Our board of trustees

Vera Baird QC

  • (Chair) Board member since August 2011

    Vera is a practising Queen’s Counsel specialising in criminal work in addition to being a lecturer, writer and co-director of Astraea Research. Vera was MP of Redcar 2001–2010 and became a Minister in the Labour Government in 2006. In 2007, she became Solicitor General and advised on a wide range of legal issues and was involved in policy development around issues such as criminal justice, gender and equality. Vera was the first woman Chair of the Society of Labour Lawyers and was described by The Lawyer Magazine as one of the top five talents at the criminal bar.

Wanda Goldwag

  • (Treasurer) Board member since November 2011

    Wanda is an advisor to Smedvig Venture Capital and Non Executive Director of the Performing Right Society, International Copyright Enterprise, Perfect Getaways, True North Human Capital and Surelaw. She had a 25- year career in marketing and her last corporate role was as Managing Director of British Airways owned AIR MILES. Wanda was appointed a Civil Service Commissioner in December 2011 and will join the Commission in April 2012.

Leonie Jarrett

  • Leonie has worked at the School for Social Entrepreneurs since October 2011, starting as PA to the Chief Executive before moving into the role of Communications Officer in early 2013. SSE supports individuals to realise their potential and to establish, scale and sustain, social enterprises and social businesses across the UK, Australia and Canada. Before joining the SSE team Leonie worked in Tourism, Customer Service and Sales and completed a degree in Social Policy.

Louisa Cox

  • Dr Louisa Cox joined Article 25, a leading architectural aid charity, in January 2013 as Head of Business Development and manages the Fundraising and Communications teams. She is responsible for growing the organisation’s income and levels of support including overseeing Corporate, Trust, Statutory and digital fundraising, as well as Article 25’s flagship event – ‘10 × 10: Drawing the City’.

    Prior to this, Louisa worked for Peabody as a Business Development Manager, raising money for and developing programmes aimed at ending poverty across Peabody estates, including anti-gang work; homelessness provision; and employment and training initiatives. Previously she worked for the Domestic Violence Intervention Project (DVIP), leading on fundraising for perpetrator programmes, a linked Women’s Support Service and Children’s Contact Centre.

    Louisa is a committed feminist and is passionate about women’s rights issues. She has an MSc in Women and Development, and undertook her doctoral research in Mozambique, working with local women to advise INGOs on how disaster management programmes can be made gender sensitive.

    For more information about Eaves’ board of trustees please contact Suzanne Thompson on 020 7840 7113 or at [email protected]

Emma Reed

  • Emma has been a civil servant for over 10 years. She is currently working in the Cabinet Office on their civil service reform programme. She only took up this post a month ago, prior to which she worked at the Government Equalities Office where she was the head of sexual orientation and transgender policy. In this post she held for over four years, Emma has led a number of cross Whitehall programmes, including same-sex marriage, handling the largest ever response to a Government consultation. Prior to taking up her post at GEO, Emma was at the Department of Health, where she worked on health inequalities, workplace health and had a short stint as a Private Secretary. Her civil service stated in at the Government Office for the North West, where she worked on a range of public health programmes, ranging from children to older people.

Claire Macmillan

  • Claire is currently a partner at H2glenfern, an investor relations consultancy she helped to start in 2004. H2glenfern specialise in helping companies improve their communication specifically with a City audience and everyone who works in the business has a Capital Markets background. For Claire this came about as a result of a relatively short stint in equity sales for Merrill Lynch where she sold pan European equities into a primarily Benelux client base. Claire began her career at the Criminal Bar in London where she practised for a couple of years having read Law at Bristol University.

Sophie Stevens

  • Sophie Stevens is a consultant and programme manager at PricewaterhouseCoopers, with 4 years’ experience of supporting security and justice sector reforms and human rights projects in developing countries. Her experience spans research, business development, programme design and management of international donor-funded initiatives.
    Sophie joined PwC after 3 years at specialist international development consultancy Adam Smith International where she drafted proposals, set-up, and implemented consultancy programmes aimed at helping developing country governments and other stakeholders to improve security and access to justice. This included proposals and projects in Ethiopia, Palestine, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Somaliland and Nepal, funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), FCO and Ministry of Defence. She led and contributed to several successful multi-million pound proposals.

    Sophie has a particular interest in addressing violence against women and girls, including sexual violence and FGM, which was a central focus of several projects she worked on.

    Sophie also enjoys research and policy and has done field research on security and justice issues affecting women in Ethiopia, Sierra Leone and Eritrea. She also recently completed a literature review on sexual violence in conflict for World Vision in preparation for a high-level DFID conference in November 2013.