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What is a trustee?
A trustee's role in a charity is to be the 'guardians of purpose', making sure that all decisions put the needs of the beneficiaries first. Our trustees safeguard the charity's assets – both physical assets, including property, and intangible ones, such as its reputation.
Current Opportunities
Have you ever considered becoming a trustee for NDAS? We are currently looking for a dynamic and committed trustee to join our Board. Knowledge around domestic abuse is not required.
We want our Board to be representative of our local community and so would welcome approaches from people from under-represented groups, particularly people from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities, LGBTQ+ but also a broad age-range and people living with disabilities.
We are looking for trustees with skills and experience in the following areas:
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Higher or Further education
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Fundraising and income generation
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Communications and PR, particularly digital marketing
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Audit
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Disability
If this is of interest to you or you would like further information, please email:
Come and meet out current Trustees
All come with a wealth of experience from diverse sectors. Click on the links to find out more about them
Bev McConnell Bev joined the NDAS board of trustees in 2013. She is a qualified social worker and has a background in multiagency safeguarding and currently works as an independent safeguarding consultant. She provides services to local authorities, education settings and private providers as well as acting as an Independent Social Worker in private law cases and as a review author.
Felicity Lister Felicity has worked in family law her entire career, and qualified as a Chartered Legal Executive in 2010. She has always worked in Northamptonshire, and has been aware of the important work undertaken by NDAS. Having experienced the impact of domestic abuse on family law cases throughout her career, she is keen to try and make a difference by supporting NDAS and their work.
Andrea Gomm Andrea is a qualified and experienced Human Resources professional with a strategic mindset and strong commercial background across all HR specialisms. She focuses on aligning the people agenda with business strategy, empowering people to believe in their potential and perform beyond. Supporting NDAS provides Andrea the opportunity to support a local charity that delivers invaluable services to the local community. Living locally to Northamptonshire she has a passion to help people make a difference in their lives.
Jo Burns Jo currently leads a local charity which operates a variety of programmes for those experiencing homelessness, addiction and poverty. She regularly sees and supports victims and survivors of domestic abuse, and witnesses the incredibly unfair and difficult situations they are in because of this. There are a multitude of barriers to individuals being able to receive adequate support for what they have faced. Prior to her current role, Jo managed the regional operations of a children's charity, and gained an understanding of the impact domestic abuse can have on children, but also the positive outcomes that some dedicated, specialist support can provide to those children. Charities like NDAS help break down the barriers, myths and challenges for individuals facing crisis and their families.
Shahnaz Zaman Shahnaz has a career background with over 20 years in safeguarding, from having worked in both statutory and non-statutory organisations and leading teams and organisational boards to creating and maintain strong safeguarding focused cultures. She is an experienced Magistrate and has been practising for over 18 years. Shahnaz is passionate about making communities safer and stronger by enabling people to make changes and positive improvements to their life.
What is your area of expertise?
Could you make a difference?
Rufia Ashraf Rufia is a local Councillor and and is proud to have been the very first Northampton Town Council Mayor in 2019. She was born and educated in Northampton and is a qualified social worker and a community activist. As a passionate environmentalist she enjoys working in the community by organising walkabouts, litter picks and looking at ways to improve our local neighbourhood. For many years she has been organising food aid collections for food banks and fundraising. She was keen to become a trustee of NDAS, because having worked as domestic abuse officer, she saw many challenges facing the service. She also has a family member who was subjected to abuse for years and found many local women with language barriers approach her to seek help.
Glynis Bliss Glynis has a career background in working with victims and witnesses of crime, specialising in working with victims of sexual, domestic and child abuse. She established and managed the Witness Services in the Crown and Magistrates’ Courts in Northamptonshire for 6 years and pioneered those services for child victims and witnesses before moving on to become the CEO for Victim Support Northamptonshire for 10 years. She then developed the project for the County’s first Sexual Assault Referral Centre (SARC), which she managed for 6 years. Since retirement she has been a trustee for NDAS, including several years as its Chair. She also chairs Referral Order Panels for the Youth Offending Service and sits on the consultative group for violence against women and girls for the East Midlands Crown Prosecution Service.
Mark Behan Mark has recently retired as a detective chief superintendent, head of crime in Northamptonshire Police following 32 years service. Public protection policing including tackling domestic abuse which was a consistent and significant element of his career. He introduced a number of initiatives to improve the Police and multi-agency response to domestic abuse including risk assessment, specialist rape teams, an expanded resource dedicated to domestic abuse and a domestic homicide review. He remains appalled at the harm caused by domestic abuse. Being an NDAS trustee gives me the opportunity to continue this work and bring a substantial criminal justice perspective to the work of the Board.
Jaime O'Beirne Jaime started his Finance career at Unilever in 2009, qualifying as a Chartered Accountant (CIMA) in 2012. He worked at St Andrew’s Healthcare (a mental healthcare charity) as Senior Finance Business Partner to multiple Directors. In 2015 he joined a local SME as Financial Controller, responsible for all areas of Finance as the Company doubled in size within 18 months. He then worked as a Commercial Accountant for Homebase. In 2018 Jaime moved to Avon Cosmetics where he has worked in a variety of roles. In his most recent role at Avon, he has worked in finance transformation - standardizing core accounting processes and the Finance blueprint across 30+ countries. He has experience in contract negotiation, vendor management, debtor management, cashflow forecasting, process design, controls, business partnering, strategy development, project management and transformation – he is also a qualified coach.
