Sanjay Dighe: Committee Chair
Sanjay Dighe is currently Principal of Vega Risk Consulting providing training and consultancy in financial derivatives and risk management. He has previously held senior executive positions in investment banks including Global Head of Equity Derivatives at Banque Paribas Capital Markets.
Other experience includes:
- Councillor and Deputy Leader Harrow Council (Labour)Lead Member for Equalities, London Councils
- Non-Executive Director and Chair of Audit Committee
- Central and North West London Mental Health Trust.
Sanjay is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He is a member of the Strategic Planning Society and founder member of the London chapter of the Global Association of Risk Professionals. He is a Governor of two schools and a Further Education college and holds M.B.A and B.Sc. (Hons) degrees.
Dr Mohammed Amran FRSA
Mohammed Amran is 31 and comes from Bradford. He has a background in working with young people, having been a youth worker in Bradford where he worked with young people for The Prince’s Trust.
For 13 years, he has worked voluntarily in the community and has actively been involved in encouraging young people to embrace the concept of good citizenship. He has volunteered, and held numerous titles, on almost 30 organisations including:
- community cohesion manager, Greenhead High School
- chairman, Courts Boards (Department for Constitutional Affairs)
- member, Home Office Advisory Panel on Futurebuilders
- lay advisor, CENTREX Developing Policy Excellence
- member, Community Safety Task Team
- member, the University Leeds Court
- member, Saathi Centre Project
- Board Director, Bradford Youth Development Partnership
- chairman, Bradford and District Minority Police Liaison committee
- member, Preventing Extremism Together Working Group.
Mohammed Amran was awarded a doctorate for his work with disadvantaged young people in the Bradford area, his community work and contributions in the field of race relations, and in recognition of his appointment in 1998 as youngest ever commissioner for Commission for Racial Equality.
The Reverend Dr Alan Billings
Alan Billings retires this year as a parish priest, having been a vicar in the Lake District in the Diocese of Carlisle. He was previously a vicar in Sheffield and Leicester. He continues as director of the Centre of Ethics and Religion at Lancaster University.
- Alan is also a member of the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales. He previously trained clergy as principal of a theological college in Birmingham.
- Between 1973 and 1986, Alan was a member of Sheffield City Council and served for a time as its deputy leader and chair of the finance committee.
- He has held a number of other public service posts, having been chair of the Cumbria Courts Board between 2004 and 2006 and
- He is a member of the Home Office Community Cohesion Panel between 2002 and 2004, set up after the disturbances in Burnley, Bradford and Oldham.
Between 1999 and 2006 he was a schools adjudicator and from 1997-99 a board member of the Funding Agency for Schools, chairing its finance committee, and from 1994-2007 he was chair of the Springfield Women’s Refuge in Kendal.
He is a contributor to “Thought for the Day” on Radio Four.
Sue Charteris
Sue Charteris is a public policy consultant, specialising in local government and public service reform. She has worked for several London Borough Councils including Richmond, Hounslow and Ealing. From 1990 to 1995 she worked for Kirklees Metropolitan Council as an executive director working to its elected cabinet. She then returned to London, where she was chief executive of Merton Council between 1995 and 1998.
Since 2000 she has run the Shared Intelligence consultancy as a co-founder and director. For the past seven years she has helped local authorities and other public sector bodies with policy development and change management, and the creation of practitioner learning networks for knowledge exchange. Her expert advice is used by local authorities needing help with performance improvement and implementing new governance arrangements.
She works with both urban and rural authorities and their partners to develop strategic partnerships and community planning. She has worked on projects for:
- the Scottish Executive
- the Department of Health
- the Department of Culture, Media and Sport
- the Home Office
- the Audit Commission.
Sue is also author of a number of publications on local government modernisation, as well as being an experienced mentor and Board facilitator. She has served as an adviser for the Office of the Commissioner of Public Appointments on the panel for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport for three years.
John Gartside OBE
John Gartside is currently Chairman of the Warrington Primary care Trust. He is also a Trustee of the Jonathan Ball Tim Parry trust, a charity in Warrington focussing on young people, and Deputy Lieutenant of Cheshire.
He has held the following positions:
- Member of Cheshire Courts Board
- Member of the Bar Society Standards Board Monitoring Committee
- Freeman of Warrington
- Chair of the NHS Warrington Community Health Care Trust (1995-2002)
- leader of the Warrington Local Unitary Authority (1992-2002)
- Chairman of the Cheshire Local Government Association (2000-2002)
- a founding member of the North West Regional Assembly before resigning in 2002.
He was, until October 2006, Chairman of the 5 Boroughs Partnership. 5 Boroughs Partnerships is a specialist mental health and learning difficulties trust that he founded in 2002, serving over one million people in the North West.
Margaret Hyde
Margaret Hyde has recently retired as director of the Esmeé Fairbairn Foundation, where she served from 1994 to 2005.
The Esmeé Fairbairn Foundation is one of the 10 largest grant-making foundations in the UK, with assets of £800 million and grant programmes covering arts, heritage, education, environment and social change. As director, she was responsible to the Board of Trustees for policy and strategy, management of the organisation and 25 staff, and was accountable for £29 million of annual grant spend and £2 million administration costs.
Before that she worked in the Home Office in the 1970s, and from 1977 to 1985 she was head of information at the National Council for Voluntary Organisations. From 1985 to 1990 she was chief executive of the Action Resource Centre, which specialised in arranging secondments and other skilled business support for charities.
She was then deputy secretary general of the Arts Council of Great Britain for 18 months, following that with a period as a freelance policy adviser and programme consultant.
She continues her work as:
- as a governor of the London School of Economics
- a trustee of the New Economics Foundation
- a member of the Venturesome Investment Committee
- on the Advisory Panel on Futurebuilders (a Cabinet Office public appointment).
She also carries out freelance consultancy and policy advice for voluntary organisations. Recent clients and assignments include the Association of Charitable Foundations, Forward Thinking and the Esmeé Fairbairn Foundation
Lydia Thomas FRSA
Lydia Thomas is currently a consultant working with the creative, public and grant-making sectors.
She started her career as a researcher, which started an extensive career with the BBC from 1989 to 1999, where she worked as a producer and presenter on many programmes for BBC1.
Lydia left the BBC in 1999, when she became director of the Ragdoll Foundation for three years. She was responsible to the Board of Trustees for the formation and creative development of this grant-making foundation, set up to support the imaginative development of children through the arts. She worked on UK and international initiatives, seeking out talent and potential in young people.
Among her assignments, Lydia has worked as an independent assessor for the Department for International Development’s Programme Development Fund and for the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts.
She also performed work for the Active Community Unit of the Home Office in 2004 and 2005, and was a grants assessor on several programmes run by Volunteering England, while also undertaking media-related work.
She has held a number of public and charity sector appointments, which include:
- Acting Chair and Deputy Chair of the OFCOM Advisory Committee on Older and Disabled People
- an observer on the DCMS Consumer Expert Group
- a member of the British Medical Association’s Patient Liaison Group
- served on Equal Opportunities Committee.
She served on the Wellcome Trust Society Awards Funding Committee, making “Pulse” awards for grants for science and arts-related projects for young people. She also has been a member of the Children in Need grant-making review advisory forum.
Albert Tucker
Albert Tucker is a leading figure in the fair-trade movement and overseas development, and is an advocate for poor small farmers in global trade and policy. He has a longstanding track record with leading charitable funders financing UK and international development.
Albert has had senior management and non-executive roles in regeneration, community development and social enterprise.
He was Chief Executive of Twin and Twin Trading for nine years, and has been the chair of Comic Relief’s International Grants Committee and associated with Comic Relief for over 16 years, funding innovative programmes with poor communities in the UK, Africa, Asia and Latin America.
He is also:
- trustee and grants panel member of the City Parochial Foundation
- a non-Executive Director of The Places for People Group, one of the largest and leading Registered Social Landlords in the UK
- chair of the Assurance and Regulation Board.
He currently works as an independent consultant and recently worked with the BBC, contributing to their Africa Lives season.
Nalini Varma
Nalini Varma is a trustee of Comic Relief and chair of the UK Grants Committee. She has been a member of the committee since 1992 and a trustee since 1996.
In addition, she is currently a lay member of a number of organisations including:
- ICSTIS, the independent appeals body of the Independent Committee for the Supervision of Standards of Telephone Information Services.
- a lay member of the Law Society,
- General Medical Council
- Criminal Injuries Compensation Appeals Panel.
Earlier in her career, she was chief executive of the Rainer Foundation for three years - a charity for young people. She has worked for a number of other charities, including the Family Service Units, beginning her career as a social worker in the London Borough of Waltham Forest.
She has also carried out a number of assignments as a management consultant, including interim director of EAVES Housing for Women, and assignments for the Ethnic Alcohol Counselling Hounslow, North East London Advocacy, Lambeth Council and Lambeth Voluntary Action Council.
She has had appointments for children’s services in Newham Social Services as a consultant commissioner, served as a board member of the Children and Families Court Advisory Support Service (CAFCASS), and a Trustee of the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund.
Finally, she has been a committee member of the Association for Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations and the Ashiana Young Asian Women’s Refuge.
Geoffrey Wilkinson
Geoffrey Wilkinson was chief executive of the South West Regional Development Agency for five years until he retired in April 2006. The South West RDA is a non-departmental public body responsible for promoting sustainable economic development in the region. He managed a team of 300 people and a budget of £185 million.
Before this he was managing director of the Laird Group plc, where he was directly responsible for the operation of group companies in the UK and USA, as well as for major acquisitions and divestments. He served in this role from 1994 to 2001.
Geoffrey has worked for a number of organisations including:
- the British Steel Corporation
- Quadrex Ltd
- Dillon
- Read Ltd
- Prior Wilkinson and Co in senior positions.
He has been a non-executive director of the Court of the Bank of England since March 2005, and a non-executive director of the South West Strategic Health Authority since September 2006.
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