Our Trustees and Senior Management Team

Nick Grinham

Chair of Trustees

Nick is our chair of trustees and brings with him plenty of skills and experience to lead an effective trustee board.

He has a huge amount of experience leading large diverse teams across the world and has worked in a variety of sectors including retail and publishing as well as oil and gas. He’s got senior leadership level experience in Human Resources, business strategy, transformation and Information Technology. His passion and promotion of inclusion in the workplace that drove him to look at trustee positions and, luckily for us, to join our trustee board.

Having now retired, Nick has more time for his hobbies including travel, walking and sports (especially football and cricket).

Francis Chiwariro

Treasurer

Francis is an experienced Chartered Management Accountant who has worked in a variety of roles across higher education, healthcare, and international development. He brings to our board strong financial knowledge and leadership. He is a Director of Finance at WorldSkills UK. Francis is also a Trustee/Non - executive Director at Greywood Multi-School Trust and sits on their Audit and Finance committee. He is passionate about social justice and equality.

Francis is an associate member of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants and has a BA (Hons) in Accountancy and an MSc in NGO and development management.

Harish Jani (Abacus Llp.)

Trustee

Harish Jani is a Chartered Accountant who qualified with Coopers & Lybrand now called PWC. Harish was engaged in high profile audits of banks and commodity dealers and carried out consultancy work on national organisations.

The lure of the private sector beckoned. He spent the next 15 years at Mercedes-Benz which was his childhood dream of driving around in posh cars! He carried out a variety of financial and operations roles. After moving on from Mercedes Harish spent a few more years in the motor industry working with other brands.

Harish is also known as Hari in his business circles.

Having tired of cars and material possessions (as one does), Hari changed the next phase of his career towards healthcare and had quite an immersive spell in this sector. It is during this time in his career, that he acquired even a more humane and caring focus.

However, he then had a quite a challenging and interesting offer from Crystal Palace Football Club. His last twelve years of working career were spent in reshaping and helping the club achieve the promotion to Premier League. There was a real connection with the fan base and local community and its people, and his empathy grew even more on human spirit and endeavour. Of course, it was hugely demanding. Each season had new challenges.

When the retirement time came around the age of 70, Harish decided to do an MBA at Cass Business School (now known as Bayes Business School. It is highly ranked as one of the top business schools in the world and part of the UCL. Just to continue on the theme of lifelong learning he has also done a couple of other courses at Yale and Princeton.

Harish strongly believes in social justice and has a very keen interest in ensuring that people live their lives with dignity and freedom. He also decided to join as a Trustee of Quo Vadis which is a housing association in South London.

Harish is also a Treasurer Trustee for ENN which is an international charity which works with UNESCO and Gate Foundation and Irish’s Aid and is helping with nutrition specially for infants and younger generations across the less fortunate parts of the world. There is good spectrum of local, national and international flavour in Harish’s work and passion.

Tricia Nicoll

Trustee

Tricia lives in Reading and began her career in 1989 as a teacher of children with
learning disabilities. This early experience made her passionate about inclusive education for all children. She is a long-term avoider of mental health services and has a history in the mental health survivor movement.

She has worked in the advocacy sector, running Skills for People, a user-led organisation in Newcastle upon Tyne, and she was part of the national Valuing People Support Team, working as the Northeast Regional Advisor and holding the national lead role for Advocacy and Involvement/Leadership. As people started getting interested in the ideas around self-directed support and personal budgets, she moved to the Department of Health Personalisation team and worked on personal budgets, developing the Citizen Leaders and Having a Voice programmes which explored how people with lived experience can contribute genuinely and effectively as policy is both written and put into practice. She worked on the Getting a Life programme; the precursor to Preparing for Adulthood.

Since 2008, Tricia has worked for herself, exploring how we can organise support so that people really do get Gloriously Ordinary Lives. Tricia is committed to the principles (and practice) of building genuinely inclusive communities. She has a foster son who loves drawing and foster daughter who is a princess, both of whom happen to be autistic. She loves sunshine, cats, swimming in open water and good food and wine.

Brian Frisby

Trustee

Brian is a qualified and registered social worker, manager and leader with significant experience in a breadth of social care roles. He is a champion of ordinary living, dignity, personalisation and building community capacity. He has been at the forefront of adult social care transformation in senior leadership roles both nationally and alongside a number of local authorities.

He has written and contributed to a number of publications and has presented at many conferences about: service quality in the personal social services, the use of assistive technology to support people with dementia and their carers, personalisation and building community capacity/prevention.

It is clear to see why Brian wanted to share his skills as a member of the KeyRing board. Brian challenges the KeyRing team and ensures the people we support are front and centre in all that we do.

Shaun Webster

Trustee

Shaun is an International Project Worker and Volunteer Development Worker at CHANGE, a human rights organisation led by disabled people. He has worked there for over 10 years, campaigning internationally for the rights of people with learning disabilities, delivering training and managing volunteers.

In 2016 he was given an MBE for his work.

He is also a KeyRing Member in our Rotherham network.

Natalie Harris

Trustee

Natalie is an experienced KeyRing Member. Her background of getting social care support means that she adds valuable insight to the board of trustees.

Natalie is passionate that everyone has something to share and is frequently heard saying ‘If I can do it anyone can’. She is an inspiration to other Members especially when talking about her experiences in the world of work and the positive impact work has on her life. She is a great spokesperson about the power of great support and has presented at several events including a global event that showcased KeyRing’s work with the World Health Organisation.

Natalie says:
“I want to be a trustee to share ideas on how best KeyRing can use money for their services, as well as look at ways to enhance the support that's needed for both Members and the organisation.”

Richard Hyams

Trustee

Richard has over two decades of Information Technology and cyber security knowledge and expertise. He has a Masters in Information security and a number of industry security certifications.

His experience in both public and private sector organisations led to an extensive knowledge of data security solutions. He has offered advice and guidance to a number of non-profits to protect them and their supporters from cyber attack. Having worked for KeyRing in the past, he has an insight into all aspects of KeyRing and the people that we support. It was a pleasure to welcome him back as a member of our trustee board.

Paul Rackham

Trustee

Paul is an experienced Head of Social Care and Health Commissioning with a strong values based approach and a demonstrated history of working with people who use services, their families and communities and the large and small organisations that support them.

Andrea Wiggins

Trustee

Andrea is Chief Executive of Involve Kent; an organisation working across Kent to build communities and empower people within those communities. Involve does this by Navigation, social prescribing, as well as building connections.

Andrea has spent her career working in not-for-profit organisations predominately supporting people with learning disabilities.

Andrea started her career as a support worker and has worked in various roles since including campaigning, Quality Assurance, Operational Management and advocacy. Andrea has been drawn to supporting people with the most complicated backgrounds living complicated lives. often around service development and transformation. Andrea is a trustee of BILD and volunteers for Charity Mentors Kent and Medway.

Karyn Kirkpatrick

Chief Executive Officer

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Karyn Kirkpatrick (PgDip, RNLD, LLB) is our Chief Executive. She is passionate about people having their own homes lives and voices in their local community. Having started her career as a Learning Disability Nurse, Karyn moved to work with advocacy and advice organisations. From there she joined KeyRing where people were getting the type of support and connection that Karyn felt they needed.

She is keen that people with support needs have employment opportunities and is leading KeyRing through several ongoing projects to make employment a reality for their Members.

She has previously taken on roles on the boards of Learning Disability England and Neighborhood Networks and a seconded role as the Valuing People Housing Lead.

Karyn loves the great outdoors and often spends her holidays in her campervan with family, friends and her ridiculous chihuahua.

Helen Bradley

Director of Resources

A photo of Helen outdoors crouching down with her dog.

Helen Bradley (MCIPD) is a Human Resources professional of over 25 years and has been part of the KeyRing team for over 10 of those. Her role as Director of Resources is varied and busy, overseeing Human Resources, Information Technology and Central Administration.

Helen developed her skills across a broad spectrum of sectors including hospitality, finance, power generation and food manufacturing. She describes her experience of working for KeyRing in the charity sector as her natural home.

Helen has a passion about people being seen as the person they are first and foremost, and what talents and skills they have rather than being defined by a disability. She believes that society should be fully accessible to all, and that support should always be exactly what the individual wants.

Having previously been a trustee and Chair of a Leeds based Advocacy organisation, she is now interested in supporting small organisations local to where she lives

Living in the Yorkshire Dales Helen's favourite activities are walking her dog and taking a dip in very cold rivers. She also loves to cook, whilst spending time with her family and friends

Theresa Egbuniwe

Finance Manager

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Theresa Egbuniwe started her career in audit, working with an accountancy firm in Nigeria. She joined KeyRing in 2007 as the Finance Assistant and has since become the Finance Manager. Theresa is responsible for KeyRing’s financial affairs and oversees its finance department.

Theresa is a fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) and holds BA (Hons) and an MSc in Accounting and Finance.

Theresa enjoys reading in her spare time, taking walks with her family and watching her sons play in football matches.

Tracy Hammond

Research and Innovation Director

Tracy Hammond (Dip Mgmt (Open)) joined KeyRing in 2001 but her first career was an equestrian one. Whilst working as Chief Instructor at a riding centre for the disabled she became curious about ‘what makes people tick’, and this has been a theme for the rest of her working life!

She went on to work with people who were said to have behavioural support needs and concluded that the logical result of many services is behaviour that challenges.

Tracy joined KeyRing on a temporary contract. She has since had a variety of roles within the organisation, working in areas such as development, engagement, and communication. She has led KeyRing’s Criminal Justice policy work for many years and is passionate about getting the stories of people who have been poorly served by the system into the domain of decision makers.

Following a period of secondment, Tracy returned to KeyRing as Research and Innovation Director. Her current role includes identifying great ideas and supporting them to get off the ground.

When not at work, Tracy can usually be found riding her horse in the Welsh mountains or doing dressage.