Volunteering in 2025 and Beyond - Speakers

Emily Hughes has worked in the voluntary sector since 2005, with a particular focus on empowering volunteers to contribute to the sector.

She held strategic volunteer management roles at the National Autistic Society and Parkinson’s UK.

She is passionate about what organisations of all sizes contribute to the sector and spent 2010 volunteering in Zambia with VSO, supporting a community organisation to work effectively with volunteers.

She is also a trustee of AVERT, a small international HIV/AIDS charity based in Brighton. Since 2016 Emily has been Head of Volunteer Experience at Girlguiding, leading a department that takes a partnership approach to supporting 75,000 volunteers to deliver great experiences to girls across the UK. She has a Masters in Voluntary Sector Management from Cass Business School (now Bayes).