Board member biographies
Christine Allen
Progressio
Christine Allen has been Progressio’s Executive Director since 2001. Before joining Progressio, she worked as Head of Public Affairs at the National Housing Federation and held key posts with a variety of Catholic organisations, including CAFOD, the Justice and Peace Commission of Liverpool Diocese and the Catholic Housing Aid Society.
She is an advisor to the Porticus Charitable Trust and was previously a trustee for Church Action on Poverty.
Since 2006, Christine has also been part of the livesimply Executive, helping to lead a network of faith-based organisations encouraging people to live in solidarity with the poor.
Tim Boyes-Watson
Mango
Tim has led and managed in variety of contexts within the NGO sector: in organisational and programme management, programme financing, emergencies management and financial management. He now leads Mango and provides support to a range of NGOs in financial strategy, risk management and grant management through Mango’s growing Consultancy Service.
Previously, Tim led Learning South West, an education and youth work charity, through a substantial period of growth, and between 2002 and 2005 was Country Director for VSO in Vietnam where he led the development of a new strategic plan focused on HIV and Aids and Disability. Before that he worked at Christian Aid in various senior finance-focused roles.
Alison Cairns
Unilever (UK and Ireland)
Alison is Director of External Affairs at Unilever UK and Ireland with a focus on health and wellbeing, and food security.
She is a senior public affairs specialist with experience of campaign development in the private, public and "third" sectors in positions including Head of Government Relations at the Royal College of Nursing and a Campaigner at Oxfam where she worked on the Make Trade Fair campaign.
Alison is former Co-Chair of SERA (Socialist Environment and Resources Association).
Rose Caldwell
Concern Worldwide (UK)
Rose is the Executive Director of Concern Worldwide, a medium-sized NGO focusing its work in the poorest and most vulnerable countries and populations and specialising in hunger reduction, health and humanitarian response.
She is a qualified chartered accountant, with private sector experience and senior management roles in variety of UK charities.
She is also vice-chair of the Consortium of British Humanitarian Agencies and a trustee of the Disasters Emergency Committee.
Michael Hammer
One World Trust
Michael is Executive Director of the One World Trust, an independent think tank conducting research on accountability in global governance. Previously he was 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 has worked for more than a decade in organisational management, programme implementation, policy oriented research and governance practices of different actors in the public and private sphere. He has lived and worked several years in West Africa and is co-author of the One World Trust Global Accountability Report.
Louise James
Accenture Development Partnerships
Louise James is a senior executive in Accenture's management consulting practice where she has worked since 1997. Within Accenture Louise heads up the European practice of Accenture Development Partnerships, a not-for-profit consulting group.
In Louise's tenure at ADP she has helped to significantly expand ADP's network of partners with a particular focus on cross-sector partnerships between the private sector and civil society.
Louise has a French and Hispanic studies degree from the University of Nottingham. In 2011 she was selected as one of Devex's 40-under-40 International Development Leaders in London. She lives in London with her husband and two sons.
Nik Kafka
Teach a Man to Fish
Nik Kafka is the founding and managing director of Teach A Man To Fish.
Part of a Clinton Global Initiative commitment to establish 50 'Self-Sufficient' schools by 2017, under his stewardship Teach A Man To Fish has grown into an international network whose membership now numbers over 2,500 education institutions and experts in more than 125 countries.
Honoured as a Young Global Leader in 2009 by the World Economic Forum, he was more recently named in 2011 as one of Devex's 40 Under 40 International Development Leaders in London..
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. The organisation works principally in China, a country with which Nicola is 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.
Koy Thomson
Children in Crisis
Koy Thomson is Chief Executive of Children in Crisis, which works to protect children and shape resilient solutions to education in conflict affected environments.
Koy trained as an ecologist and worked in the tropics, the artic and London graveyards, before joining Friends of the Earth as their tropical rainforest campaigner.
Many years providing high level UN and government advice convinced him that the democratisation of policy making and the agency of poor people in shaping their futures was key.
Seven years as ActionAid International's Director of Policy put this into practice. He has also headed the largest urban cycling movement in the world, the London Cycling Campaign.
Sue Turrell
WOMANKIND Worldwide
Sue Turrell has been the Executive Director of WOMANKIND Worldwide since January 2007, an organisation working for women’s rights and development in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
She lived and worked overseas for eight years, as a teacher, trainer, project manager and researcher in Kenya, Indonesia, Australia, the Gaza Strip and Zambia. After returning to the UK in 1997 she worked for Education Action International and Christian Aid, managing programmes in Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.
Sue has held a range of roles in the international development sector. She is also a trustee of People In Aid and BAAG (The British and Irish Agencies Afghanistan Group).
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.
Dominic White
WWF
Dominic White is Head of Government Partnership in WWF-UK. 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 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.
