Vice Chair of Futurebuilders; Comic Relief's UK Grants Committee; School Governor of Whalton First School; Whalton Village Hall Committee; Commissioner for the IPPR North Public Services Commission and membership of several theatre boards. Fiona currently serves on the National Council for Voluntary Organisations Funding Commission.
Ian Allsop
Ian was editor of Charity Finance magazine for five years, leaving in early 2009 to become a full time dad. He has also edited Association Manager. Prior to his career in journalism, he worked for the charity unit at accountants BDO Stoy Hayward in a range of roles. Ian holds a degree in economics and has volunteered for Oxfam, as well as on a scheme assisting schoolchildren with reading difficulties.
Anne-Marie Piper
Anne-Marie Piper is a partner at law firm Farrer & Co, where she specialises in charity law. Her job involves acting for sponsors of new charities, directors, trustees and officers of existing charities and other not-for-profit bodies, as well as individuals and companies wishing to make charitable gifts or do business with charities. She is also well known for her handling of Charity Commission investigations and acting, for and against, Charity Commission-appointed receivers and managers. Founder, former secretary and now chairman of the Charity Law Association, Anne-Marie also lectures and writes regularly on charity law subjects.
She trained at Richards Butler and was called to the Bar in 1980. She joined the private client department at Richards Butler in 1983, then requalified as solicitor and became a partner at Richards Butler in 1989. She then moved to Paisner & Co to head up its charities group from 1994 to 2001, and joined Farrer & Co in 2001.
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