Trustee Board
Our trustee board play a vital role in enabling us to achieve the charity's objectives - providing accountability, oversight and governance to help us achieve our goals. With a diverse range of experiences, our board is made up of a mixture of experts from across the charity, higher education, business and health care sectors.
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Sue Rigby - Chair of the board & Vice Chancellor, Bath Spa UniversitySue is a Professor of Higher Education, with a long history of engagement with national initiatives around learning, teaching and supporting students, including chairing the Learning Gain Steering Group for the Office for Students, chairing the Teaching Excellence Framework Natural Sciences Panel and sitting on the Disabled Students Sector Leadership Group organised by the Department for Education. Her academic background is in palaeontology, where she spent happy years working out the ecology of an extinct group of plankton.
She spends her down-time listening to opera and lieder, travelling Europe to attend performances of her favourite singers. |
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Amelia Ireland - Student & FundraiserAmelia studies History and also works in student fundraising, having both coordinated local fundraising events and led teams to take on the Three Peaks Challenge and summit Kilimanjaro. She is also a Trustee for the Holocaust Educational Trust and an Ambassador for the Young Trustees Movement. Having experienced mental health problems at university, particularly whilst studying abroad, Amelia is eager to help improve mental health support for students and empower them to support one another.
To relax, Amelia enjoys going for long walks on the hills, watching the sunset and reading. |
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Andrew Nelson - Chief Financial Officer, AmeyAndrew Nelson is Chief Finance Officer and Executive Director on the Amey Plc Board. He is a qualified Chartered Accountant and has worked in investment banking and corporate finance.
During his leisure hours he enjoys competitive skiing, golf and plays squash regularly. |
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Aneeska Sohal - Masters studentAneeska is currently studying for her MSc in Modern South Asian Studies at Somerville College, Oxford.
She has been engaged with student mental health activism for many years. She was the President of University of York Student Minds, and was awarded a Volunteer Recognition Award by the charity in 2019. She was a panellist for 'Students for Liberty’s global mental health' webinar, which focused on debunking the myth around student mental health. Aneeska is the founder and presenter of the podcast All Things Mental Health. She chats to different students about how their interests and outlets help to ground their mental health, with the hope of helping other students along the way. Aneeska is a trained Hindustani vocalist, and she turns to singing regularly to help her with her own wellbeing. |
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Brian Rock - Director of Education & Training/ Dean of Postgraduate Studies, Tavistock & Portman NHS Foundation TrustTraining in a local hospice in Johannesburg, South Africa changed his career path and influenced him to study and qualify as a clinical psychologist. Since coming to London Brian has worked in the NHS, before this he set up and led an award-winning clinical service for the Trust in primary care. He is also a psychoanalyst and has an MBA from Henley Business School and has published and presented widely on various topics related to mental health.
Music and running provides avenues for managing his wellbeing and he harbours a not-so-secret wish to be a jazz drummer in band one day. |
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Jaki Booth - Chief Executive, Sheffield Students' UnionJaki has worked in Chief Executive roles for nearly 30 years, mostly in Students’ Unions in various midlands universities, and as General Manager at MAC, one of the Midlands’ leading arts centres. She finds working in Students’ Unions to be incredibly rewarding and very varied - and especially loves working with and for elected student officers, creating change and developing talent. Moving around the country has given Jaki an insight into different institutions and their engagement with their city and community. Jaki has also been a Trustee with Girlguiding UK since 2015.
In her free time, Jaki relaxes by singing in a choir and in the local pubs of Sheffield and Derbyshire, and has recently taken up learning the diatonic accordion. |
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Lauren Young - Partnerships and Corporate Social Responsibility SpecialistLauren has worked in both the charity and corporate sectors, working with a broad range of charities including six years at Cancer Research UK, working across fundraising, marketing and communications teams. More recently, she joined The Royal Foundation to provide secretariat support for The Duke of Cambridge's Taskforce on the Prevention of Cyberbullying, and headed up the National Theatre's corporate development team, leading them to secure a record breaking year's income. From a corporate perspective, she has designed and implemented CSR strategies for Bupa UK TalkTalk Telecom Group, and is working with Chivas Brothers to bring their parent company, Pernod Ricard's sustainability plan to life in the UK.
Lauren tries to make sure there's at least 15 minutes of calm in every day - her current favourites are reading and yoga. |
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Natasha Devon - Writer and ActivistNatasha Devon MBE is a writer and activist. She has been touring schools and colleges throughout the U.K. and beyond for more than a decade delivering talks and conducting research on mental health, body image and gender equality.
She also has an anxiety disorder, which she manages through a combination of medication, running (not well) and cuddling her cat, China Girl. |
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Dr Nicola Byrom - Founder & Lecturer in Psychology, KCL
Nicola founded the charity in 2009. She is a lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neurosciences at Kings’ College London. Leading SMaRteN, the UKRI funded Student Mental Health Research Network, Nicola’s research interests focus on student mental health and the influences that Higher Education Institutions have on youth mental health.
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Victoria Goddard - Partner and Head of Universities, Pinsent Masons LLPVictoria started as a trainee lawyer at Pinsent Masons in 1993 and has been a partner there for the past 15 years. She leads the global universities team in providing a full legal service of governance, regulatory, HR, estates, GDPR, tax, financing, IP and student disputes advice to universities as well as new entrants into the sector. Her area of specialism is student accommodation projects and through that she is on the BPFs student accommodation committee and student mental health sub-committee. She is also on UUK’s task force on information sharing in the context of student mental health. She has been a school governor for 5 years.
Victoria has 3 children and enjoys skiing, diving and cycling as well as film and theatre but most importantly spending time with friends and family and trudging through the woods near home. |