NCVO's Trustee Board
The list of NCVO's trustees and other honorary officers.
NCVO's Trustee Board
Honorary Officers
Chair: Martyn Lewis CBE
Martyn Lewis, who is well-known from his long career in broadcasting at the BBC and ITN, has been involved with the voluntary sector for almost 30 years.
His other current charitable roles include: Chairman of The Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service, YouthNet and Families Of The Fallen; Trustee of the Windsor Leadership Trust, President of United Response, and Deputy Chair of the Lord Mayor of London’s Dragon Awards. He is a Vice-President of all three main hospice charities, and campaigns regularly for the movement.
He is the founder of YouthNet, an award-winning charity that provides websites signposting 16-25 year olds to opportunities and help on a wide range of topics from careers, employment and volunteering through to sex, relationships, alcohol and drugs.
He was awarded the CBE in 1997 for services to young people and the hospice movement.
He moved into the business world in 1999 when he co-founded Teliris, a company that is the global technology leader in providing real-time corporate communications systems known as Telepresence.
Honorary Treasurer: Helen Simmons
Helen Simmons (ACA) has been Director of Finance and Operations at Diocese on London since September 2010. Previously she was Finance Director of Jewish Care (Health and Social Care) for 5 years, Finance Director of the Multiple Sclerosis Society for 4 years and was Finance Director of Crisis (single homelessness) for 3 years prior to that. Helen spent 6 years as Trustee of the Charity Finance Directors’ Group, with 3 years as Vice Chair and is now treasurer of NCVO (National Council for Voluntary Organisations).
Helen also sat for 2 years on the investment committee of Venturesome. Helen has been a befriender for Age Concern, a volunteer for Crisis and has a 7 year old son and 2 year old daughter. She trained at Clark Whitehill and specialised in the charity sector at Saffery Champness.
Trustees
Jo Ash (Vice Chair)
Jo Ash has been Chief Executive of Southampton Voluntary Services since 1992. SVS is the umbrella body providing infrastructure support and development to almost 500 community and voluntary organisations in membership and has NAVCA, Volunteer England and Investors in People quality awards. SVS also provides high quality services directly to local people including currently SVS Family Projects, Shopmobility Service, Street Homeless Prevention team , Young Carers project, Safe in Sound drugs awareness work and MORPH an ex-users self help project.
Jo has a BA (Hons) in Social Studies, MA in State Policy and Social Change and is an accredited practice teacher for Social work. Previous employment has included consultancy and work on Housing and homelessness, disability and advice services, womens issues and as chief officer of Eastleigh CVS. In a voluntary capacity Jo is Vice Chair of a local neighbourhood group. For nine years she was a Non Executive Director of Southampton City Primary Care Trust and is currently Vice Chair of the National Council of Voluntary Organisations. Jo is actively involved in a number of Southampton Partnership ( LSP) Boards including the SP Delivery Board, Safe City partnership, Childrens Trust and Local Safeguarding Children Board.
Dominic Fox
Dominic Fox has worked in the voluntary and community sector for over 30 years. He started as a volunteer setting up a bookshop within a multicultural community centre in Bath and has worked as a youth worker and social worker. Dominic has held a number of senior management posts including Director of the Kings Cross Homelessness Project, Acting Chief Executive at National Homeless Alliance, CEO of a disabled children’s charity, Kidsactive, and was Director of the Children’s Centre Project, a collaboration of seven national charities based at the National Children’s Bureau.
He has been a trustee of NCVO since 2002 and is a member of the Poverty Strategy Group at Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Dominic stood down as Chief Executive of The Stone Ashdown Trust in December 2008 when it became one of the UK's first charitable foundations to "spend out" its capital.
Jamie Dear
Jamie has a background in charity and social enterprise. He is founder of OxFizz, a social enterprise pioneering a new model of philanthropy. He also manages Trust Youth, a growing educational charity which sets up mini-charities in schools. Jamie is an Ambassador for Helen & Douglas House in Oxford, and has also worked with the Charities Advisory Trust.
While at university, Jamie led Jacari, a fifty-year old Oxford charity providing support for children who speak English as a second language. He now chairs the board of trustees. He is a trustee of Oxfordshire Community and Voluntary Action (OCVA) and sits on the advisory panel for Third Sector: First Choice, a structured graduate entry scheme for the sector.
Margaret Coleman
Margaret Coleman was appointed to chair the board at Huddersfield Media Centre in October 2010. She also currently chairs the Open College Network, Yorkshire & Humber Region.
Prior to this, Margaret was appointed LSC Regional Director for Yorkshire and the Humber from January 2004 until April 2010. As Regional Director she served on the national Management Group of the Learning and Skills Council.
Born in Derbyshire, Margaret holds two degrees from the University of Leeds, including a First degree in English Literature and research on early twentieth century poetry. She has worked in all the major sectors of post-16 education, including higher education, further education, teacher education, adult skills and sixth form colleges.
Before formally joining the LSC in 2001 as Executive Director for West Yorkshire, Margaret was the Principal and Chief Executive of Huddersfield New College and was previously Deputy Principal of Dewsbury College. She has held a number of senior posts in Further and Higher Education in West Yorkshire.
She is also a director of mind the gap, a theatre company for learning-disabled adults; a director of Yorkshire Dance and a member of the Leeds University Court. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute.
Jonathan Moore
Through his day job as Chief Executive of the Suffolk Association of Voluntary Organisations, Jonathan works with the 5000+ voluntary groups in Suffolk to help them improve impact and efficiency. He sits on numerous strategic groups and Boards in Suffolk and is a very active Chairperson of a local Sea Scout Group. His work has covered local, regional and national settings and is multifunctional: acting as trainer, speaker, changemaker, advocate, representative, trustee, adviser, mentor, arbitrator, manager, facilitator – to name but a few.
The latest addition to his portfolio is Adventurer – planning a 4000 mile drive in a vehicle costing less than £100 in aid of his passion for supporting young people through Scouting
Dame Julia Cleverdon
Dame Julia Cleverdon is a renowned speaker on corporate responsibility, leadership and career development for women. She is now a Vice President of Business in the Community, a movement of 800 top UK companies committed to improving their positive impact on society and a Special Adviser to the Prince’s Charities on responsible business practice. Dame Julia’s work at Business in the Community led to her being listed by The Times as one of the 51st most influential women in Britain!
Dame Julia has recently led a review for the Prime Minister on Education and Business partnerships. She is a member of the Talent and Enterprise Advisory Group and has recently led a three-month Taskforce on Building Stronger Communities in an economic downturn. Dame Julia is also Chair of Teach First, which coaches exceptional graduates into effective, inspirational teachers and leaders in all fields.
Dame Julia began her working career in industrial relations at British Leyland. She was Director of the Industrial Society’s Education and Inner City Division 1981-1988. Julia is a patron of Volunteer Reading Help and an Ambassador for the World Wildlife Fund. She has also recently become a Business Adviser for Marie Curie and the Chair of the Newnham College Advisory Board.
Jules Mason
Jules Mason joined Merlin in late 2011 as their Head of CEO’s Office where he works with the CEO and Directors Group to drive forward Merlin’s strategic development. Prior to joining Merlin he worked at the British Red Cross as Head of Governance Support for 4.5 years where he reformed their trustee election process and introduced a development programme for potential future trustees; his time there included 8.5 months as interim Director of Strategy.
Jules has extensive experience of strategy development, membership services, governance arrangements, campaigning and business planning. He has worked with and supported membership organisations, from his time as an elected student officer (former President of his students’ union and member of the National Union of Students’ Executive Committee) and staff member in student unions to various roles at the British Youth Council. At the British Youth Council he oversaw the development of a range of innovative programmes to support and encourage young people’s involvement in civic and wider society.
Jules is a former trustee of the British Youth Council and the Association for Citizenship Teaching – ACT, and a former governors at Fortismere, a foundation school in Haringey, north London (from 2003-2011; the last three years as chair of governors). He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He is an avid sports fan; a rare Manchester United fan born in Manchester, and occasionally plays tennis and five-a-side football.
Matt Hyde
The voluntary sector is experiencing a period of turbulence and volatility as spending cuts bite. The most vulnerable people in society need support from our organisations, and accordingly, those organisations need the best support from NCVO, either through advice, innovation or by shaping a more enabling policy framework nationally and locally.
Like NCVO the National Union of Students (NUS) is a membership-led, umbrella body articulating voice and delivering capacity building. Through hard work by outstanding people, we have transformed NUS in recent years with award-winning governance reform and digital campaigning, a financial turnaround (turnover growth of 46%, healthy surpluses after years of deficits) and high levels of membership satisfaction (2008: 46%, 2011: 78%).
We achieved these successes not just by confronting the challenges we were presented with, but by exploiting the opportunities, and whilst the funding situation facing voluntary sector bodies is certainly bleak, we are presented with opportunities we must seize.
As trustee, I want to share some of our learning at NUS and play an active role in building a stronger NCVO, delivering for member organisations to make a positive difference to the people who most need the critical work of our outstanding, diverse sector.
