Charity’s Committee

Dr Danny Sriskandarajah, Trustee – Chair

Danny joined Oxfam GB as Chief Executive in January 2019. Previously, he held leadership roles at CIVICUS, the global civil society alliance, the Royal Commonwealth Society, the Commonwealth Foundation and the Institute for Public Policy Research. In addition, he is also a Trustee of the Disasters Emergency Committee.

Ian Abbs

Ian is the Chief Executive of Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust.

Prof David Crossman (Medical Research)

Having started his clinical career in London, David has had two stints leading medical schools at UEA, and St Andrew’s, where he is the longest standing Medical School Dean in Scotland. Externally, David has had significant involvement with the British Heart Foundation, having served on clinical research consortium boards, and overseen their data science partnership with Health Data Research UK.

David’s experience as Chief Scientist for health to the Scottish Government, during a period that included the pandemic, demonstrates his ability to offer strategic insight and convey complex information to non-expert audiences. David has a wide range of experience in scientific research related to medical problems including a personal research programme, based on his clinical specialty of Cardiology. Through engagement with national bodies such as UKRI, NIHR, UKCRC and BHF, David brings well-rounded depth of experience.

Dr Andrew S Higgins (High Value Fundraising)

Andrew is a deeply experienced, engaged, and energetic fundraising leader whose career has centred around the arts and culture space but who has also demonstrated considerable adaptability in operating environments both in the move from the US to UK and in the move from opera to the broader base of Imperial War Museum.

Andrew has had considerable success in his fundraising roles, notably raising over £30m for the new Holocaust and photographer galleries at IWM and has a track record of developing high net worth donor relationships as well as wider institutional support. He has extensive stakeholder management and high net worth donor handling experience and displayed a particularly sophisticated approach to high value fundraising. He spent three years as a Trustee at the British Youth Opera in addition to wide experience of working with high level Boards at his organisations.

Sir Ron Kerr, Trustee

Ron was appointed as a lay member of the Council for King’s College London in August 2019 and Chair of NHS Providers in July 2019.

Prior to this, he joined Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust as Chief Executive in 2007. He stepped down on 1 October 2015 after 30 years in senior NHS leadership roles remaining with the Trust as Executive Vice Chair and then special advisor to the board. His other Chief Executive roles have included the National Care Standards Commission, United Bristol Healthcare NHS Trust, and the South East London Commissioning Agency.

Julie Milnes (Public Fundraising)

Julie is a very experienced fundraiser at major UK charities who has progressed from a background in corporate and institutional fundraising to the full multi-channel breadth of her current leadership role at Centrepoint. An engaging, experienced, and energetic communicator, Julie combined thoughtful, experienced perspectives with an evident, adaptive learning style.

At the heart of Julie’s experience is her partnership work which has been significant from growing partnership income at the British Red Cross by 137% through to recently winning a £9m partnership for Centrepoint. She has significant experience of crafting powerful, persuasive narratives. Her experience of legacies and individual giving is more recent, but the latter is the biggest piece at Centrepoint which has forced her rapidly up the learning curve. She is also running a £30m capital appeal to build more accommodation for vulnerable young people. Julie led a significant rebuilding and repositioning of the fundraising function at Centrepoint which had been in a precarious position when she arrived during Covid. She built new supporter journeys and has increased their fundraising from £24m in covid to over £35m today.

Jackie Parrott

Jackie is Chief Strategy Officer at Guy’s and St Thomas’. Up until 2000, Jackie held a number of clinical operational roles in Trusts, managing local and specialist services. Presently, she’s responsible for developing the Trust’s organisational and clinical strategy, supporting clinical services and key strategic partnerships.

Deborah Womack (Brand and Marketing)

A senior leader who has served on the Board of the RNIB amongst others Deborah is an executive-level Marketer with 25+ years of strategic experience operating at Partner and Director level at Ernest and Young and Deloitte, respectively. Deborah is well used to operating at senior level and working in an advisory capacity. Specialising in transforming Marketing functions into customer-first programs, she leads initiatives that create measurable, valuable connections between brands and customers. Leveraging expertise in data science, digital analytics, and AI, Deborah ensures organisations harness the business advantages of customer insights.

With a ‘people first’ approach, Deborah is a coach and mentor, igniting confidence at all levels – from those just starting their careers to executives. She has successfully taken that experience to the RNIB which used to be known for their home for the blind but has since gone through significant change and is now much more focused on making the UK the best country in the world to be a partially sighted person. Deborah has been a key champion of this shift as a non-executive and has also worked closely with the executive team more broadly as they have led this change.