Our Boards

Trustees of Family for Every Child (UK)

Rita Panicker

Chair of the Board, India

Rita Panicker is the founder director of Butterflies, a non-governmental organization in New Delhi, working to protect & empower street connected children since 1989. Rita earned her MSW from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and a Masters in Development Studies from the Institute of Social Studies, Netherlands. She was a faculty member in the Women’s Studies Unit, at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and from 1988-1992, served as the Director of the Board of ChildHope. She has published several papers on child rights issues and also co-authored a study on children in conflict with law.

Blessing Mutama

Vice Chair, Zimbabwe

Blessing is the Director for Farm Orphan Support Trust of Zimbabwe (FOST), which solicits and facilitates support for orphans and vulnerable children especially those in farm communities in Zimbabwe. The FOST programme is based on the belief that orphaned children have the best opportunity for development within a family group, without sibling separation, in an environment that is familiar to them. Blessing is a seasoned development practitioner with over 20 years’ experience in NGO project design, planning, implementation, and Monitoring & Evaluation in the areas of Childhood Development, Rural Development, Education Development, Youth and Adolescents Development, Administration and Training Development and Management.

Alba El Badry

Member Trustee, Egypt

Dr. Abla El-Badry is the CEO of Hope Village of Society, Cairo.  She has 30 years of experience in the field of street-connected children, children at risk, women’s empowerment and in rehabilitating young street mothers who are victims of domestic violence and rape.

Abla created the Mobile Services Unit, which is a mechanism to attract and support street-connected children which was adopted by the Ministry of Social Solidarity and became a national project in 2017. Abla also established the Hope Fund to help families with income generating projects, and to help young graduates from social care institutions and integrate them into society.

Abla holds a Ph.D. in Psychological and Social Studies of Childhood and a Diploma in Human Rights with a focus on women from Lund University, Sweden.  Abla is a recipient of the Social Entrepreneurs Award from the Schwab Foundation at the World Economic Forum, and the award for Inspiring Female Personality in positive change from Global Thinkers Forum.

Chamreun Yaim

Member Trustee, Cambodia

Chamreun Yaim is the Executive Director of First Step Cambodia, a local non-governmental organization based in Phnom Penh, working to ensure all children in Cambodia live and grow up in a safe environment and are able to fulfill their potential.  Chamreun has spent 20 years in the social sector in Cambodia, working at grassroots levels to provide mental health, social welfare, and child welfare services to vulnerable populations throughout Cambodia.  Chamreun has contributed to numerous national and international alliances of civil society organizations working together to improve the lives of vulnerable children and families, sharing FSC’s expertise and initiating new research projects, both independent and collaborative.

Chaste Uwihoreye

Member Trustee, Rwanda

Chaste Uwihoreye is a Clinical Psychologist with 16 years of experience working with children, youth and families in Rwanda, and he is the Country Director of Uyisenga ni Imanzi. 

Chaste is a strong advocate for children’s rights, and is trained in trauma healing, individual transformation, family cohesion, community participation and team and peace building. Chaste has led rehabilitation trauma recovery programs for genocide survivors, women, young girls who have been raped, children from armed groups and those in conflict with the law.

Iván Zamora

Member Trustee, Chile

Ivan Zamora Zapata is the Executive Director of ONG Paicabi, having 35 years of experience. He holds a Social Worker Degree and has done his Masters in Social Management with specialisation in Social Communication. Ivan is based in Vina Del Mar, in Chile.

Joanna Trigg

Co-opted Trustee, UK

Jo brings broad experience of strategic communications, behaviour change campaigning and brand development to the Board. She is currently Director of Communications and Engagement at the Royal Academy of Engineering, a UK charity with a mission to deliver public benefit from engineering, and a leadership body that provides policy advice to government on behalf of the whole profession. Outside her day-to-day role, she has volunteered with a number of national and international charities supporting disadvantaged children.

Nick Scott

Co-opted Trustee, Spain

Patrick Obonyo

Co-opted Trustee for Family for Every Child and Trustee for Family Alliance, USA

Patrick sits on the Board of Family Alliance, US as well as the global Board. Patrick is a talented professional with extensive experience in philanthropy, organisational assessment and development, strategy development and programme management and fundraising. Early in his career, Patrick established an educational leadership development programme in East Africa. He later moved into philanthropy with a role at Porticus Amsterdam to advise the board on social investments. At the IKEA Foundation, Patrick currently manages programmes on Employment and Entrepreneurship. Patrick sits on the steering committee of the International Education Funders’ Group (IEFG). 

Phil Crosby

Treasurer and Co-opted Trustee of Family for Every Child, and Trustee of Family for Every Child New Zealand, UK

Phil is an accountant who has also worked extensively with HR, procurement, security, programme management, governance, strategy and other operational issues in a range of commercial and non-profit organizations varying in size from very large (international oil companies, UN, the EU) to very small NGOs in UK, Europe, Africa, South Asia and the Caribbean. He currently works providing audit, assurance and related services to a range of governmental and pan-governmental development institutions, mainly within Europe. Away from this work, Phil also works with Cambridge Institute of Sustainable Leadership as an assessor for Sustainable Finance and Communication courses, and acted as a trustee of charities working in international development and with refugees coming to the UK.

Ron Gutierrez

Member Trustee, USA

Trustees of Family for Every Child Trust (NZ)

Cassandra Dickinson

Chair, Family for Every Child New Zealand, New Zealand

Cassandra studied international business and non profit management and has undertaken postgraduate research in international development. She is passionate about seeing communities and families thrive and has run community programmes for disadvantaged youth in Fiji and the USA, and has supported asylum seeker families and refugee children in Australia. Cassandra is currently based in New Zealand working as the Quality Assurance Manager on engineering projects in South East Asia.

Danica Waiti

Trustee, Family for Every Child New Zealand, New Zealand

Danica Waiti is Maori (indigenous to Aotearoa New Zealand) and mother to two daughters. Her experience in indigenous development and international programming spans over 20 years. With a speciality in research, monitoring and evaluation she has provided technical advice to projects in the Pacific, South East Asia, the Caribbean, and North and East Africa, working alongside governments and civil society groups. Danica is experienced in programming that places children at the centre and seeks to address familial and societal challenges to improve the lives of these children.

Fi McPhee

Trustee, Family for Every Child New Zealand, New Zealand

Fi is the Managing Director of Revolutionise, an accelerator for people with purpose, and a Director of The Benchmarking Project. Fi works Non-Profit and For Purpose Organisations throughout Australasia and North America from her base in the inspiring South Island of New Zealand. Having led Australia & New Zealand’s largest fundraising benchmarking and analytics programs for over 15 years, Fi’s insight into the fundraising market is unparalleled. After 24 years working with non-profits across fundraising, organisational culture and strategic planning, and with extensive program implementation experience, Fi drives culture change, strategic development and execution of strategic plans helping teams accelerate their fundraising growth

Selar Henderson

Trustee, Family for Every Child New Zealand, New Zealand

Selar is the Founder and Managing Director of Future Value Global, a regenerative investment company, and is a values-based business advisor. He is an advocate and catalyst for transformational shifts to greater sustainability in human activities and a more democratic economy that creates wealth for the many, not the few. He believes in the generation of social impact benefits through the implementation of material accountability in business, and the application of regenerative investment to achieve social and environmental outcomes, alongside financial return, for long-term community wellbeing.

Trustees of Family Alliance (US)

Charlotte Brandin

Trustee, Family Alliance, USA

Charlotte Brandin has been active within the nonprofit & philanthropic sector for almost 30 years. She began her career at Planned Parenthood S.F, and co-founded the Welfare Made A Difference Campaign for which she lobbied in the U.S. Congress. She continues to promote children’s rights and protection issues as an advisor for BRY, Hello Future and volunteer COO at Global Health Promise. Charlotte served as Executive Director for Childhood USA for thirteen years, and as Board member and Executive Chairperson at Charity Rating. Previously Trustee and then Consultant for Family Alliance, she is currently Strategic Facilitator at Natural Creativity Center. Most recently she completed certification training as a Doula.  

Kristina Vér Foley

Trustee, Family Alliance, USA

Kristina Vér Foley is a partnership builder, fundraiser and strategic communicator. She has over a decade of executive-level experience in both US and international non-profits built across the fields of child rights and care, youth development and employability, education and healthcare.

Kristina currently serves as Managing Director, US for Salzburg Global Seminar, an independent non-profit organization founded in 1947 with a mission to challenge current and future leaders to shape a better world. Previously, Kristina served the National Court Appointed Special Advocate/Guardian ad Litem (CASA/GAL) Association for Children as Chief Communications Officer and was a member of SOS Children’s Villages International’s global leadership team, first as International Director of Communications and Brand and subsequently as Chief of Staff.

Sheela Bowler

Trustee, Family Alliance, USA

Sheela Bowler, MPH, MEd, is a social entrepreneur working at the intersection of early childhood development (ECD), child health, and child protection – focusing her career on building child wellbeing systems that enable families to thrive together. Sheela was the founding COO of Kidogo, Senior Program Consultant for the African Early Childhood Network, and Senior Advisor for Programs Strategy at NYC’s Administration for Children’s Services. She is currently Foster America’s first Director of Strategic Initiatives and Innovation, where she co-designs reform projects alongside public child welfare agencies to create transformative change for children and families nationwide. 

Sonya Soni

Trustee, Family Alliance, USA

Sonya is a medical anthropologist and community organizer, working at the intersection between child health and child rights to decolonize child welfare systems in India and the United States, and helping build a movement to end the orphanage industrial complex globally. She is currently a fellow placed at the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health through Foster America, a non-profit organization that aims to build more just, holistic local child welfare systems across the United States. She has worked in the U.S., South Asia, and East Africa for various child-focused community-based organizations, with a commitment to building partnerships between community-led organizations and governments, and institutionalizing community voice in systemic policy change. She also co-leads the Akhil Bharitya Mahila Ashram, a multi-generational girls’ and widows’ rights NGO in Dehra Dun, India. 

Tom Lent

President, Family Alliance, USA

A passionate advocate for the cause of children around the world, Tom Lent is an unrivaled expert in international development. He has over 40 years of experience in integrated development and advocacy in human rights, gender, disaster relief, and education-sector reform. Tom’s vast experience includes serving as an adviser to the Ministry of Education in Guatemala; running an international project for the Bernard Van Leer Foundation on early childhood development; founding the “Social Movement for Child Rights” In Guatemala, and forming “the circle of learning on child rights and municipalities” in Central America with UNICEF, Plan International and national-regional NGOs. He is currently a consultant and an Adjunct Professor at the American University.