Board member biographies
Ian Barry, CAB International (co-opted)
After qualification as a Chartered Accountant with Price Waterhouse in London, Ian Barry spent over thirty years in financial management in the UK and overseas.
Until 2002 he worked principally in the commercial sector with Unigate and the Robert Bosch group moving into the not-for-profit sector at the end of 2002 when he joined Oxfam GB as Finance Director. Prior to joining CABI he set up the financial structures for the $280m Oxfam International tsunami fund and worked on projects for the charities Skillshare and the International HIV Aids Alliance.
Ian now works as the Chief Financial Officer for CAB International an organisation which focuses on natural, biological methods and controls to provide sustainable solutions to problems, particularly in developing countries.
Anna Feuchtwang, EveryChild
Anna Feuchtwang is Chief Executive of EveryChild an international children's rights and child protection agency that helps prevent children being abandoned and reunites children and families. Anna trained and worked as a journalist before joining Oxfam as a campaigns press officer. During her 10 years with Oxfam she became Head of Communications before leaving to work with broadcaster Jon Snow on an inter-agency millennium project which involved ActionAid, WWF-UK, Christian Aid, VSO and Channel Four amongst others. Anna spent three years working in local government in London as a Communications and Public Affairs Director and was chair of ActionAid UK during this period standing down to take on the role at EveryChild.
Anna joined the Bond board in 2005 and was elected Vice-Chair in 2007. During her time on the Board, Anna has been involved in reviewing and making changes to the way the Board works and in overseeing changes in the Secretariat including appointing Bond's Chief Executive. She has also been involved in the quality standards work and has represented Bond at ministerial meetings.
Michael Hammer, One World Trust
Michael is Executive Director of the One World Trust, and independent think tank conducting research on accountability in global governance. Previously a Programme Director with Amnesty International and Conciliation Resources in the field of human rights and conflict transformation, and a consultant in urban planning and regional integration in Europe and Africa.
Michael looks back on more than a decade of work in organisational management, programme implementation, policy oriented research and governance practices of different actors in the public and private sphere. Michael has lived and worked several years in West Africa with direct experience in Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Senegal and Nigeria. He has studied in Dakar (Senegal), and Hamburg (Germany) and holds a Research Masters in Geography, History and Urban Planning. Michael is co-author of the One World Trust Global Accountability Report, and project leader for the One World Trust's work on parliamentary oversight of international affairs and international law. Within development issues his main area of interest is in aid effectiveness, donor accountability, and links between human rights approaches and governance concerning poverty reduction and access to justice.
Alex Jacobs, Keystone
Alex has extensive experience of NGO operations, from varied field experience (particularly in sub-Saharan Africa) to management, board, consultancy and funding agency appointments. He has a degree in Social Anthropology and qualified as a Chartered Management Accountant while working as a private-sector management consultant. He has worked with rural communities in Zimbabwe and Kenya, and in many other countries with NGOs including Oxfam GB.
Alex is Research Director at Keystone Accountability, focusing on new approaches to performance management and reporting. From 1999 to 2008, he was the founding Director of Mango. Alex currently sits on Bond's board of trustees and Oxfam GB's Association. He holds a part-time visiting fellowship at Oxford University.
Sandra Kabir, BRAC UK
Sandra Kabir began international development work in 1976 as a programme officer in FPIA's South West Asia Regional Office. She has worked predominantly in sexual and reproductive health and rights and women's development. Sandra founded the Bangladesh Women's Health Coalition in 1979. She was deeply involved in advocacy at ICPD, Cairo and FWCW, Beijing. Sandra re-settled in the UK in 1995 working with Interact Worldwide, Reproductive Health Alliance, ICOMP and set up BRAC UK in 2006. She was an elected Councillor from 2002-2006 and has been on the board of Bond for two terms.
Nik Kafka, Teach a Man to Fish
After five years working as a financial analyst and auditor for major international banks (Standard Chartered and West LB), Nik's interest in microfinance led him to Paraguay where he worked for a local NGO (Fundacion Paraguaya) in programme development and communications.
Returning to the UK he then worked as a media co-ordinator for the Make Poverty History campaign before founding Teach a Man to Fish, an education charity supporting income generating enterprise initiatives at schools across the developing world.
Tariq Khokhar, Aptivate
Tariq joined the board in November 2008; his expertise is in technology strategy and implementation. He is the Chief Development Officer of Aptivate - an NGO delivering appropriate ICT (Information and Communication Technology) programmes and services for the international development community.
Tariq has hands-on experience of the use, risks and benefits of ICTs at all levels in the sector and has consulted internationally for UN bodies, British and overseas NGOs, government departments and other institutions across Africa and the Middle East.
Nicola Macbean, The Rights Practice
Nicola Macbean is the Chief Executive of The Rights Practice, a small NGO she founded in 2002 to work with local partners in realising international human rights standards. She has a keen interest in the complex conditions in which human rights claims can be effective. The organisation currently works principally in China, a country with which Nicola is very familiar having previously studied there and been Director of the Great Britain-China Centre from 1988 to 1995.
During a period spent living in Paris she worked as a consultant on development cooperation with China, taught East Asian studies and chaired an English language helpline. Nicola has a degree in social anthropology, a master's degree in educational planning and economics and an LLM in human rights. She is also an Independent Custody Visitor.
Susanne Niedrum, Build Africa
Susanne is Chief Executive of Build Africa, a medium sized INGO working with young people in Africa. Trained as a civil engineer with a masters in tropical public health, Susanne has spent most of her 20 year career in Africa, South America and Asia, designing, planning and managing development and relief programmes, often in difficult circumstances.
She has worked for consulting engineers, CARE, World Bank, DFID and Danida and has been course tutor on MSc Tropical Public Health. Susanne's main interest lies in the development of organisations capable of delivering on their mission, including business planning, staff development and motivation, accountability, transparency, communications, management of corruption and bullying, systems and procedures, board development and branding.
Kirsty Smith, Methodist Relief and Development Fund
Kirsty Smith is the Director of Methodist Relief and Development Fund. Her recent UK experience has focused on strategic and financial planning and monitoring, policy development and developing and implementing capacity building structures for distance partnerships.
Previous roles have included Campaigns Manager with Methodist Church Youth Section, and working as a university lecturer, trainer and facilitator. Kirsty has also worked overseas as a community development worker in India and as a teacher in Zimbabwe. She has a Masters degree in theatre for development
Matthew Snell, International Service
Matthew Snell is Chief Executive of International Service, based at the head office in York, England. International Service is one of the oldest volunteer sending agencies in the UK and focuses on building the capacities of partner organisations in West Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. Matthew has spent most of his development career in sub Saharan Africa. Most recently, he was a Regional Adviser with Oxfam GB in West Africa. Prior to this he was Country Director for Kenya and regional adviser with Oxfam Québec in East Africa. He was also Chief Executive of Students Partnership Worldwide, a volunteer Engineer with Water For People in Guatemala and has carried out a number of consultancies in Mauritania, Sudan and the UK.
Matthew joined the Board of Bond in November 2008. He is Chair of the British Volunteer Agencies Liaison Group and a member of the Disability and Development Group. He is married with two children.
Paul Valentin, Christian Aid
Paul Valentin, a Dutch national whose professional background is in tropical agriculture. He has worked in development for over three decades of which he spent three years working with farmers in Kenya and 11 years in the Philippines, six of which he spent working with indigenous people. He moved to UK to manage Oxfam's East Asia programme and then to the US in 2001 to head up Oxfam America's programme.
He joined Christian Aid in 2004 and has since taken charge of moving the management of development work to 40 devolved offices, giving the agency greater international presence. He is responsible for Christian Aid's work in relief and development through local partners in about 50 countries.
Willem van Eekelen, Islamic Relief
Willem van Eekelen is the head of Islamic Relief's Policy and Research Unit, and is currently on a one year secondment as the head of Islamic Relief's Change Programme. Before joining Islamic Relief, Willem worked for UNHCR, ILO, OHR and OSCE, and did occasional consultancy for a few other international organisations.
In addition to his day job, Willem co-owns and is actively involved in two small companies: a Bosnian eco-tour operator named Green Visions, and Cultural Bridges, a company that provides training that aims to improve communication between people from different backgrounds.
Willem is an Honorary Associate of the University of Birmingham. He holds cum laude MSc degrees in Development Programming and Sociological Economics.
Dominic White, WWF
Dominic White is Head of Programme Development in WWF-UK. WWF is a global environmental network that creates solutions to the planet's most serious environmental challenges so that people and nature thrive.
Dominic first trained as a zoologist, specialising in primatology, then as a forester working on low impact logging for community development. Unsustainable resource use is the central theme running through Dominic's work which has covered countries of East and West Africa, Central and South-East Asia, the Caribbean and Scotland. Dominic started work with WWF in Nigeria in 1988 then later moved on to work on UK forest policy from Scotland. He spent five years working with the World Land Trust before returning to WWF in 2000. Since then Dominic has been involved in a variety of programme related work including negotiating the partnership with DFID, EC funding, improving quality through design and building tools and competencies on monitoring for sustainability. Dominic joined the Board of Bond in November 2008.
David Woollcombe, Peace Child International
David Woollcombe is an author, playwright, film-maker and expert on the field of youth participation in governance of small to medium size organisations and institutions. Author of Peace Child, he has directed performances of the work across Europe, North America, the former Soviet Union and Central America. His academic publications include "The Role of Children in Governance" and "Youth-led Development" for the Schumacher Society. He has also consulted for UNDP, UNICEF, UNESCO and UNEP on youth-led Development and the best ways to create participatory structures that engage young people effectively. Working with young people on a daily basis at the Peace Child International Centre, he has 20 years of experience of the technology of youth participation - what works and what does not work.
