Our people

Maria is an experienced executive and non-executive board director, and her professional expertise is in communications, holding several Board positions, before 19 years of public service as a Member of Parliament. Whilst in Parliament Maria successfully campaigned for change on a wide range of issues, including working with the Law Commission, to make it a crime to share sexual images online without consent and building a coalition of MPs from all Parties to make Relationships Education mandatory for all school age children. Maria was appointed Secretary of State for Culture Media and Sport by David Cameron in 2012, and also held the positions of Minister for Women & Equalities and Minister for Disabled People. Maria’s proudest achievements were changing the law to make same-sex marriage legal, and establishing the Women and Equalities Select Committee, to ensure proper scrutiny of all equalities policies. In Parliament Maria was a champion for domestic abuse, co-chairing the All Party Parliamentary Group on domestic violence and being appointed to chair the Joint Parliamentary scrutiny of the Domestic Abuse Bill. Maria was awarded a Damehood by Her Majesty The Queen in 2022 in recognition of her national contribution to equality issues.

Zoë Billingham CBE was Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary where she had a particular focus on domestic abuse and ending violence against women and girls. A lawyer by background she has worked in Whitehall and local government. She has recently been appointed as Chair of an NHS Mental Health Trust.

Shana Begum is the founder of St Helens the Best Me CIC, a by and for grassroots organisation, led and run by volunteers in the community with lived experience of adverse childhood experience and domestic abuse. The coaching, training and consultancy CIC aims to fill in the gaps that are normally left behind, breaking the cycle of domestic abuse and helping survivors process trauma. Shana is also a local government officer and domestic abuse trainer with 25 years of lived experience of domestic abuse, honour-based abuse, and forced marriage. Shana uses her lived experience in research and policy development to help change systems, and supports organisations to become more inclusive and diverse for marginalised communities and neurodiverse people.

Liz Hughes is a Chief Superintendent in Avon and Somerset Constabulary, her responsibilities include leading the response to Neighbourhood Policing and Partnerships across the force area. She has been a police officer for over twenty five years, working in many roles and ranks across urban and rural areas. In 2013, Liz worked on a national level with the Home Office and Her Majesty’s Inspectorate to address and improve the policing response to domestic abuse. She supported the national rollout of legislation such as Domestic Violence Protection Orders and the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme and was recognised by the College of Policing for her work and commitment.

Tim Symington runs his own consulting business, helping a range of public and private sector organisations to manage security risks. He has a background in security and crime prevention having held senior roles in the Ministry of Defence and the National Crime Agency, where he was a Board member from 2013 to 2018. Tim is also trustee and treasurer of the Hospice of St Francis and a senior visiting research fellow at Kings College London.

Emily Hawkins-Longley has over 20 years experience in HR. She has spent the majority of her career working in the media industry, looking after titles such as Vogue, GQ, Elle, Women’s Health, Good Housekeeping, Dazed and is currently HR Director at Hello! Magazine.

Emily has also been a volunteer with Victim Support for over 4 years, supporting victims of Domestic abuse, stalking and serious sexual violence.

Patrick Mitchell is a independent healthcare consultant having spent 38 years service in the NHS where he worked in numerous Board roles at Health Education England leading national programmes and workforce development, and in medical and dental education at the Department of Health. He previously held positions as Chief Operating Officer/Deputy Chief Executive at St George’s Healthcare NHS Trust, and Director for Operations at Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Trust. He also spent time in PwC in their California practice in San Francisco.

His areas of interest and expertise are in workforce transformation, digital technologies supporting education delivery, online learning and digital skills development, and knowledge management & library services.

He oversaw the widely acclaimed Topol Review, led by Dr Eric Topol of the Scripps Institute in San Diego, which investigated the impact of digital technologies on the NHS workforce.

He has recently stepped down as Vice Chair of Framework, a large homeless charity covering the East Midlands having served two terms of office. He currently is Chair of Healthwatch Lambeth, the consumer arm of the NHS and care sectors.

Rebecca Handley is a Partner at Pagefield, where she provides strategic corporate communications advice to clients, across public affairs and public relations. She works with clients to help build and protect their reputations, helping them to engage with relevant stakeholders across the media and politics.

Rebecca was a Labour Party Councillor in the London Borough of Southwark from 2012 – 2022, during which time she chaired the Borough’s Health Committee for 5 years, and went on to hold roles including Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Finance, Performance & Democracy.

Mhairi McGowan is an independent VAW consultant involved in delivering training, developing and managing a variety of projects and facilitating discussions between various strategic and operational agencies to find solutions. In a career that has spanned nearly 50 years Mhairi has worked in the Civil Service, the trade union movement and the Violence Against Women movement. Her particular focus throughout has been bringing people together to understand and respond either operationally or strategically to important issues. Mhairi helped set up the first women’s refuge in Greater Easterhouse in Glasgow and managed the first court based domestic abuse advocacy service in Scotland. She has worked with COPFS, Police Scotland and the Scottish Government a range of issues including the development of the Scottish equivalent of Claire’s Law (the Disclosure Scheme for Domestic Abuse in Scotland) and the DA (Scotland) Act that criminalised coercive control.

Anna Mitchell is the UK Lead and Special Projects Manager for the Safe & Together Institute. The Institute’s mission is to create, nurture and sustain a global network of domestic violence-informed child welfare professionals, communities and systems. Anna has worked in violence against women services and operational and strategic roles within local and national government for more than twenty years. Anna has a passion and commitment to advancing systemic responses to domestic abuse to partner with survivors, intervene with perpetrators and improve outcomes for families.

Girijamba Polubothu is the manager of Shakti Women’s Aid in Edinburgh which also has an outreach service in Fife Tayside and Forth Valley in Scotland. She has worked extensively with minority ethnic organisations and has been working with Shakti Women’s Aid for the past 19 years. She currently sits on the Scottish Government’s Forced Marriage Network Group and has been actively involved in drafting the Forced Marriage etc. (Protection and Jurisdiction) (Scotland) Act 2011, the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill which criminalises forced marriage and Multi agency practice guidelines – handling cases of forced marriage. She is also one of the Forced Marriage Commissioners (National Commission on Forced Marriage). Girijamba an active member of the National No Recourse to Public Funds Campaign Group lead by Southall Black Sisters and is locally involved with various Violence Against Women Partnerships and, Edinburgh’s Marac and Cross Party group – Men’s Violence against Women and Children.

Dr Christine Goodall is a Senior Clinical Lecturer and Honorary Consultant in Oral Surgery at The University of Glasgow’s School of Medicine Dentistry and Nursing. She trained in Academic Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery in Glasgow and Aberdeen and it was her work with facial trauma patients over many years that led to her founding the charity Medics Against Violence in 2008. Medics against Violence aims to prevent violence and reduce injury. They work in schools to help young people understand the consequences of violence from a health perspective. They also developed and provide training on domestic abuse, rape and sexual assault for health professionals, and others in front facing roles, through their Ask Support Care programme. They work in partnership with the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit to run the hospital based violence intervention programme, Navigator.Christine’s research interests lie in the fields of alcohol, violence and facial trauma. She is an Honorary Member of the Faculty of Public Health and was awarded and OBE for her work in violence prevention in 2016.

John Devaney is the Centenary Professor of Social Work at the University of Edinburgh. He practised as a social worker for nearly 20 years in various roles, and his research relates to domestic abuse, the impact of adversity in childhood across the lifecourse, and child maltreatment. He has published three books and numerous articles on domestic abuse arising from his research. He has provided expert advice to government’s throughout Europe on their strategies and approaches to addressing domestic abuse, and initiated the now biennial European Conference on Domestic Violence. He is currently an invited member of the Scottish Government’s working group on misogyny and criminal justice.

Rory Macrae has worked in domestic abuse interventions for over thirty years, developing, delivering and managing both court mandated and non court mandated behaviour change programmes for abusing men with integrated women’s and children’s services. Rory was one of the authors of the original practice manuals for the Caledonian system published in 2009 and oversaw the rewriting of these manuals in 2017. He is currently the National Co-ordinator of the Caledonian, overseeing its implementation in 19 of Scotland’s local authorities.

Katie Cosgrove, formerly of NHS Health Scotland and Public Health Scotland.