our trustees...
Simon Hebditch (Chair)
Simon Hebditch is an independent consultant working with third sector organisations, voluntary organisations, community groups and social enterprises. Simon was Chief Executive of Capacitybuilders, a public agency which dispensed grants to voluntary organisations to help increase their efficiency and effectiveness, from February 2006 to March 2008.
Previously, Simon was External Affairs Director at Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) and Assistant Director of NCVO. He is also Chair of the Board of Social Firms UK, a social enterprise network working with people with disabilities as well as disadvantaged people to help them get into the labour market. Simon is also the current chair of The Experience Network, a group of about 50 previous CEOs of third sector organisations who are now working as consultants with non-profit organisations.
Simon joined the Board of Small Charities Coalition in March 2011 having been a trustee of CTN since February 2009.
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Murtaza Jessa (Treasurer)
After qualifying as Chartered Accountant in 1986, Jessa joined KPMG at their London office where, in addition to carrying out audit and special assignments such as mergers, management buyouts and due diligence, he was in charge of the tax work in the department. In January 1990, Jessa left KPMG to start Trustient. Over the years, Trustient, under the leadership of Jessa gained excellent reputation of auditing and advising clients in the not for profit sector and Jessa headed up the division. With effect form 24 July 2006, Trustient merged with haymacintyre and Jessa is now a partner at haysmacintyre.
As well as audit and accounting support, Jessa has been involved in all aspects of advising charities including Charity Commission review visits, advice on mergers, structure and set up of trading subsidiaries, trustee training, risk assessment, business plan facilitation, set up of affiliated overseas charities, overseas branch offices and advice on internal controls.
Between 1999 and 2004 Jessa was Treasurer of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, a charity based in London with more than 20 field offices and affiliated charities in the USA and South Africa. Jessa is also one of the founding trustees of Health, Education and resources for Tomorrow (HEART), a newly incorporated charity working with young children in Africa and India providing grants for schooling and welfare to needy families.
Jessa is a regular contributor to charity publications and speaks at sector conferences. He uses much of his spare time working for voluntary organisations and socialising.
Debra Allcock Tyler
Since 2001, Debra has been the Chief Executive of the Directory of Social Change, which works towards an independent voluntary sector at the heart of social change. DSC seeks to help voluntary and community organisations become effective agents of change. DSC has contact with thousands of voluntary and community organisations every year, through its training, information and publishing programmes and earns 99.9% of its revenue enabling it to speak with a truly independent voice.
She was the founding Chair of the Small Charities Coalition/Charity Trustee Networks.
She has worked in both the private and voluntary sectors carrying out a range of roles at all levels, including campaigning; policy development; sales, product development, media relations and training. She also spent some 14 years as a voluntary Trade Union Officer.
She spent a year working with Youth at Risk, an organisation that works to rehabilitate young people who suffer severe social disadvantages. She was the first female Programme Director of the Runge Effective Leadership programme, one of the UK’sleading programmes for senior managers.
She is an internationally published author of several books covering topics such as leadership; management; communication skills; personal development and time management. Recent publications include ‘It’s Tough at the Top’ for Chief Executives and ‘The Pleasure and the Pain’ for anyone working with people.
She has spent many years working with the media, doing TV, radio, newspaper, magazine and internet features and interviews. She was a regular columnist for a major national newspaper on work-based issues and writes a regular column for Third Sector magazine.
She delivers around 50 keynote speeches every year to the voluntary, private and public sector – on topics ranging from the relationship between the state and charities; leadership and topical issues affecting the voluntary sector.
She is a member of the Charity Commission’s SORP Committee. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce (FRSA). She was a Licensed Practitioner of NLP. She was appointed a Special Ambassador for Girlguiding UK as a result of her work with the Commonwealth Chief Commissioners and is a member of the Advisory Panel for the MSc in Voluntary Sector Management at Cass Business School, City University, London, where she gives an annual lecture on leadership.
She has a BSc (Hons) in Psychology and a Certificate in Natural Sciences (Physics; Chemistry; Earth Sciences; Biological Sciences).
Henny Braund
Henny Braund is Chief Executive of the Anthony Nolan Trust.
Henny has 20 years experience of management in the voluntary sector (Richmond Fellowship, Shelter) and was Resources Director at Shelter for 10 years, leading IT, HR, Planning & Project Management, Property & Facilities and up to the recent past, Finance.
As an HR Professional, Henny has extensive experience in managing change and driving up performance across the organisation. Henny was the Trustee and then the Chair of the Health and Housing Charity, a Trustee for Thamesreach and is currently a member of the Board of Shelter Trading Ltd, which oversees the management of 80 shops for Shelter. She was also a Samaritan for many years.
She has two children and lists gardening, cinema and Italy amongst her interests.
Beverley Costa
Beverley Costa was born in London and raised in a bicultural family surrounded by various languages and religions. She is a qualified counsellor and psychotherapist, registered with the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapists and she is a registered practitioner with the British Psychodrama Association and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Beverley is the director of Mothertongue, a culturally sensitive therapeutic support service for people from black and minority ethnic communities, which she founded in 2000. In 2007 Mothertongue won the National Charity Awards, in 2008 the Award for Excellence in the Practice of Counselling and Psychotherapy from the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP[M1] ), and in 2009 the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service.
Mothertongue is a small, independent charity, with just two members of staff and so it is a match in terms of relevant experience for the work of the Small Charities Coalition.
Richard Davidson
Richard has been Director of Communications and Marketing at Anthony Nolan since July 2010. Previously he was a Director of Health Mandate, a communications agency, and prior to that he spent four years as Cancer Research UK's Director of Policy and Public Affairs where he oversaw the organisation's policy formulation, external affairs, public campaigning and tobacco control work.
He joined the Cancer Research Campaign in 1998 and following the charity's merger with Imperial Cancer Research Fund (to form Cancer Research UK) Richard was appointed the charity's first Public Affairs Manager. During his time there the 25-strong team won a range of parliamentary, campaigning and public affairs awards. He also spent two years as a trustee of the Association of Medical Research Charities.
Richard left the University of Essex in 1996 after gaining a BA and MA in American Government and spent two years as a fundraiser at the Charities Advisory Trust in London.
D'Arcy Myers
D’Arcy Myers has been Chief Executive of The Rainbow Centre - the charity supporting children with Cerebral Palsy and adults with a stroke, MS and Parkinson’s disease and their families - since November 2011. Prior to this appointment D'Arcy had been CEO of Wessex Heartbeat, and before this had been at the helm of Dreams Come True, a national children's charity which aims to make the most treasured dreams come true for terminally and seriously ill children. D’Arcy initially trained in agriculture and spent much of his early career in marketing and business development.
An opportunity to volunteer with VSO enabled D’Arcy to combine his agricultural training with his business skills and he spent two years establishing a marketing department for the Ministry of Agriculture in the Kingdom of Tonga.
Over the next decade he developed a career in international development, spending time working in Asia, Africa and the former Soviet Union on a variety of projects ranging from setting up farmer and community cooperatives to Government backed export initiatives.
D’Arcy takes a prominent role in working closely with companies to understand their overall PR and marketing objectives which will ultimately see added value by working closely with a charity such as Dreams Come True.
Having experienced the agonies and worries that small charities go through he was delighted to be part of setting up the Coalition - a system that will both support small charities and encourage larger ones to share knowledge and experience. He feels this has been too long in coming to an industry that prides itself on supporting others.
Mike Nussbaum
Mike Nussbaum has been in the thick of social change and community development for nearly 50 years.
As a young activist he was involved in a wide range of social action programmes and by 18 was chairing national youth organisations, organising charitable fund-raising events, and leading youth summer schools.
His first career as a research chemist was cut short by failing eyesight, but Mike soon forged a second career in local government and public policy development. Mike worked with communities in some of the most challenging local authorities in the UK, initiating pioneering work in social inclusion and in urban regeneration and design. For three years, he led the government’s policy unit on Children’s Play.
Since retirement Mike has taken on various roles in the national voluntary sector but particularly in promoting and developing the role of volunteering. In 2003, he steered the merger of 3 national voluntary organisations to form a single national focus for volunteering and helped to establish national quality standards for volunteer centres and for volunteer management. He was instrumental in persuading the UK government of the need for ‘The Office of the Third Sector’ as a key function of the Cabinet Office. Currently, Vice President of Volunteering England, he was its founding Chair for 7 years, from its inception until September 2009.
Mike is involved with various charitable organisations both locally, nationally and more broadly, in the European context. He is Chair of Milton Keynes Volunteer Centre, a Board member of Bucks Vision (formerly Bucks Association for Blind and Partially Sighted People) and served on the Campbell Park Parish Council. He is a Board member of The National Blind Children’s Society and acts as Community Development Adviser to the Churches Conservation Trust. He regularly acts as Ambassador and conference presenter for the European Volunteer Centre (CEV). He is currently Chairing a UK wide Cross Sectors Working Group developing a Framework to recruit up to 50,000 skilled volunteers to assist the hardest to reach groups of the long-term unemployed.
Mike has just been appointed as Chair of the national Charity Action for Blind People. In 2005 Mike received a national ‘Year of the Volunteer’ Award for services to volunteering, and in 2008 The Open University awarded him an Honorary Doctorate in recognition of over 40 years of public service.
Mike joined the Board of Small Charities Coalition in March 2011 having been a trustee of CTN since April 2009.
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Zöe Willems
Zöe was advised by her tutor at Oxford to focus on her degree rather than voluntary work if she really wanted to make a difference in life. Thankfully, she ignored the advice, did the voluntary work and got a first-class degree! Since then she has worked for conflict resolution and development charities, and spent nine years at the Charity Commission, in various roles from charity advisor, business planner, to senior policy advisor. She developed and managed the original Large Charities team, and advised and lobbied on charity legislation. She has been an observer member of the Institute of Fundraising Standards Committee, and was on the steering group developing the model for the new self-regulation of fundraising body. Her main voluntary activity during this period was as chair of the departmental trade union.
Zöe is now a freelance consultant, with a particular interest in the voluntary sector and links between governance and fundraising. Zöe is also a lay member of the Fundraising Standards Board, and a member of the fundraising committee for her grade 1 listed city Church.
Zoe joined the Board of Small Charities Coalition in March 2011 having been a trustee of CTN since May 2006.
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