It's Tough at the Top 2024 - Speakers

Debra has worked in the charitable and voluntary sector for nearly 40 years with brief forays into the private sector. Amongst numerous other roles, she is Co-Chair of the Soldiering on Awards. She is a Trustee of In Kind Direct, one of the Prince's Foundation Charities, a governor of the Berkshire NHS Community Foundation Trust, a Commissioner on the Local News Commission of the Public Interest News Foundation, and just recently stood down as trustee of the Berkshire Community Foundation. She is also an Africa Advocacy Foundation Ambassador for women and girls at risk of or affected by Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).

Debra has served as a trustee of several charities including being the co-founder of the Small Charities Coalition and was its first Chair. She served on the Charity Commission's SORP committee for over 7 years and was the Vice-Chair of Governors of Whiteknights primary school for 6 years.

She is a renowned public speaker with many years' experience of training and coaching and is an internationally published author of several books on management and leadership including It's Tough at the Top; The Pleasure and the Pain; It's Murder in Management and It's a Battle on the Board. Debra has a regular monthly column in Third Sector magazine and has appeared on Radio 4's The Moral Maze.

Mike Findlay-Agnew is a third sector leader, coach, writer and trainer. He is CEO of the International Network of Street Papers (INSP), a UK based charity that represents all printed newspapers and magazines sold globally in support of tackling homelessness and poverty, including the Big Issue UK.

His background is in senior communications roles in the charity, higher education, and health sectors. Through his coaching and training work, Mike is passionate strategies third sector leaders and CEOs can use to enhance their health and wellbeing

Matt Hyde is Chief Executive of the Lloyds Bank Foundation, one of the UK’s largest corporate foundations, funded by the profits of the Lloyds Banking Group. It partners with small, local charities and communities working towards a more just and compassionate society.

Until September 2024 Matt was Chief Executive of the Scouts, the UK’s largest youth movement, where he led the organisation during a period of record membership growth, particularly in areas of deprivation, and oversaw the development of a new age range, called Squirrels, opening up Scouts for four and five year olds.

Formerly Chief Executive of the National Union of Students (NUS), he’s undertaken a number of leadership roles in the charity sector.
Matt is co-Founder of The Big Help Out, an initiative to dramatically increase volunteering numbers across the UK, where 7.2m took part in 2023 and similar numbers participated in 2024. He is Vice-Chair of Comic Relief, a Patron of UNLOCK (the charity for people with convictions) and was previously Vice-Chair of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO).

Matt was awarded an OBE in the 2020 New Year Honours List, an Honorary Fellowship from Queen Mary University of London in 2012 and an Honorary Degree from the University of Hertfordshire in 2023.

Lizzie Kenyon has spent the last eighteen years years working and volunteering for a range of frontline and second tier voluntary organisations. She started her career at Voluntary Action Cardiff, supporting over 100 children and young people’s voluntary groups and facilitating their participation in the strategic planning of local services. Her work helping the sector was identified as best practice by Estyn, the education and training inspectorate for Wales.

Latterly Lizzie joined BASSAC where she developed and delivered support for London-based anchor organisations around governance, funding and communications including a new bespoke capacity building programme funded by the City Bridge Trust. There she was a strong advocate for demand, rather than supply-led support for voluntary organisations.

From 2011 to 2022, Lizzie worked at Keep Britain Tidy where she held a number of roles managing community and education programmes and campaigns and spent eight years as part of the Executive Team. In 2023, she became Chief Executive of The Bike Project which refurbishes unwanted second-hand bikes for refugees and people seeking asylum.

Khalid began his fundraising career at Muslim Aid in 2007, later moving into faith-based media with roles at Eman Channel and Islam Channel. His extensive experience culminated in his appointment as UK Director at Physicians Across Continents before he returned to Muslim Aid.

Since becoming the Interim CEO in February 2023 and subsequently the permanent CEO in September 2023, Khalid has driven a period of remarkable transformation and success for Muslim Aid. His leadership has significantly elevated the organisation’s profile and impact both in the UK and globally.

Under Khalid’s leadership, Muslim Aid was named the most loved Muslim charity in the UK and the most loved charity in the humanitarian sector by an independent survey. His effective leadership and community trust were further demonstrated through a record-breaking fundraising campaign during Ramadan.

Khalid has established strategic partnerships to combat homelessness, knife crime, and support refugees in the UK. Notably, Muslim Aid was the first major UK charity to respond to the Leicester flooding, assisting affected families.

Sophie Tebbetts is the Chief Executive Officer of FoodCycle, the largest community dining charity in England and Wales, whose vision is for food poverty, loneliness, and food waste to be a thing of the past for every community. A programmes delivery and operations specialist, she has held positions in the not-for-profit sector for over eleven years and has won a sector award for her leadership. Sophie’s commitment to her work is driven by her belief in the transformative power of community dining. She sees the potential for every meal shared to create lasting bonds and positive change.

James has a formidable list of achievements that have been built up from working for over 30 years experience in the third sector. Coming from a senior commercial background he changed career paths when his young son died from a rare form of cancer. Since then, he has set up national non-profits in both the UK and US and in 2002 was the recipient of the ‘Leading The Way’ award from the CBI.



During his career James has advised Governments on a variety of innovative ‘people centred’ health and social services that he has then implemented throughout the UK. His work as advisor to the Walt Disney Company assisted in the formation of the companies Pan European community care programme at the Disneyland Paris Resort. In North America, he also established ‘home from home ‘facilities for all UK families with terminally ill children visiting Florida.



Continually looking for new challenges he has founded the charity Action For Elders, now in its 14th year to challenge the way we think of ageing in our society and tackle one of the biggest challenges facing the world-an Ageing Population.

Fadi Itani is the Chief Executive Officer of the Muslim Charities Forum, an infrastructure body serving British Muslim-led Voluntary and Community Sector organisations of various sizes and programmatic focus areas.

With over thirty years of experience in this field, Fadi plays a crucial role in supporting charitable organisations, fostering collaboration, and advocating for humanitarian causes. His expertise spans community development, social justice, and the effective mobilisation of resources to support vulnerable populations. Besides his work in Europe, he led various field assignments and assessments across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

George joined DSC at the beginning of 2017 and, having previously led the sales and customer service teams, moved into training at the start of 2020.



He trains in Management & Leadership, Fundraising, Personal Development, Project Management and Wellbeing. He has extensive experience in helping organisations make positive changes to how they approach social change.



He is also qualified as a Mental Health First Aider, with additional time spent studying Psychosis. The favourite part of his role is knowing that the work DSC performs has a major impact on both the charities and individuals that we are able to serve.

Alison Dunn is a former solicitor, a social justice activist, Chair of Trustees for VONNE, the host of the podcast series This is the North and the Chief Executive of the Society Matters Group.

The Society Matters Group consists of advice and guidance direct to citizens through our charity Citizens Advice Gateshead and includes the work of our community interest company Society Matters, which campaigns and influences decision makers who operate the systems which impact the lives of our citizens.

In 2023/2024 we supported 20,000 people through our direct advice service, generating £27.3m of financial gains for our local economy.  Further, we supported more than 40 employers across the North East to develop strategies and ways of working to ease the impact of the cost of living crisis, benefitting a combined workforce of 40,000 employees across our region. 

Sherine Wheeler is Chief Executive of Fire Fighters Charity and an experienced charity leader, having previously held leadership roles at Mayhew, Action for Children, Marie Curie and Young Lives vs Cancer. She has also advised several charities on strategy, impact and performance.

Sherine specialises in working closely with boards and senior teams to influence and cultivate shared understanding of purpose, to clarify goals, and to develop strategies that drive meaningful and measurable impact.

Having a background in financial services, Sherine has commercial, risk and process expertise and has successfully led complex change initiatives of significant breadth and scope.

Sherine is passionate about the voluntary sector’s power to connect and mobilise people across systems and society to address the challenges we face today.