I’ve spent most of my adult life working in the small charity sector – as a practitioner, manager, freelancer, volunteer, and CEO. Currently I’m CEO of the Stonegrove Community Trust, plus also a proud Trustee of Reach Volunteering, and Treasurer/Trustee of Victoria Hall Harrow. I’ve been lucky enough to work with an amazing range of people throughout my career, and one of the parts of the charity sector I love is the range of volunteers (including trustees) that we are able to engage. I’m essentially a generalist who knows a little about lots of different things, and who’s comfortable leading & taking decisions. The amazing skills that trustees & other volunteers bring to our sector gives me access to a range of specialist knowledge & advice, and allows me to keep learning & growing every day.

I believe in the power of small community based organisations to improve people’s lives and strengthen our communities. I also believe that we’re at a time right now when our small local charities will be needed more than ever (at least in my lifetime, which how I tend to measure things!)

Unfortunately we’re also at a time when many organisations are under threat, and the part of that that I find most worrying, is the loss of physical assets (premises) to the community. Particularly in London we don’t have many opportunities due to property value to get new physical assets, and so working together to defend & preserve the ones we have is vitally important!