WBG Management Committee

Janet Veitch, Co-Chair
Janet is the Director of the Women's National Commission, the Government's independent advisory body on women. She joined the Management Committee in 1999 in order to support the WBG's contacts across Government, helping to organise meetings with officials and ministers. The WBG is one of the WNC's 200+ partner organisations and many WBG members are also WNC partners.

Hilary Fisher, Co-Chair

Hilary is Director of End Child Poverty. She joined the organization in May 2006 to lead a major campaigning push by charities and others working with children and families to challenge public attitudes to poverty in the UK and campaign for an end to child poverty.

Hilary is currently Chair of the Council of Europe Expert Task Force on violence against women, including Domestic Violence. The Task Force is a Council of Europe sui generis ad-hoc committee directly answerable to the Committee of Ministers. The Task Force drafted the blueprint for the Pan – European Campaign to Combat Violence against Women launched in Madrid in November 2006.

Hilary joins End Child Poverty from Amnesty International (AI) where she managed the global campaign to Stop Violence Against Women.

Clare Cochrane, Co-Chair

Clare Cochrane is responsible for developing the Attitudes and Beliefs strategy at Oxfam UK Poverty Programme. She has spent the last six years working in the UK anti-poverty sector, first with Groundswell, which supports homeless people's self-help and user-involvement initiatives, and then with Oxfam where she ran the Get Heard project, which enabled groups of people with experience of poverty to feed their views into the 2006 National Action Plan on Social Inclusion. From 1996 to 2001 Clare worked in financial and trade publishing in Asia. Clare has been involved as a volunteer and worker in grassroots social change for more than 20 years, in Hong Kong and the UK.

Sue Smith

Sue works in Oxfam's UK Poverty Programme as Gender Adviser as part of the Programme's Capacity Building Team, and leads on Oxfam's UK work on gender equality and diversity. Based on its international work, Oxfam takes a gender lens to poverty in the UK, in which an analysis of how poverty affects women and men differently, and how gender relations can exacerbate poverty, is a key perspective. Sue has worked for Oxfam for the last ten years, as Resource Officer in the Gender and Development Unit, and Information Manager in the Oxfam's Policy Department. She has edited Links, Oxfam's newsletter on gender and development, for five years. Her previous work includes teaching in the Middle East, and lecturing in further education.

Louise Tilbury

Louise worked for 8 years in Whitehall, leading on gendered issues, from teenage pregnancy to childcare and maternity pay. In 2003, she worked closely with the WBG on the gender analysis of tax credits. In 2005, Louise sat on the first steering group for the Voices of Experience particpatory research, led by the WBG.

Louisa Darian

Louisa is a policy officer at the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, working on funding policy. Before that she worked at YWCA England & Wales, specialising in young women's poverty. She has a Masters in Comparative Social Policy, where she looked at support for lone mothers from an international perspective.

Sheila Quinn

Sheila is a freelance consultant and has considerable experience and expertise in gender mainstreaming and gender budgeting, particularly in the development and delivery of training. She has previously worked with UNDP, UNIFEM and is about to take on a 3-year commitment with USAID to deliver training and consultancy on gender budgeting.

Pam Fitzpatrick

Pam works for Child Poverty Action Group and is a co-author of a number of books related to poverty and welfare rights aswell as a visiting lecturer at Kings College . Previous employment includes being a policy advisor at Family Rights Group, visiting lecturer London Metropolitan University to social policy and law students, and over a decade representing claimants before the social security commissioners for Citizens Advice.

Pam Wain, Treasurer

Iman Achara

Narmada Thirangama

Narmada is the Women's Equality Policy Officer for the Trades Union Congress, leading on the TUC's work on issues affecting women in the workplace and beyond, such as unequal pay, occupational segregation, women's poverty and violence against women . Previously, she worked as a Senior Official on Equality and Training for a teachers' trade union, NASUWT. She has also served as a Trustee for a Women's Domestic Violence Refuge (Kiran) and has long had active involvement on issues relating to women in Sri Lanka, particularly on human rights and democratic participation.