Our trustees

Caroline is a Partner at EY, a multinational professional services network with headquarters in London. She became Senior Partner for London in 2015, and has been a member of the Senior Leadership team since then, helping to manage a business with over 18,000 UK employees and a turnover in excess of £2bn.

She has also served on the Remco for three years with a focus on addressing diversity issues, in particular gender and BME pay gap challenges. She is committed to social mobility through education and employment, with particular interest in young people and how lives can be changed for the better.

Natasha has extensive leadership, policy and communications experience in the charity sector. She has been Chief Executive of Working Chance since 2019 and previously spent 11 years as Chief Executive of Become,.

Natasha was awarded an OBE for services to children and families in 2019 and has been a Fellow of the RSA since 2007. She has acted as an advisor to two Children’s Commissioners, served five years as a trustee for Children England and has sat on the advisory boards of two national inquiries and on several government taskforces. She currently sits on the Ministry of Justice’s expert group on female offenders.

Matt is a fractional CFO specialising in deeptech and engineering startups. A Chartered Accountant with a PhD in Quantum Chemistry, he has 20 years’ experience building, fundraising and transforming ambitious startups. He has held CFO, COO, and CEO roles across sectors including international development, biotech, AI, medtech, manufacturing, education, property and corporate finance.

He spent several years in the charity sector, working in Nigeria on the impact of oil extraction in the Niger Delta, and was previously a trustee and co-creator of Sidekick, a charity empowering people to support their own mental health.

Jeff Jacobs has held roles in central Government and the Greater London Authority across a long career in the public sector.

During his time in the Civil Service, where he rose from being a 16 year old filing clerk to Director General level, his jobs included Principal Private Secretary to the Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State, John Prescott, Head of Regeneration and Housing teams, and Chief Executive of the Government Olympic Executive. Jeff then joined the GLA in 2007, working in senior roles for Ken Livingstone, Boris Johnson and Sadiq Khan.

Jeff retired from full-time executive work in 2018 and has since taken on charitable roles.

Gita North is a Partner with First Friday, a change management, training and consulting firm.

Prior to joining First Friday, Gita was an Executive at Dixons Group plc and subsequently, as an independent consultant, worked with the Boards of several leading UK retailers on transformative change programmes. She was also a Non-Executive Director of Center Parcs while it was publicly listed.

Dr Emer Sutherland is an experienced A&E and trauma doctor working in London. She leads a large emergency department that was the first in the UK to embed youth workers into the clinical team to support young people at times of crisis. She is passionate about a holistic approach to healthcare and building wellbeing not just treating illness.

Ben is an experienced technology and business leader who has built and led IT consulting and software businesses across the US, Asia and Europe. Most recently, he was a managing director at Accenture, the global technology consulting firm.

Ben is also a trustee, and volunteer van driver, at The Felix Project, one of the largest food re-distribution charities in the UK. He serves on their Operations committee, their People committee and Chairs their Technology Strategic Advisory & IT Governance committee. He has actively supported Felix’s digital transformation as well as having worked as an interim member of their senior leadership team.

Irene began her career as an accountant in the financial services sector. An opportune meeting with the then CEO of the Disabilities Trust introduced her to an organisation whose work she greatly admired, which she soon joined as Director of Finance, before becoming CEO two years later. Since then, Irene has led the organisational and strategic transformation of the Disabilities Trust to ensure it remains the UK’s leading not-for-profit provider of brain injury services. She is also a trustee with VODG.

Irene is passionate about opportunity and fairness and would like to help drive societal change and contribute a more equitable society for all.

Claire Starza-Allen is a Trustee of Catch22 and chairs its Governance, Risk and Internal Audit Committee. In this role, she applies her governance and compliance expertise to support Catch22’s mission and social impact.
Claire is also Group General Counsel at Valtech, a global digital consultancy that partners with organisations to drive business transformation through technology and experience design, where she leads on legal, compliance (including insurance, incident response and AI), and governance matters. She has extensive experience in commercial negotiations, mergers and acquisitions (including post-deal integration), and legal operations.

Alongside her in-house role, she practises as a dispute resolution specialist in arbitration and mediation, focusing on practical and constructive ways to resolve disputes.

Jonathan is a business development professional who has undertaken a variety of senior roles in support of the public sector during his career within Capita since 2005. He has been instrumental in designing innovative service delivery models, the development of public sector strategy and has secured numerous partnerships across Local Government, Health, Central Government and Education, delivering over £400m of savings to the public sector.

Jonathan is passionate about the impact of accessible and well-designed services and has driven innovation and value within the public sector. He has expertise in business transformation, service re-design, business case development, mobilisation, procurement, deal architecture, contract negotiation, commercialisation of services and sustainable growth.