Here’s where you can find our staff and trustees.

Staff

Ali Harris

Ali joins us from Citizens Advice as our Chief Executive.  She brings twenty years of leadership experience from organisations like Oxfam and Stonewall. She’s fought homophobia, pioneered new ways to support domestic violence survivors, and championed disability rights in war-torn Bosnia.

You can follow her at @alifharris.

Aimee Dorsett-Browne

Aimee is our Social Enterprise Development Manager, leading on the equality strand of the Enterprise Development Programme. The programme encourages equality organisations to explore incorporating trading in their practice as a way to build financial resilience and foster innovation across the sector. Prior to joining Equally Ours, Aimee worked at Media Trust where she led, amongst other things, a strategic communications programme for London-based equality organisations.

Alice Jennings

Alice is our Head of Digital and Strategic Communications. She helps lead our strategic communications programme, working on audience insight, frame and message development, content and campaign creation, and sector capacity-building. She joins us from ActionAid UK.

Kathryn Quinton

Kathryn is our Communications Director, leading our respected strategic communications programme to shift public opinion on social issues to influence policy. The programme comprises audience insight, frame and message development, content and campaign creation, and sector capacity-building.

Liz Shannon

A London native, Liz leads on all things policy and parliamentary. She has a strong campaigning background: from widening access to education at UCU, to getting Fair Trade off the ground at Oxfam.

Saphia Youssef

Saphia joins our team as Projects Intern after completing a Masters of Law in Human Rights and Legal Practice at the University of Roehampton. She specialises in minority rights, racial discrimination and criminal justice and has previously interned for an indigenous rights organisation and a charity working with offenders to improve rehabilitation services in the U.K. Her role involves working on important policy projects, including supporting the Funders for Race Equality Alliance.

Tanishtha Sen Gupta

Tanishtha is our Community Engagement Officer. Her work focusses on engaging our member organisations, supporting knowledge exchange and amplifying member voices to inform thinking and policy-making. Tanishtha has a Masters in Human Rights from the School of Advanced Studies UoL, and Refugee Studies from London South Bank University.

Tansy Hutchinson

Tansy is our Head of Policy. She leads on policy and research and manages our network on hate crime. She joins us from the House of Commons where she provided specialist policy support to the Women and Equalities Select Committee, having previously worked for the Equality and Human Rights Commission and race equality NGOs in Northern Ireland and Europe. Tansy has a Masters in Human Rights Law from Queens University, Belfast and 20 years’ experience of working on policy, research and campaigns in Northern Ireland, Europe and Great Britain.

Tracey Agyeman

Tracey is our programmes manager. Her work involves managing the secretariat of the Funders for Race Equality Alliance and providing expertise across their priorities.

Trustees

Asif Afridi

Asif is our Chair, joining us from the Birmingham think tank brap. His areas of expertise include deprivation; social networks and cohesion; inequalities in political representation, and human rights protection in the UK.

Ceri Smith

Ceri is an experienced political influencer and campaigner, with expertise in issues including disability employment, social care, disability and age discrimination, loneliness, welfare rights, and consumer issues. She is currently the Head of Policy and Campaigns at the disability equality charity Scope.

Chris Whitwell

Chris is the former Director of Friends, Families and Travellers. He’s dedicated to addressing the needs of those groups who are  ‘chronically excluded’ and who often remain untouched by mainstream initiatives.

Clare Moody

Clare sits on the board of Fair Play South West (FPSW). She joined FPSW following her role as an MEP sitting on the European Parliament’s Equality Committee and before then spent 20 years as a trade union official working to deliver equality in the workplace.

Emily McCarron

Emily McCarron is the Equality and Human Rights Policy Manager at Age UK. Her areas of expertise are policy, strategy, research and campaigning; and she has a thorough understanding of inequality and poverty particularly as they relate to gender, ethnicity, disability, socio-economic disadvantage, age and access to justice.

Janet Veitch, OBE

Janet is also our Vice-Chair. She specialises in public policy on women’s rights. She’s one of the management committee members at the Women’s Budget Group and was awarded an OBE for services to women’s rights in 2011.

Jean Scott

Jean is our Treasurer, and another TUC alumni as their Head of Finance. She’s worked with TUC Education Trust, Tolpuddle Memorial Trust and TUC Aid.

Julie Bishop

Julie is the Director of the Law Centres Network, working to defend the legal rights of people who can’t afford a lawyer. She’s also worked in IT, and taught philosophy at the University of Sydney, Australia.

Magdelene Davis

Magdelene is a corporate governance professional currently working for a listed technology company. She has worked in various industries including finance, corporate services and retail, mainly supporting boards with discharging their duties and responsibilities.

Poornima Karunacadacharan

Poornima has 20 years of professional experience working with BAME communities, including refugees and asylum seekers, and tackling race inequalities at a structural level. She has expertise in delivering training on the Equality Act 2010 and the Public Sector Equality Duty. Poornima is the Senior Policy Officer at Race on the Agenda.

Sarah Veale, CBE

Sarah is our Vice-Chair. She was Head of the Equality and Employment Rights Department at the TUC, where she helped negotiate the basis of the Temporary Agency Work Directive with CBI and the Government.

Dr Wanda Wyporska, FRSA

Wanda is Executive Director of the Equality Trust and a Visiting Fellow at the University of York. She’s also a trustee of LGBT History Month.