After working in sales and marketing with Procter & Gamble and logistics with the Boots Company, Karen worked with the Anglican Church in northern Tanzania. Here she established a women’s project, The Coffee Shop café in Moshi, the centre of Tanzania’s coffee business. On return to the UK she volunteered with Citizens Advice and trained for ordination in the Church of England. In parish ministry in inner city Nottingham, and Area Dean, she took a local lead on the Sanctuary Pledge and campaigned to end child detention, and was a founding Trustee of the Nottingham Arimathea Trust, housing destitute asylum seekers. She was the founding co-chair of Nottingham Citizens whose wins include Nottinghamshire County Council becoming a Living Wage employer and Nottinghamshire Police making history in 2016 by becoming the first force in the country to recognise misogyny as a hate crime.

She has co-chaired the Citizens Council and New Citizens Leadership Team; been a member of the End Indefinite Detention Working Group, and is on the Sponsoring Committee of Leicester & Leicestershire Citizens. Governance in the Church:  Bishop’s Council in the Diocese of Southwell & Nottingham and in the Diocese of Leicester; Leicester Cathedral Chapter, and Chair of Parish PCCs (parish church councils). She is currently the Dean of Leicester Cathedral with the social justice portfolio and  governance responsibility; holds the spiritual leadership of two inner city congregations, and is the Women’s Ministry Enabler for the Diocese of Leicester.

Noeleen is an experienced Board Chair and Charity Trustee. Following a career in marketing and communications, Noeleen shifted her focus to the voluntary sector, where she has worked for over 20 years. During this time, she has taken on a number of board and advisory roles, to which she brings a deep understanding of board effectiveness, governance and charity finance. Noeleen combines her professional skills and love of bringing people together, to build strong partnerships and shape organisations that are well run, impact driven and socially conscious.

Noeleen is currently Vice Chair of leading community organising charity, Citizens UK where she chairs the Mission, Membership and Governance Committee. She is the Chair of the New Israel Fund UK, that is part of an international NGO that advocates for civil and human rights for all of Israel’s citizens. Noeleen has chaired Alyth Synagogue and is currently leading on the community’s £6.3m building development project which is due to be completed in the Summer of 2024. She is a director and Chair the Board of Circle Square., a networking organisation for people over 50 who come together to share passions, energy and the potential of their post-career lives. Previous roles have included being the Chair of Leo Baeck College and serving on the board of the Movement for Reform Judaism.

Brandon is currently a Risk Business Partner with Aviva with a broad range of skills and experience across business operations and risk management within large multi-national and FTSE100 organisations.

He is passionate about championing educational achievement for young people. He has supported several initiatives that specifically aim to widen participation in Higher Education from unrepresented groups in society affected by social and/or economic deprivation to provide opportunities for them to understand the positive benefits that education can bring and to empower them with the knowledge, skills, and confidence of how to achieve this.

He arrived in the UK as an unaccompanied minor and overcame adversity to study Law at university (bachelor’s degree, MSc in Law, Business Management & the Legal Practice Course) before entering the financial services industry. He believes he has been able to realise his potential through the help of others. He states that “the greatest appreciation you can deliver is not just to benefit from the help, but to reach out your hand to someone else who need it whenever you can”.

A founding member of Leeds Citizens, John has been involved with Citizens UK and contributing to our work for many years. In his professional life, John was a British Labour Party politician, serving as an MP for Leeds West for over 20 years. During this time, he also served as Minister of State at the Department of Trade and Industry and then for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. In 2002, he became a Member of the Privy Council and was the Prime Minister's envoy to all faith communities until May 2010.

Despite now being in retirement, John is still active in local politics, local community project work as well as working through the Roman Catholic Church Justice and Peace Commission both locally and nationally. He is Pro-Chancellor at Leeds Trinity University, a Fellow of Blackfriars Hall in Oxford and Chair of both Bramley Baths Social Enterprise and Leeds Diocesan Justice and Peace Commission. John is also trustee of several other organisations including holding the position of Chair at St Monicas Housing Project, a Leeds charity providing fully supportive housing for destitute refugee women without recourse to public funds.

John is based in Leeds West and is a proud father and grandfather to three grown-up children and five grandchildren. In his spare time, he enjoys folk music, poetry and supporting local teams Leeds United and Leeds Rhinos.

Lindsay Driscoll qualified as a solicitor in London and spent several years as Assistant Registrar General in Kenya. Since then she has spent over 35 years working in charity law and governance in this country and internationally. She has worked in a number of different roles including Head of Legal and Governance with the National Council of Voluntary Organisations, partner in a charity law firm and Legal Commissioner at the Charity Commission. Lindsay has served on many boards and committees. She is a former chair of theInternational Center for Not-for-Profit Law based in the US and former chair of the steering group for the Charity Governance Code. She is now a trustee of four other charities.

Sheikh Nuru Mohammed is a religious scholar and resident Imam of the Khoja Shia Ithnasheri Muslim Community of Birmingham. He combines his international role as an Ambassador with the Universal Peace Federation – an NGO of the United Nations, a local secondary school Governor and a member of the Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education in Birmingham. A qualified civil and commercial Mediator, Sheikh Nuru is also a Member of West Midlands combine authority faith strategic group, Head of Islamic Cultural affairs at the Council of European Jamaats ( COEJ) and co-chair of Birmingham Citizens Leadership group.

From 2020, he has played a significant role in how the Birmingham alliance responded to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Through effective public health messaging and identifying top priority issues for action by politicians and decision makers he also led his mosque to becoming the first UK mosque to be converted into COVID vaccination hub and was voted most impactful Imam in the UK in 2021.

Jimmy is from Oldham, Greater Manchester, and is passionate about combating racism and facilitating improved community cohesion in his local area. He believes that Community Organising brings about tangible change on issues affecting people’s day-to-day lives and is passionate about ensuring that Organising methodology makes a positive and lasting impact on UK communities.

Jimmy is an active member of the Lambeth Citizens leadership team and is involved in campaigns focusing on social mobility in Lambeth and Southwark, the lack of Latinx community inclusion in UK ethnicity monitoring and cutting the unfair Home Office child citizenship fee (a huge barrier to young people without British citizenship looking to access university). He is particularly excited about expanding the work of Citizens UK to new regions and recruiting more member institutions from the higher education sector.

As Widening Participation Manager at King’s College London, Jimmy manages programmes which offer the chance for young people from under-represented groups to exhibit their potential to access university. He is a former school governor at Heald Place Primary School.

Dr Mahera Ruby is also a trustee for East London mosque and is currently the chair of the women’s committee of the Maryam Centre. She was the Lead Organiser of Muslimaat UK for three terms, which empowers Muslim women to increase their religious, educational, economic, and social capacity. These women then mentor and uplift other Muslim women to improve their quality of life and contribute to creating change in their own communities. She has been known for her initiative to increase Muslim Women’s Leadership as a Founding member of ‘Women100’. Mahera has a PhD and has held teaching and research roles at UCL Institute of Education and Goldsmith, University of London. She is a certified personal growth and family coach and trained hundreds of parents to become more confident in their parenting roles. She has authored many academic papers and two books, both published by the UCL press. Mahera’s background in intergenerational learning finds her supporting a wide interfaith work within diverse communities and she has a good knowledge of how charities and local authorities work. She is a visionary, a trainer and a proud Community organiser who was instrumental in the vision and development of the Maryam Centre, bringing women from the community together.

Adrian is starting a new chapter as a non-executive director and trustee after a successful executive career in the finance industry based mainly in the City. After gaining a degree from the London School of Economics he qualified as a chartered accountant and then switched into operations at the US investment bank Morgan Stanley. Adrian then moved into the exchange sector and held various roles including setting up and then leading as CEO a start-up pan-European stock exchange and then as the CEO for a new clearing house in London for the London Metal Exchange.

Adrian has always had an interest in people and diversity and in the CEO role at LME Clear was the sponsor of the Diversity & Inclusion Forum at LME and sponsored the LME’s Women in Finance targets and the creation of the LGBT, and Race and Ethnicity networks.

Over the course of his career Adrian had had responsibility for building and leading teams, delivering large scale business and technology projects and managing commercial and operational risk and will now use these skills and experiences in a governance capacity. Adrian’s focus as a trustee is to use these skills to contribute to the Board and the management team developing their people, processes and technology.

Alongside his role as Citizens UK, Adrian also works one day a week at Nourish food bank in Tunbridge Wells and has gone back to school at the Open University.

Sally is a Learning and Development Officer with the Methodist Church in Britain. She is also a visiting lecturer in Chaplaincy Studies at Newman University and studying part-time for a Dth at Roehampton University, sponsored by the Susanna Wesley Foundation. She has been a Methodist Local Preacher for 10 years. Previously she has worked as a community worker with young adults for a church, university chaplain, FE lecturer and community engagement officer for a LGBTQ+ charity.

Saba Shafi is the Commercial Director of The Advocacy Academy, a youth movement working to unleash the power of young people to create a more fair, just, an equal society. Saba spent over eight years working in management consulting and business advisory across a variety of roles and organisations. She also spent three years developing healthcare initiatives in refugee camps across the Sahara. Saba holds an MBA from Wharton Business School, and a Masters in Mathematics from Imperial College. She is also a Governor of The Belham Primary School, and an organiser with POC Impact. 

Stuart Wright started work as an Army officer in the Royal Engineers training first as a Military Engineer and then more formally as a Civil Engineer. A career change (after 20 years) took him briefly to PA Consulting and then to Aviva.

Time at Aviva has been spent almost exclusively in the planning, design and operational delivery of shared services. Roles have included UK property director and Aviva Europe operational services director and more recently Group Property and Facilities Director, where he had a wide remit including all operational property acquisitions and disposals as well as running the worldwide real estate portfolio.

Stuart now leads Aviva’s ambition to be carbon net zero across its operations and operations supply chain, including all markets, subsidiaries and joint ventures, by 2030, building on his strong track record of delivering carbon reduction projects.

Stuart was Chair of the UK Living Wage Foundation Advisory Council from 2016 to 2021, a body that provides advice and guidance on the development of the Living Wage in the UK; he is now a Trustee of Citizens UK, the founder charity of the Living wage.

Outside of work Stuart enjoys his family, gardening and his vintage tractor.

Yahye Abdi serves as a Trustee for Citizens UK, bringing extensive experience in community organising and youth advocacy.

As the Lead Project Coordinator at the Somali Community Parents Association (SOCOPA), he combines youth work with community initiatives, focusing on equipping young people with essential life skills. Yahye is also the Chairman of the Hope Collective, where he leads the largest alliance against youth violence, collaborating with various organisations to create safer environments for youth. His leadership extends to serving as the Chair for Leicester and Leicestershire Citizens, where he promotes community development through active youth participation and builds alliances within schools and local organisations.

Yahye's contributions have been widely recognised, earning him awards such as Leicestershire Charity Employee of the Year 2022 and the AAA Foundation Inspirational Community Mentor.

He has been commended by the Leicestershire Black Police Association for his excellence in youth development and impact on reducing youth violence. In 2023, he was a keynote speaker at the Commonwealth of Nations' Conference on Youth Work, highlighting his innovative methods in community development. With three years of involvement with Leicester Citizens and two years as Co-Chair, Yahye continues to champion community organising principles across the UK, advocating for inclusive and sustainable initiatives that foster social cohesion and equity.