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 - Fundraising and Events ExecutiveAmelia currently works for a national charity in fundraising, membership and events, having gained experience at university coordinating local fundraisers and leading teams to take on the Three Peaks Challenge and summit Kilimanjaro. Having recently experienced mental health problems at university, particularly whilst studying abroad, Amelia is passionate about improving mental health support for students and empowering them to support one another.
To relax, Amelia enjoys going for long walks in the countryside, watching the sunset, or reading a good book. |
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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 - Project Manager for Kings College London and SMaRteN ‘Keeping Students in Mind: Understanding Student Mental Health Research’Aneeska has recently completed her masters in Modern South Asian Studies at Somerville College, Oxford. She is currently project managing ‘Keeping Students in Mind: Understanding Student Mental Health Research’, a collaboration between King's College London and SMaRteN. Aneeska is the founder and presenter of the University of Oxford funded podcast All Things Mental Health. The podcast discusses mental health in young minds, focusing on schooling, through to higher education. Aneeska sets out to encourage listeners to be curious about the mental health and wellbeing of young people during these chapters of change. Recent series welcomes different topics of conversation from leading psychologists, policy makers, writers, activists, and researchers. This podcast sets out to make leading research on student mental health accessible to the wider student community, helping students at a grassroots level.
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 - Global Internal Communications Manager, pladis
Lauren has worked with a broad range of charities including six years at Cancer Research UK, with roles in the 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 and Chivas Brothers, before turning to Internal Communications at the start of the pandemic and joining pladis, the second largest biscuit manufacturer in the world, in October 2021.
For her own wellbeing, Lauren turns to yoga, reading and walks on Putney Heath. |
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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. |