Board of Trustees
Our Board members are recruited for their specific skills or experience. All our trustees are appointed for three years and generally cannot serve more than two consecutive terms. The Board normally meets four times a year, but may meet more often if necessary.
Trustees are all legally our company members and can vote at our annual general meeting, normally held in the autumn.
Yvonne recently retired as the CEO of The Clink Charity and has spent her career in a variety of senior leadership and board-level positions in both FTSE companies and HM Government including BT Plc, the Ministry of Justice and Interserve Plc. She is the co-founder and director of Aran Advisors Ltd who help organisations who supply government to review their growth strategies and to design compelling solutions. She also advises government bodies, companies, and charities on public sector procurements.
Yvonne is also a Trustee of the national charity; P3, a Trustee of The Spencer Club, a community sports charity in London; and undertakes board advisory work.
Sudeep is a technologist with over 24 years’ experience in digital transformation. His experience is in the public sector, spanning railways, policing, third sector and more recently within healthcare. He brings with him a wealth of knowledge and a passion for driving digital innovation and organisational efficiencies against a backdrop of organisational change. An alumnus of Leeds University, his MBA has provided him with a blend of business acumen and technical skills, contributing to excelling in diverse leadership roles.
Sudeep has served as a Chief Technology Officer and the national Head of Strategy and Innovation for UK police and director of digital programmes within healthcare. He is driven by a values-based approach and has a complete and thorough understanding that technology is a catalyst for transformation. He is enthusiastic in contributing his wealth of experience and expertise to provide services to the most vulnerable within our communities and is keen to help Victim’s Support achieve this via digital channels.
Claire is Emerita Professor of Leadership at Henley Business School, University of Reading. Her career began as a biomedical scientist in the NHS, progressing into senior management in a large NHS Trust. Thereafter, she became CEO of a London law firm, before taking her academic qualifications into higher education. She has worked in this role for 17 years and has served as director of diversity and inclusion, led a major educational transformation for the British Army, directed the doctoral programme and served two terms on the University Senate. During this time, she worked as a partner and adviser with a number of organisations.
Claire now works with professional women who are experiencing toxic work environments, helping them regain their career confidence and developing strategies to manage their bully or gaslighter. She is a Foundation Director of a large multi-academy trust.
As a victim-survivor of coercive control, she is passionate about supporting victims of all wrongdoing, so that they regain their strength and confidence to move forward with peace and dignity.
Helen is a partner in Deloitte’s Insurance Consulting practice where she focuses on shaping, leading and delivering insurance regulatory change programmes. Helen has worked as a Project and Programme Management Consultant for over fifteen years and prior to joining Deloitte she has worked in a variety of industries across a breadth of transformation themes, from technology installations to large scale initiatives involving cultural and organisational change.
Angela has been CEO at SHAL, a small community housing association based in Somerset since 2014 and a housing professional since 1981 working for local authorities and housing associations across England and Wales. She has led in areas of work including the development of innovative approaches to Anti-social behaviour, support for vulnerable people and systems transformation across multiple services.
She has acted as a non-executive director over three decades with organisations working with disabled people, gypsies and travellers, young people and women and was appointed to the Board of the Welsh Probation service. She currently chairs the National Housing Federation’s Rural Housing Alliance which provides a voice for housing associations’ lobbying and influencing on rural housing. She practices compassionate listening and has introduced restorative process and trauma informed practice into the organisation she leads to support personal and community empowerment and regularly works with people across the USA and the UK to deepen her knowledge and skills.
Debbie Gillatt CBE is a longstanding magistrate, a non-executive director of the Health and Safety Executive and a trustee at Penny Parks Charitable Trust. Previously, she held non-executive roles with Companies House and the Insolvency Service and was the Director of Business Frameworks at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).
Within BEIS, she most recently led the teams responsible for the UK’s company law, accounting standards and corporate governance rules, and for corporate transparency and anti-corruption initiatives. She also led on corporate responsibility and boardroom diversity.
Caroline has broad commercial and financial experience gained from her 34 years in business. Her career started at Xerox Corporation with significant experience across Europe in both manufacturing and finance. She subsequently worked as a private equity investor before moving back into industry in leadership roles including chief financial officer and chief executive positions.
Caroline was a member of the government’s advisory committee that resulted in the formation of the British Business Bank plc in 2014 and was then appointed as a non-executive director, sitting on the board for five years. She has also held trustee positions at the MS Society and at unseen (UK), the charity dedicated to eradication of human trafficking and slavery. She was awarded MBE in 2019 for services to the economy and to charity.
Amanda and her family experienced personal tragedy when her brother was fatally wounded as a victim of knife crime in 2018. It’s this personal experience that has made her value and want to take a more active role with a support network such as Victim Support and help to develop the advice and comfort they provide to bereaved families and those who have felt the impact of crime.
In her professional career Amanda is a business lawyer, with nearly three decades of commercial experience. Most recently she was head of legal and compliance for a multi-national consumer goods business. Her significant experience in the key areas of risk, governance and compliance together with being a former trustee of Unseen (which supports victims of modern slavery and human trafficking), ensure that she has a wide and varied level of experience and specific skills to help Victim Support to meet the varied and emerging needs of victims, and to support the drive for victims to have improved rights and feel respected by the criminal justice system.
Clarisse is an independent consultant leading a boutique management consultancy that specialises in providing business consulting and managed service solutions. She has over fifteen years’ experience leading complex regulatory change project in the financial services industry, risk management and in more recent years has specialised in helping clients fight financial crime across various industries subjected to Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing regulations. The real-life implications of such crimes make her passionate about empowering staff and clients to combat these crimes effectively.
Additionally, through adverse life events, she needed the help of Victim Support and was impressed by the passion, dedication and professionalism of the people who guided her through one of her hardest life situations. She wanted to give back to the organisation and feels that her experience as a service user gives her a unique perspective to help develop and improve Victim Support’s services.
Sue is an Executive Director with a professional background in human resources and organisational development. She has spent over 30 years working in the public, charity and not for profit sector, currently working as Chief People Officer with Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust. Here, she leads the People and Organisational Development function in this large Acute NHS Trust which employs over 7,000 people.
She has previously worked for many years in local Government, as well as the Ambulance Sector and the National Crime Agency. She returned to the UK in 2021 having worked in New Zealand for four years as Deputy Chief Executive of People and Strategy with St John Ambulance and Community Health Services. She is passionate about developing positive organisational culture and building high performing customer focused services.
Sue is also a member of the CIPD Committee for Kent, a board member of the HPMA London Leadership Academy and a Trustee at St Margaret’s Hospice in Somerset.