Our Associates
Tricia Wass Kim Aumann Frances Ellery Susy Taylor Jan Aram Gail Gray Yvonne Rivers
Tricia Wass
With a background in psychiatric nursing and counselling, Tricia has worked as a senior manager in the HIV and substance misuse fields before becoming an independent management consultant in 1996. Since that time she has worked with over 100 clients from the health and social care sector and has built up such a good reputation that many of her clients have continued to commission her over the past twenty two years. See Work with Organisations for a list of Tricia’s clients.
Kim Aumann
My work has always been in the social care and health fields, as a practitioner or, setting up and managing lively community-based projects and organisations. Now, I work independently, offering training, facilitation and supervision for individual practitioners and groups to build and nourish their ability and skill to do caring work well.
My education and training have been in community welfare, sociology, counselling, group work and research methods, with my roots in a person centred, humanistic approach. It is the application or the doing of the work that captures my attention the most. I am interested in how we connect with the work we do, and how we tap into different knowledge bases to reflect on our practice and advance ways to tackle work related challenges, social issues, and inequalities.
I started out as a community development worker and was employed for most of my career, as a manager of third sector organisations, including co-founding and directing the award-winning parent support charity Amaze (www.amazesussex.org.uk). Having worked with a social ecological view of resilience for many years, I co-created a community interest company with an academic partner, to pursue resilience research and practice (www.boingboing.org.uk). While I was a Visiting Fellow with the School of Health Sciences at the University of Brighton, I published on themes of community-university partnership working, parent carer support, and resilience. I am currently an associate with the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement (www.publicengagement.ac.uk) where I work with people from both universities and communities, to explore the art of partnership working, from a community perspective.
Frances Ellery
Frances Ellery was Head of Publications at Save the Children for 10 years and previously worked as a publications manager and editor in the voluntary sector. Specialist areas include international development, social policy, health, education, and women’s and children’s rights.
Frances has particular expertise in copywriting (feature articles, campaign reports, fundraising brochures, web copy) and editing (policy reports, practice guides, handbooks). Major clients include UNICEF, Save the Children, Clingendael (Dutch Institute of International Relations), PLAN International, Institute of Development Studies, Overseas Development Institute and Christian Aid.
Susy Taylor
Susy Taylor is an accredited community and workplace mediator. She is a Trustee of the Brighton and Hove Independent Mediation Service, where she is also a volunteer mediator. Susy has an MSc in Computer Science and also works as an IT consultant particularly with people and organisations for whom technology presents challenges. She worked in Primary Care NHS organisations for 30 years before changing career to concentrate on her work as a mediator and IT consultant. As an independent management consultant for the past 25 years, she has worked on projects in local government, NHS Trusts, Primary Care Trusts, with individual clients, independent companies and in the voluntary sector. Her major clients have included London Boroughs of Newham, Redbridge and Greenwich, Brighton and Hove City Council. Health and other organisations in Brighton, Lewisham, Southwark and Lambeth, Kings College Hospital, University of London and Quality Medical Solutions
Jan Aram
Jan has worked as a senior manager in both the private and voluntary sector and has developed a broad range of skills. She combines an understanding of the culture and values of the not-for profit sector with tried and tested business skills. In her early career she worked for an international advertising agency in London and on moving to Italy she set up and ran her own language school. Jan gained a post-graduate Diploma and MA in Teaching English as a Foreign Language and she became a qualified teacher trainer. In the UK she was Principal of an international language school in Hove and her marketing responsibilities enabled her to travel abroad extensively. Jan also began volunteering in the community and voluntary sector in Brighton first as a helpline volunteer with Survivors’ Network and subsequently as a Trustee then Chair of Threshold Women’s Mental Health Service. Moving from the private to community and voluntary sector she was employed for many years in a local infrastructure organisation, Brighton & Hove Impetus, supporting frontline organisations and projects with performance development and during this period she also became a registered PQASSO Assessor for the Charities Evaluation Service now part of National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO). Jan has particular interest and experience in: Interim management, monitoring and evaluation, training and facilitating, consultations and stakeholder engagement, performance development, case management supervision, governance, quality assurance and being a ‘critical friend’ to bid writers.
Gail Gray
Gail Gray is a highly skilled, successful, and dynamic strategic leader and manager with over 25 years’ experience in voluntary sector organisations in London and Sussex. Gail has qualifications in teaching, (B’Ed), social work work/probation (CQSW), Counselling (Diploma in Psychodynamic Counselling), and Management (Certificate in Management). Earlier on in her career she also worked in the statutory sector with adolescents, children and families, and in probation facilitating conditional group work programmes for offenders. Gail progressed from being a front line worker offering 1-1, group work support and counselling into management positions.
Her most recent appointment was as CEO of RISE a specialist domestic abuse charity based in Brighton and Hove and Sussex, which she successfully led through a rebrand, service redesign, increasing its profile, reach and its income by over 100%. In this role Gail was named as one of the top 100 influencers in Brighton & Hove for 2 years running. RISE became an award winning charity in 2014 and shortlisted for the National Equality awards in 2015 in the category of gender. Gail has expertise in organisational development and management, including change and crisis management, performance management, marketing and communications, fundraising, quality controls, managing complex partnerships and delivering trauma informed services. She has specialist expertise in gender equality and violence against women and girls. For 3 years Gail was a trustee of national Women’s Aid and in this role supported it through a significant time of change and growth.
Having achieved personal and professional goals working within organisations, Gail is now offering her skills and expertise as a consultant as well as enhancing her own professional development. She is particularly interested in offering non-managerial /clinical supervision to individuals, groups and teams.
Yvonne Rivers
As a facilitator, trainer and supervisor Yvonne works collaboratively to support community, voluntary and public organisations to work effectively together. She ensures spaces are held so that all the voices are welcomed into meetings; with a view to ensuring that the needs and priorities of diverse communities are included. She focuses on building robust relationships so that everyone can work together to determine shared goals, develop strategies and action plans as well as work through complexity and tricky issues which are part and parcel collaborative working.
Throughout her working life Yvonne have been actively involved in working with the questions, challenges and potential inherent in the interface between health and care. She has worked with community and voluntary sector organisations such as Islington Crossroads; providing home based support for disabled people and Trust for Developing Communities in Brighton. She also worked extensively with primary and public health commissioners and providers in developing health and care services to meet the needs of diverse communities. This has included work with Brighton and Hove and High Weald Lewes and Havens Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) and with Brighton and Hove City Council. In the Middle East and Pakistan she worked with Ministries of Health and Non-Governmental Organisations to develop health and care services that complemented each other in responding to the needs of local communities.
yvonne.rivers@yvonnerivers.co.uk