Our trustees
We are governed by our Board of Trustees who are legally responsible for our charity, its activities and management.
The board delegates authority as appropriate to the Chief Executive Officer and members of the leadership team. Our board is made up of a fantastic group of people with a diverse range of skills and experience. The board meet six time per year in addition to our Annual General Meeting.
Anthony Waddington
Anthony joined The Cellar Trust as Chair in July 2023. He is the Chief Executive at Participate Projects which supports communities and voluntary and social enterprise organisations: helping them to develop and grow their ideas into sustainable projects and enterprises.
Anthony has over fifteen years’ experience of supporting social ventures through direct support and engagement of the private sector. He has strong local and national peer networks and a track record of partnership working and dissemination of best practice in this field. Anthony has worked directly with hundreds of new and growing enterprises and has established award winning support programmes. He has been a Trustee on a number of Boards. He lives in Bradford District with his family and is passionate about mental health.
Hugh Rolo
Hugh joined our Board as Treasurer in 2019 and Chairs our Finance, Audit and Risk Committee.
Hugh lives locally in Saltaire and has been active in Bradford’s voluntary sector for nearly 30 years. A former investment banker Hugh has worked in the third sector since moving to Bradford. He is employed by Locality, the national network of community organisations. As Locality’s social investment lead Hugh is an active investor working as Director with the 3 funds: Key Fund, Social Investment Business and the Community Shares Booster programme regularly seeing a pipeline of social enterprise investment propositions.
He says: “I have always believed in acting locally and have an abiding interest in mental health wrestling with my own issues over time”
Professor Udy Archibong
Uduak Archibong PhD MBE is the Pro Vice-Chancellor [Equality, Diversity and Inclusion], directs the Centre for Inclusion and Diversity and provides strategic oversight for equality, diversity and inclusion [EDI] across the institution. She is a Fellow of the West African College of Nursing and a Fellow of the Royal College of Nursing. She was listed in the New Year Honours list 2015 and was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire for her contributions to higher education and equality. Recognised as a foremost authority with a sustained, distinguished presence in the field of diversity management, she is currently leading in setting agenda to drive research, learning and knowledge exchange activities internationally and has published extensively on inclusion and diversity. She is at the forefront of transforming organisational culture for sustainable diversity and inclusion approaches. Her research has provided a unique international definition of positive action and application for representational and participative diversity. She is currently leading a portfolio of research on residential segregation, school segregation and factors in hate crime reporting in the city of Bradford as part of the Bradford for Everyone Programme.
Dr Shehla Khalid
As Senior Evaluation and Insights Manager at NHS England, Shehla is currently leading evaluations and insights gathering of a large national programme to improve health and wellbeing of 1.3 million NHS workforce. After completing two Masters degrees (computing and data governance) and a doctorate from the University of Bradford for work exploring user requirements for secondary uses of data for improving the quality of dementia care, Shehla has previously successfully led a number of analytical and impact programmes in academia, private sector, voluntary sector and in the local government. Shehla is a highly experienced researcher with expertise in data analytics, data management and evaluation solutions. Shehla is a published author with a number of papers published in high-quality national and International Healthcare and informatics journals. Shehla is always keen to explore innovative and pragmatic approaches to measuring impact of health and social interventions and policies. She says “I am personally committed to values of social justice, equality and inclusion, with a strong passion to promoting mental health and reducing health inequalities. I am honoured to volunteer my time to help the Cellar Trust measure and showcase the value of their work, and personally achieve happiness and contentment in making a real difference to people’s lives.”
Melvyn Ingleson
Melvyn is joining the Board having been a member of the Board of Bradford Counselling Services since 2020. He recently returned to Yorkshire after thirty years In Scotland. Melvyn has enjoyed as many years running his own advisory firm, serving as an interface between private companies in many sectors who need to build relationships or sell services to the Government or wider public sector.
He has a strong professional interest in organisational transformation enabled by digital technologies having supported Microsoft’s public sector business growth in recent years. He is passionate about all sectors serving the needs of the most vulnerable in society. He was educated in Bradford and committed to giving back to the city on his return.
He is also a non-executive director for Spectrum Community Health CIC. Spectrum is a Wakefield based CIC that plays a leading role in the North of England, providing health care inside prisons, also supporting drug and alcohol rehabilitation and sexual health services in the community. He is a governor of the Heights Federation, three rural Junior & Infant schools in Kirklees and a long time non-executive director of the Centre for Scottish Public Policy in Edinburgh. Newly resident in Brighouse, he is very active in Brighouse Central Methodist Church and serves on an informal advisory group for the Digital Economy in the region.
Gabby Voinea
Gabby has, for the past 7 years, worked in the health and care sector (both frontline and at strategic level) whilst studying for 2 part-time postgraduate degrees. She has trained and worked as an Independent Mental Capacity Advocate, Independent Mental Health Advocate and as a health complaints advocate, worked in the public legal sector, dealing with Court of Protection matters and in the third sector developing Representatives to be involved in a range of strategic roles. This has included working closely with CCG colleagues to ensure the third sector has an equal voice within the Population and Care Delivery Boards in the local Health and Care Partnership. She is currently working as Paralegal in Clinical Law.
She says: ‘My ethnic background and experiences have provided me with the insight to recognize (and empathise with) some of the struggles faced by ethnic minority individuals. Add to those extra layers of complexity, such as language barriers and the results can indeed be devastating. I believe in what The Cellar Trust is working to achieve, and I am excited about the opportunity to contribute towards the strategic direction of the organisation, to give back to the community and I feel privileged to volunteer for an organisation in which I believe.’
Sam McLean
Sam joined the board in 2022, and this is her first formal role in the voluntary sector. She is currently an Associate Professor in Pharmacology at the University of Bradford and is a Research Fellow of the Wolfson Centre of Applied Health Research. Her research is centred around understanding changes in the brain in psychiatric disorders in an attempt to develop new drugs for the benefit of patients.
Sam is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and teaches the science of mental health and the medicines used to treat the symptoms to students in the School of Pharmacy and Medical Sciences.
She says “Having worked in academia for many years I’m looking forward to the opportunity to influence and be part of change and growth at a very exciting time for the Cellar Trust. As a scientist, I’m hoping to gain a more holistic view of the experiences and challenges faced by people living locally and was delighted to be appointed to the board to give something back to the community.”
Mel George
Mel brings over 25 years of experience in healthcare IT, specialising in operations management and digital transformation. She currently works with organisations to enhance data security, focusing on ISO27001 information security certification. Alongside her IT career, Mel is also pursuing a diploma in counselling, building on her CPCAB Level 3 Certificate in Counselling Studies, with the goal of practicing in the field. A mum to a teenage son, Mel can often be found out and about walking in the local area with her faithful canine companion.
Passionate about both technology and helping others, Mel’s career and personal interests align through her volunteer work with The Cellar Trust, an organisation providing vital support services to her local community. She feels privileged to contribute her time to such meaningful work.
Lorna Dunsire
Lorna has worked for the last 15 years in the NHS, in various Mental Health services in both Leeds and Bradford, and is a registered Occupational Therapist. She previously worked in Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust as the Senior Patient Experience manager, responsible for the Patient Advice and Complaints service as well as Patient and Carer involvement across the organisation. Lorna has an MSc in Senior Leadership from the University of Leeds, and a Level 7 apprenticeship in Leadership from the Chartered Management Institute.
Lorna is now employed full-time in Leeds as the Professional Lead Occupational Therapist responsible for the Occupational Therapy workforce across the Community Mental Health Service for working age adults. She is passionate about recovery and creative interventions to promote good mental health and wellbeing.
Lorna’s first encounter with The Cellar Trust was in 2009, when she volunteered with the employment service, and experienced firsthand the value and impact that The Cellar Trust can have on individuals, to improve quality of life and promote inclusion.
In her spare time, Lorna is a poet and has been actively involved in the spoken-word creative scene in Leeds and Bradford. She has been involved in poetry publishing, and her poetry has been featured on BBC breakfast news, as well as having a nature poem commissioned by Chris Packham.