Federation Board Members (Trustees)

Hilary Armstrong
The Rt. Hon. Hilary Armstrong MP for North West Durham joined the Emmaus UK Trustee board on 13 March 2008 as a co-opted member.She was first elected to parliament in 1987. In 1992 she was made Parliamentary Private Secretary to the late John Smith MP. After Labour's 1997 general election victory she was appointed as Minister of State at the Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions with responsibility for Local Government and Housing. In 2001 Hilary was given the cabinet position of Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury and Government Chief Whip. In May 2006, the then Prime Minister Tony Blair, appointed Hilary to the post of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Minister for the Cabinet Office and Social Exclusion. In June 2007, Hilary announced her decision to step down from the Government and return to the backbenches after 18 years as a Party spokesperson and Government Minister.

Mathieu Delarue
Mathieu was elected to the Board on 26 March 2009. He has been involved with the Emmaus movement since 1995 when he joined Emmaus Cambridge as a Companion. In 2004, he was appointed Community Leader of Emmaus Brighton and Hove. He represented Emmaus in the UK as National Delegate for the old Centre-South region of Emmaus International and helped set the statutes for the Emmaus Europe Region, which was established in 2005.

Raja Gomez
Raja's skills lie in the fields of Strategic Planning, Human Resource Development and Training. After serving as a Director in the Commonwealth Secretariat and the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association until 2003, he now works as a researcher and consultant, carrying out assignments for such organisations as the World Bank and the Inter-Parliamentary Union. He is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at University College London. Raja also advises on the Youth Ministry at his local Church and is a Trustee at Emmaus Greenwich. Raja was elected to the Board on 1 December 2006 and re-elected on 25 March 2010.

John Grieves - Chair
John was a corporate lawyer with Freshfields, now one of the largest law firms in the world, for 33 years, eventually becoming Senior Partner. Since retiring in 1996 he has had a collection of appointments including as a non-executive director and chairman of various public companies. He has served on his parochial church council and as a Governor of Ripon College, Cuddesdon, a theological college. He has a long standing interest in homelessness and was involved at Board level with the Church Housing Trust. John is a Trustee of Emmaus South Lambeth. John was elected to the Board on 21 April 2005 and elected as Chair on 18 June 2009.

David Howells
David was elected to the Board on 25 March 2010. He has been involved with the Emmaus Medway Group since 2004 and has been Chairman since 2007. Over the last 20 years, David created and led a social care organisation that grew from nothing to caring for more than 3000 very vulnerable younger and older people each year, had a staff team of 1500, with sound finances, quality accreditations and a trustworthy reputation. He has also served on many Boards in the charitable sector and has an empathy with local government having served there for some 10 years. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Housing and Chairman of a Local Authority owned care company.

Iain Mackechnie-Jarvis
Iain was elected to the Board on 30 November 2007 and has been involved in Emmaus since its earliest days in Britain. He was one of the first trustees of Emmaus UK and the Cambridge legal practice of which he was a partner provided the fledgling Emmaus UK with pro bono work. Iain personally oversaw the acquisition of the properties for the first four Communities, Cambridge, Coventry, Greenwich and Dover. He was appointed the first Director of Emmaus UK in 1994, and was responsible for the taking Emmaus UK through a restructuring process to create the current federal organisation.

Paul Misik
Paul has worked for Emmaus since January 2003, 2 years at Emmaus UK Federation Office as Finance Manager & Company Secretary, and 4 years as the Project Director at Emmaus Mossley. Before this, he worked in finance, mostly in the public sector. He has been Governor of three schools and a Further Education College. He was elected to the Board on 26 March 2009.

John Noble
John was elected to the Board on 1 December 2006 and re-elected on 25 March 2010. John has been a trustee of Emmaus Gloucestershire since May 2002 and the Chair until 2009. Currently he is chair of Emmaus Preston. (no longer Chair? Currently Chair of Preston). After reading economics at LSE and becoming a Chartered Accountant, his career has included advising and running companies with subsidiaries around the world and since 1992, advising Governments in Africa and Eastern Europe on restructuring, privatisation and regulation of public enterprises. John is married to Anne and has three daughters and three grandchildren. He is a school governor and serves on his parochial church council.

David Perry
David was elected to the Board on 22 March 2007. He has been Community Manager at Emmaus Bristol since the Community opened in 2003. Before this, he spent 24 years in the Avon Ambulance Service NHS Trust, retiring as a Paramedic Station Officer due to knee injuries at work, and just over a year working as a Project Worker in one of the three main hostels for homeless people in Bristol. He is also the UK's national delegate to Emmaus International.

Don Pinchbeck
Don was co-opted to the Emmaus Federation Board in April 2009. He has experience at senior executive level with several multinational companies, has successfully led the re-organisation of several high-profile concerns, including Seiko Epson, the grant giving cycle and process of the National Lottery Charities Board, has worked as a Youth Leader and as Chair of HospiceCare North Northumberland. Don provides market research consultancy to several universities, and is a visiting lecturer at both Newcastle University and Edinburgh Business School. He conducts due diligence assignments for local venture capital companies and mentors young companies for the Centre of Excellence for Life Sciences. He is a Trustee of the recently affiliated Emmaus Gateshead Group.

Willy Slavin
Willy Slavin is a retired psychologist and active catholic priest in Glasgow who dates his interest in Emmaus from his studies in Rome where he first heard of Abbe Pierre in the late 1950s. When he learned of the intention to set up the first Scottish Community in Glasgow he indulged in his favourite leisure activity by fundraising for it cycling from Land's End to John O'Groats with his friend Rev John Miller, later Moderator of the Church of Scotland. Willy followed up 5 years in Bangladesh with 10 years in HMP Barlinnie, Scotland's largest prison, which he opined was more health threatening than the Third World. He also serves on the board of Age Concern Scotland and is Treasurer of the Glasgow branch of the Christian Socialist Movement. Willy joined The Emmaus UK Board on 30 November 2007 and has been the Chair of Emmaus Glasgow since 2001.

Christine Squince
Christine was elected to the Board on 25 March 2010. She joined Emmaus Brighton & Hove in December 2003 as Business Manager. She has many years of retail experience, having worked for a number of High Street Retailers but also as an Area Manager for Scope which has given her a good knowledge of charity retailing, an understanding of working with secondhand donated goods, with shop managers and also with volunteers.

Nigel Terry
Nigel was elected to the Board of Emmaus UK on 25 March 2010. He trained as a chartered quantity surveyor and for the last 14 years he has worked as the Property Manager at Trinity College, Bristol. Nigel has been chair of trustees at Emmaus Bristol since 2007. He first became involved with Emmaus in 1998 when he joined the steering group working to establish an Emmaus Community in Bristol. He was one of two trustees who oversaw the design and conversion of the Community's premises at Shaftesbury House and chaired a Community Management Group for the next three years to act in support of the Community Manager in the bedding down of the foundling Community.

Keith Tolladay
Keith was co-opted to the Emmaus Federation Board in April 2009. He retired from the Civil Service in 2008 having been Director of Finance at the Cabinet Office and Deputy Chief Executive of Energywatch. His expertise is in strategic planning, organisation and finance. Keith is active in local charity work and, prior to being co-opted to the Emmaus Federation Board, has visited the Emmaus UK office in Cambridge and the Emmaus Village Carlton Community.

"I was getting through a couple of bottles of scotch a week right up until I came to Emmaus and then all of a sudden I stopped drinking. I just wasn’t interested. I didn’t need a bottle, I…"