DSC Leadership and Governance Summit - Speakers

Dr Sarah Hughes is Chief Executive of Mind, the UK’s leading mental health charity. With more than 35 years’ experience in mental health and social justice, she has held senior leadership roles including Chief Executive of the international think tank Centre for Mental Health and CPSL Mind.
Her work in mental health began at 15 and became her life’s vocation. She trained as a social worker and went on to manage services in communities, residential care and Holloway Prison before moving into senior leadership. Sarah now serves on the boards of One Small Thing, A Better Way, and the Central East Integrated Care Board, and is the founder of The Muse Nine, an online leadership studio exploring rebellious leadership and feminist innovation.

A regular media commentator and sought-after speaker, Sarah is frequently invited by governments and organisations worldwide to share her expertise on mental health and inclusive leadership. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, the Sciana Health Leaders Network and Salzburg Global, she holds a professional doctorate in women and leadership and an honorary doctorate from Hull University. Her leadership is rooted in lived experience of social injustice and a lifelong commitment to equity and inclusion. She lives in Cambridgeshire with her family — and an ever-growing collection of pets and plants.

Martin Edwards has been CEO since 2005 of children’s hospice Julia’s House, a charity employing 240 staff and 600 volunteers and renowned for innovation in workforce culture. Julia’s House has twice been ranked No 1 Charity to Work For by Best Companies, based on staff survey scores, and has won the Healthcare category at The Charity Awards. Martin writes a regular column for Third Sector on leadership and fundraising, and won Fundraiser of the Year at the 2025 Charity Heroes Awards.

Mark Simms OBE is Group Chief Executive of P3 Charity⁠ and Rugby Portobello Trust⁠, leading organisations that support more than 80,000 people each year through housing, homelessness, mental health, youth and community services. With more than 30 years’ experience across the charity, public and social enterprise sectors, he is recognised as one of the UK’s leading voices on charity leadership, governance and social enterprise.

Mark is a Board Member and former Interim Chair of the Charity Commission for England and Wales⁠ and has held a range of board and public appointments across civil society. A former mental health nurse, his leadership is shaped by both professional expertise and lived experience of homelessness, giving him a practical and deeply personal perspective on social change.

Awarded an OBE for services to social enterprise, Mark is a regular speaker on leadership, governance, public trust and systems change. He is known for challenging conventional thinking, championing innovation and helping organisations build cultures that deliver lasting social impact.

Kolbassia Haoussou MBE is a torture survivor who came to the UK in 2005 after fleeing persecution in central Africa. He experienced the challenges of being a refugee in Britain, which included immigration detention, homelessness, and mental health issues before receiving treatment for the psychological impact of his torture at Freedom from Torture.

His career began with campaigning and advocating when he co-founded the Survivor Speak OUT (SSO) network in 2006, a network led by survivors, campaigning for survivors. After a short while running, SSO came under the umbrella of Freedom from Torture and Kolbassia found himself employed with Freedom from Torture as SSO Coordinator.

Kolbassia was and has been instrumental in building Freedom from Tortures’ survivor activism and making sure survivors were centred in all aspects of the organisation.
After over 10 years of working at Freedom from Torture in the capacity of SSO Coordinator, Service User Champion and acting Survivor Activism Lead, Kolbassia is now the department head for the organisations newly founded Survivor Empowerment directorate.

In 2019, he became a survivor champion for the UK government's Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative and in 2020 received an MBE for his work with survivors.

Suneet Sharma is a charity governance specialist, twice trustee and governance consultant. Having worked in law for eight years in roles at the BBC, Associated Press, SEGA Europe and Blenheim Chalcot, Suneet transferred to charity governance to work with cause driven organisations. Now a Governance Consultant for Eastside People Suneet specializes in governance reviews, advisory and strategy work- whilst bringing an operational governance understanding from having been a Governance Manager. He also runs a governance resource hub via the website Sharma on Governance and is an avid governance writer. Passionate about EDI, Suneet has conducted award winning work establishing Employee Resource Groups in the games industry and is a passionate advocate for EDI and inclusive governance.

Michael has worked with domestic and international anti-poverty charities for more than 30 years. He is CEO of In Kind Direct, the UK’s leading product-giving charity, which enables major brands and retailers to donate essential products to a network of 9,000 charitable organisations across the country. In Kind Direct currently reaches 1 million people a week with everything from hygiene products to toys, clothing to household goods.

Previously, Michael spent more than 20 years in the Fair Trade movement, helping drive the campaign for trade justice. He was CEO of the Fairtrade Foundation for 12 years, leading the organisation behind the UK’s best-known and most trusted ethical certification, and campaigning for fairer trade for farmers and workers in low-income countries. That followed eight years as Director of Policy at Traidcraft, the Fair Trade pioneer, where he led their public policy programme on issues including ACP-EU trade relations and UK Company Law reform.

Michael is also a trustee of the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and a non-exec Director of Zaytoun, the award-winning Palestinian Fair Trade brand

Samina is Associate Director of Communications at Human Appeal UK, where she leads the organisation's digital strategy to drive online fundraising growth and deepen supporter engagement. This has included building the digital infrastructure for Human Appeal's expansion into new global markets, including the USA, Ireland, Spain and beyond.

A full-stack marketer with over 19 years of experience across the non-profit, public, and commercial sectors — including the NHS and the Information Commissioner's Office — Samina brings end-to-end expertise spanning donor and customer acquisition, retention, brand building, and sales activation. She has built her career on a simple but powerful conviction: without a digital strategy, you're directionless. Done well, it is one of the most transformative tools a charity has — not just for growing income, but for turning supporters into advocates and building the lifetime value that sustains a mission for the long term.

At Human Appeal, she leads integrated digital campaigns and transformation initiatives that connect donors with the charity's humanitarian mission. More recently, her focus has turned to artificial intelligence and the extraordinary possibilities it holds for the sector — from smarter fundraising strategies to personalised, dynamic donor journeys that drive loyalty and accelerate online revenue growth. Central to this is a collaborative approach, bringing donors into the development of products and platforms, so that the people who care most about the mission help shape how it grows.

As the charity sector navigates an increasingly complex digital ecosystem, Samina is a passionate advocate for building capabilities that are not just effective today, but genuinely resilient for tomorrow — ensuring charities are equipped to thrive in a world where AI is rapidly redefining what is possible, not only in digital fundraising, but in how aid and support reaches the people who need it most.

Sarah is CFG’s Director of Finance and Operations and a chartered accountant with over 25 years of leadership, operations, governance, risk, compliance, and accounting experience in the US and UK.

Before joining CFG she was CEO of the Midlands-based charity, Muscular Dystrophy Support Centre. Prior to that she was a Director with KPMG - working with clients from global public companies to government entities and non-profits – providing a wide range of finance and compliance-based consultancy and outsourced services, with a deep specialism in risk management and board governance.

In addition to her role with CFG, she currently volunteers as Chair of non-profit members’ club Edgbaston Priory in Birmingham, and as a trustee of two charities, Lisieux Trust and Empower Squash Foundation.

Peter Wanless is a consultant adviser on leadership, civil society and safeguarding. He also chairs the 5Rights Foundation, a global charity at the forefront of securing children’s rights online.

Between 2013 and 2024, Peter was Chief Executive of the UK’s leading child protection charity the NSPCC. He is a former CEO of the Big Lottery Fund (now the National Lottery Communities Fund), responsible for distributing hundreds of millions of pounds to charities and community groups throughout the country. Peter has also been a senior civil servant at the Department for Education and at the Treasury where he worked closely with top politicians across all major parties. Having worked for many years in London Peter now lives among family, fruit and vegetables in a village just up the road from Somerset County Cricket Club, where he is Club President.

Peter was awarded a knighthood for services to children and charities in 2021.

Paul joined Age UK, the charity for older people, as CEO in October 2022.
Before joining Age UK, Paul served as Chief Executive of Mind, the leading mental health charity in England and Wales, a role he held from 2006.

Alongside his executive career, Paul has held a number of significant public
appointments. He is a Commissioner at Historic England, a Trustee of English Heritage.

Paul co-authored the Government-commissioned Thriving at Work review, which helped drive major improvements in workplace mental health, and co-chaired the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health, securing substantial additional investment in NHS
mental health services.

His contributions have been widely recognised. He holds an honorary Doctorate of Science from the University of East London and is an Honorary Fellow of both St Peter's
College, Oxford, and the Royal College of Psychiatrists. In 2016, he was awarded a CBE in the New Year Honours for services to mental health. His favourite music can be heard
on Desert Island Discs.

Through his work and personal experience, Paul has witnessed both the best and the worst of how older people are treated in society. He is passionate about helping to improve the lives and experiences of older people and is committed to driving positive
change.

Rachel McCastman is a charity lawyer at law firm, Bates Wells. Rachel specialises in advising charities and not-for-profits on technical charity law, regulatory and governance issues, bringing a holistic approach to governance, organisational effectiveness, and sector-specific best practice. Rachel is also a member of the Charity Law Association.

Louise Calvey is the Executive Director of Asylum Matters, an asylum rights campaigning charity. Lou has over 20 years of experience working in the refugee and asylum sector across the UK, focusing on service delivery, safeguarding, and advocacy for people seeking asylum. She has been involved in high-profile advocacy, including campaigning on issues such as the UK’s Rwanda asylum policy, border violence and the use of military sites. Coming from a casework background, Lou’s campaigning work remains rooted in the needs of individual people and practical policy & structural changes to inform improved outcomes for them and reduced trauma.

Olivia is co-founder and Chief Executive of Kids Club Kampala, which helps vulnerable children across East Africa to survive and thrive. Olivia is an experienced charity leader with over 15 years’ experience of working in the charity and voluntary sector both in the UK and internationally. She’s a passionate champion of small charities, a proud trustee of the Small International Development Charities Network (SIDCN), and she sits on the UK Small Charities Advisory Panel (SCAP), hosted within NCVO. Olivia also works as a freelance consultant with Fair Development, specialising in strategy, leadership, and organisational development.