Dan Rogers
Chief Executive Officer
Dan has worked in strategy, operations management and business development, throughout a career which has spanned roles in publishing, research, and consultancy. He brings experience of engaging industry, government, and grant funding clients, in order to scale businesses and deliver social impact. Dan joined Public Voice from Connected Places Catapult, a government-backed, non-profit innovation agency. At Connected Places Catapult, he led a team responsible for developing bids and proposals for people-centred innovation projects – looking at ways to improve places for social, economic and environmental benefits.
Gary De Ferry
Associate Director — Regeneration
Gary worked for over 30 years in social housing, starting as a trainee and holding senior and executive posts in local government, the voluntary and private sectors. Since leaving his last post as the Chief Executive of a successful community based housing association, he has worked as a senior consultant specialising in resident involvement in housing and regeneration. Gary also holds senior voluntary posts with two charities.
Lva Simms
Office Manager
Lva is responsible for day-to-day office management, healthand safety, HR, recruitment, policies and procedures, and provides the CEO and Board with administration and governance support. Lva is an Associate of CIPD, with over 26 years business administration experience and in particular within HR for the last 14 years. Lva has worked across the public, private and voluntary sectors. Previous roles have included Director of HR & Quality (at HAIL) and Co-ordinator of Administration (at The North Middlesex Hospital NHS Trust).
Eamonn England
Associate Communications Manager
Eamonn is responsible for all our communications and marketing activities, from our communications strategy, media relationships and company brand/project brands, through to project planning, business development, our website, social networks, and all our publicity materials. He is a highly experienced business, communications and marketing professional with a wide range of experience in both the public and private sectors. He has spent time working in local government, education, the voluntary and community sector, and as a consultant within the creative industries.
Polly Frayne
Programme Manager
Polly manages our Reach and Connect service and our Social Prescribing Link Worker team, having previously worked as a Community Connector based with Mind in Haringey. Before joining Reach and Connect Polly worked with Disability Support for students and as a Dementia Adviser.
Mary Blake
Volunteer Coordinator
Mary supports Public Voice’s team of volunteers working across all projects. Previous roles were with Groundwork London’s volunteer Energy Champions programme, Energise London and Family Action. Earlier work was in waste prevention with Enfield Council and environmental campaigning for Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. Mary also works part-time for the Muswell Hill Sustainability Group and volunteers for a health charity helpline.
Ashley Grey
Community Connector
Ashley is a Community Connector with our Reach and Connect project, a service for over 50s in Haringey. Ashley has an arts background and has spent the past 40 years working in community development. She has held senior management posts in local government, the education sector and several arts and disability charities. Her interests include local history, and in 2012 she formed a Community Benefit Society to save a heritage pub, The Antwerp Arms, which is the first Community Pub in North London.
Tanya Murat
Engagement and Communications Officer
Tanya supports our Healthwatch Haringey team with engagement and communications activities, working with Patient Participation Groups and GP practices, recruiting, training and supporting patient representatives in Haringey, and providing content for our website, newsletter and social media. She has previously worked in libraries, town planning and community development and has years of experience engaging with communities experiencing exclusion and disadvantage.
Samir Hakim
Information, Policy and Research Officer
Samir supports our research projects through quantitative and qualitative analysis, engagement and reporting findings to our partners. He has a background in innovation and strategic project management, having previous experience at the British Red Cross and the London Borough of Waltham Forest.
Our Board
Sharon Grant OBE
Independent Chair
Sharon’s career has focused on both health and social care, and consumer representation. A former university senior lecturer in social policy, she was appointed Chair of Commission for Patient and Public Involvement in Health in 2002-2008, and then Chair of London Travelwatch 2008-2012. She has also served as a consumer representative at the Food Standards Agency, and as a parliamentary adviser on health care for some years. Sharon chaired the Haringey Citizen’s Advice Bureaux from 2007 to 2015, and is a trustee of the Bernie Grant Arts Centre in Tottenham, where she ran the office of the late Bernie Grant MP from 1987–2000, and was also an elected councillor.
Vernon Herbert
Vernon is a highly experienced Director with wide ranging professional and managerial experience in both the public and private sectors. He has a multi-disciplinary background with extensive experience of infrastructure planning and delivery as well as the broader aspects of urban planning and development, the environment, regeneration and management. Much of his career has been spent working in local government and, more recently, the NHS. He is also a Director of a small professional services and management consultancy, JVM. Previous roles have included Deputy Director of Environment and Planning at the City of Westminster, Director of Growth and Regeneration at Harlow and senior positions with the Amey Group, Interserve and Tribal Group. He began his career as a planning and transportation graduate trainee at the Greater London Council and is qualified as a town planner.
Laura Guest
Laura is a Masters qualified former Chief Executive who has worked across complex organisations from NHS commissioning and hospital Trusts to the Department of Health and also in the commercial sector, within London and nationally. Her experience includes leveraging in-depth commissioning expertise and strategic insights into legislative and government health and social policy trends to innovate solutions. She has expertise in constructing and validating high-level business cases that source and attract additional external funding; and creating long-term strategic relationships based on trust with partners and policy-makers to drive collaboration and growth. Laura is a regular speaker at national conferences and has collaborated on various publications.
Omar Ahmed
Omar is a senior manager with strategic, digital change/transformation, portfolio, programme and risk management skills within the media, oil/gas, financial services and banking arenas. He has a solid record of effecting change via leadership, creating high performance teams and cross company communications structures. He has worked in both public and private sector organisations, as well as hybrid organisations such as the 2012 London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG). Omar has worked for a number of national and multi-national organisations including the BBC and Sky as a project manager and transformation consultant and has a professional interest in privacy and data protection. He has a number of pro-bono directorships, and in addition to his degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering is a qualified management accountant.
Kevin Sheridan
Since July 2017, Kevin has been a freelance community development and engagement consultant. Before this he was Director of Community Engagement in the Institute for Health and Human Development (IHHD) at the University of East London (UEL), leading on community, public, user, patient and stakeholder engagement from 2006 to 2017. In the previous three decades Kevin worked variously as a researcher, media practitioner, and as a teacher at higher and adult levels. He has a degree in Urban and Regional Planning and an MSc in Computing Science.