Hear from our Trustees in the series of videos below:
Christopher French
Christopher’s day job is as a Senior Associate at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), where he project manages large public sector programmes and carries out reviews of governance at large public organisations.
Prior to this role, he was a regulator working for one of the largest statutory healthcare professional regulators in the UK, first as the manager of the international application process and then as operations manager in the investigations team.
He became aware of the work that Consortium do and they support they provided, when creating the LGBT+ community organisation, Lambeth Links. As Chair of Lambeth Links, Christopher has established a group of trustees to help run the organisation and raised the profile of Lambeth Links with service providers and other third sector / voluntary organisations.
A resident of Lambeth, Christopher enjoys walking throughout the borough and is an unashamed sci-fi fan!
Rico Jacob Chace
Rico is a Director at Trans Actual CIC and has a wealth of experience in tackling transphobia and racism. He is also a full time diversity consultant, passionate about tackling misinformation and creating strong allies in the public and private sectors.
Rico also brings his financial industry background to support our continued development as our Treasurer.
Rico has engaged extensively with Consortium's work over the last couple of years, helping to build the Equity Fund, engaging with our London team and speaking at our Trans events.
Leni Candan
Leni is a senior charity communications leader. Over the last 7 years, she has worked with a wide range of charities and political organisations in communications roles, including for LGBT+ causes.
She is passionate about building up the capacity of the LGBT+ sector and improving collaboration.
Emily Macaulay MBE
Emily based in Exeter, Devon has been working in the public sector since 2004 having completed an undergraduate and postgraduate degree in Criminology.
Initially working in the criminal justice system within Devon and Cornwall she led on a range of community engagement work. Also in that time she was elected Chair of the Gay Police Association, a staff support group for members of the policing family that identified as LGB/T. It was this work that saw Emily awarded an MBE for services to equality and diversity.
She is an outgoing Trustee for Libraries Unlimited SW, an Alumni Fellow for The Nottingham Trent University and the Independent Member for the Police and Crime Panel for Devon, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.
In all roles, as well as her day job, Emily has developed a strong background in governance and scrutiny and is passionate about the social impact organisations can have.
Professor Elizabeth McDermott
Liz is a Professor of Health Inequality in the Faculty of Health & Medicine at Lancaster University. She is a public health specialist in young people’s mental health. Her research is focussed upon explaining why there are inequalities in young people’s mental health, and unravelling the mechanisms by which poor mental health is distributed unfairly across the adolescent and young adult population.
Over the last two decades this research has concentrated on understanding why LGBTQ+ young people have elevated rates of poor mental health. As Chief Investigator, she has completed numerous studies investigating LGBTQ+ youth mental health and advises various UK Government departments on national policies which attempt to tackle this inequality.
Her book titled: ‘Queer Youth, Suicide and Self-Harm: Troubled Subjects, Troubling Norms’ (Palgrave Macmillan) was published in 2016. She is currently leading a 3 year UK national study funded by the NIHR which identifies and evaluates early intervention mental health support for LGBTQ+ youth.
Hannah Pittman
Hannah is one of the founding members of the committee for Pluto MCR, a social group for asexual and aromantic people in the Greater Manchester area and a Consortium Member organisation. She has also recently set up TRACE (Trans Respect Advocacy in Care Employment), a campaign to provide support to other trans people in the care sector, and encourage greater trans inclusion.
Hannah is passionate about the importance of empowered, supportive and organised community activity in furthering LGBT+ rights.
Louie Stafford
Louie had been searching for an opportunity to use both their lived and professional experiences in a board-level role and felt Consortium was a great fit.
Louie is the Managing Director of Member organisation Learnest, a social business set up to develop meaningful work opportunities that change the lives and prospects of people affected by transphobia, biphobia and homophobia in the workplace and wider society.
Louie has worked for a number of LGBT+ third sector organisations and has been engaged with Consortium's work, particularly through our Trans Organisations Network.
Pavlo Cherednychenko
Pavlo is a public accountant with over 15 years of experience of auditing and advising large and listed businesses across multiple jurisdictions. He identifies as cis/gay man, originally from the south of Ukraine but calls the UK and London his home since December 2010.
Pavlo brings the lived experience of being gay and being brought up in orthodox Christian tradition by his family. He currently works as Audit Director at Mazars having been originally trained with Big4 firm (EY), he also chairs Mazars’ LGBT+ network and recently took part in CorporateQueer independent photoshoot to raise the visibility of queer people in the corporate sector in the City.