Board of Trustees
Our Board members are either elected or recruited — usually 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 five 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.
Victim Support would like to acknowledge and thank Nurole for their support in the recruitment of some of our Trustees and Independent Members.
Andrew is a Fellow Chartered Accountant and senior partner at Ernst and Young with significant experience working with multinational organisations and government bodies.
He has more than 35 years experience in corporate finance and advisory services including strategy, mergers and acquisitions, finance and performance management, data analytics, and IT-enabled business change.
Prior to Ernst and Young, he held senior Finance and Corporate Finance roles in two major FTSE corporations. Andrew is Chair of the Board, having previously held the roles of Treasurer and Chair of the Finance Committee.
Kathryn is a chartered accountant with substantial experience in the third sector, having previously worked at national charities including Cancer Research UK and Comic Relief.
Kathryn is currently setting up a business to support charities, giving assurance to Boards on their financial management and sustainability by enabling organisations to improve their financial processes, planning and reporting. She is also the co-leader of the Manchester branch of the Women’s Equality Party.
Andrew Edwards retired as a chief officer in the police service in 2010 having completed thirty two years’ service in two Welsh police forces. A graduate of the FBI National Academy in Quantico he was also a visiting lecturer at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York and was responsible for serious and organised crime and counter terrorism across Wales in his last role.
A fellow of the University of Wales Trinity St David, in retirement he helped to establish the Wales Institute for Work Based Learning where he occasionally lectures on leadership and crisis management. He is also a member of the Wales committee of the Equality and Human Rights Commission and sits on the board of Milford Haven Port.
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.
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.
Roger Harding is Chief Executive of RECLAIM, the working class youth leadership charity. RECLAIM supports a diverse new generation of young working class leaders, helps them campaign for change, and works with organisations who want to be inclusive of working class talent.
Roger began his career working for a public affairs and communications agency, and then the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, before becoming Director of Communications, Policy and Campaigns at Shelter. He has been a Trustee of Victim Support since 2017, and in 2019 was selected to join the Mayor of London’s new Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Group.
Clarisse is the Head of Financial Crime Compliance Practice at GDFM, 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.
Rachel Onikosi is an elected Councillor in the London Borough of Lewisham and also sits on the governing body of two primary schools.
Over the last 7 years Rachel has managed a portfolio of local politics, consumer and stakeholder advocacy and investigations.
Rachel’s past role as a consumer advocate with the Consumer Council for Water (CCW) saw her challenge water companies on their customer performance and value for money principles in line with CCW’s Forward Programme.
Rachel past and recent investigations experience has been with both national and local bodies including freelance investigations consultancy.
Currently, Rachel sits as a magistrate at two South East London courts and is a Non Executive Director of the Consumer Council for Water.
