Our Board of Trustees govern the charity and direct how it is managed and run. They make sure that we respond to the needs of children in line with our vision and mission, and that we spend our supporters’ money as efficiently as possible.
Led by our Chair, Martina Larkin, they also see that we adhere to charity guidelines and fundraising standards and monitor our annual progress, income and expenditure against our strategic objectives.
Read below to learn more about our Trustees and the knowledge and leadership experience they bring to Hope and Homes for Children from the international development, corporate and legal sectors.
Simi Dubb
Simi is passionate about putting talent, development and inclusion at the centre of business decision-making, believing that the way businesses engage and develop talent are key drivers of both competitive advantage and successful business change. Throughout her career, which includes senior global roles across the people agenda at Citi, Centrica, Fidelity International, Royal Bank of Scotland, BT Group, HSBC and Royal Bank of Canada, she has been a strong advocate for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and having a ‘high performance culture’ through active talent management.
Simi’s commitment in this vital area includes involvement in the Women On Boards (Davies Report), Steering Committee at the Royal Academy of Engineering, and lobbying with Government in the House of Commons to change legislation for working carers in the UK.
Simi holds a Master’s degree in Individual and Organisation Development, and is a guest lecturer at King’s University in London, teaching Masters students how to develop a commercial business case for HR with in purpose led organisations. She is on the Advisory Board for Investment News covering global DEI topics.
Paul Farthing
Paul’s career has been in fundraising and marketing for good causes for over three decades. He began in small campaign organisations seeking political change, before helping to establish Young Minds, the children mental health charity. He then moved across to charity-specialist marketing and communications agencies, first with Burnett Associates and then Target Direct, eventually becoming its Managing Director. He worked with clients such as The National Trust, Greenpeace International, Médecins Sans Frontières, Red Cross, Feed the Children and The Romanian Orphanage Trust. He was also a regular conference contributor in the UK, Europe and North America.
He then switched to senior fundraising and communication roles at Cancer Research UK, Age UK/Age International, NSPCC and The Children’s Trust, before joining Shooting Star Children’s Hospices as Chief Executive in September 2021. He also sits as the children’s hospice representative on the Hospice Uk Advisory Council.
During this time as a senior fundraiser, he joined the Board and then became Chair of the International Fundraising Congress, which brings together fundraisers from across the globe.
His experience also includes eight years as a local authority councillor, including as Chair of Housing, and Vice-Chair Social Services with responsibility for children, and he gained his MBA from Warwick University.
He is currently a trustee of Surrey Youth Focus and Elizabeth’s Children Charitable Trust, and ex-trustee for The Fairtrade Foundation.
He lives in West Sussex with his partner and two daughters and spends his spare time reading history and taking the early footsteps to an interest in wine appreciation.
John Good
John has spent his career working in finance in both the profit and not-for-profit sectors. Following nearly 20 years working for Cadbury Schweppes, he has worked for the past 18 years in the not-for-profit sector at Leonard Cheshire, International Planned Parenthood and ActionAid where he was Interim CEO and Chief Operating Officer for ActionAid UK. He is currently Treasurer and a trustee of Watford Mencap.
Ian Haslegrave
Ian is currently the Group General Counsel & Company Secretary at ofi, a leading global food group offering naturally good food and beverage ingredients and solutions. The Group operates in over 50 countries, sources from over 2.75 m farmers and has over 20,000 employees. Ian is based in London and has responsibilities globally for the legal, compliance and company secretarial functions.
Ian holds 30 years of experience that include blue chip international listed companies across a diverse range of sectors (food, media and distribution). He carries significant commercial and management experience, extensive M&A as well as leading key global initiatives outside of his core responsibilities.
During his 15 years at RS Group PLC (a global FTSE 100 listed company), Ian played multiple roles that included the General Counsel and Company Secretary as well as handling other key global responsibilities including HR, Compliance, Indirect Procurement, Risk, and Information Security. Ian’s previous stints included time with Viacom Outdoor, United Biscuits plc, and Freshfields
Kristina Hedderly-Perez
Kristina Hedderly-Perez is the Executive Director of Fundraising and Communications at youth homelessness charity Depaul UK. Kristina has worked in Communications and Fundraising roles over the past 20 years, specialising in public fundraising and communications.
Before starting at Depaul UK, Kristina worked in the International Development sector with INGOs including ActionAid International, Action Against Hunger and CAFOD. She also spent two years as operations manager of a social housing charity in Guatemala.
Kristina is a passionate advocate for the rights of children including their right to a safe and loving home.
Dr Maria Herczog
Maria Herczog PhD is an economist and sociologist, and a visiting senior lecturer at ELTE Budapest Law Faculty. Dr Herczog teaches on child rights, mediation and child protection. She has been the chair and program director of the Family Child Youth Association in Budapest, Hungary since 1993, and has been teaching child welfare, child protection and conflict resolution at different universities and on other vocational courses since 1989.
Dr Herczog has been undertaking research on child welfare, child protection, child rights, family matters and conflict resolution for more than 30 years. She is the author of several books, book chapters and journal articles.
A frequent speaker at national and international conferences and in the media, Dr Herczog has been working with UNICEF, Council of Europe and WHO as a temporary scientific expert for many years. She was a member of the UN Committee on the Rights of Child between 2007–15, a founding member of Eurochild, and served as its president between 2010–16, member and later president of ExCO of Child Rights Connect between 2018-24. She has also been a member of the Board of Learning for Wellbeing Foundations since 2014 and president of Missing Children Europe since December 2023.
Martina Larkin (Chair)
Martina Larkin is a global executive and board director and an expert on leading global institutions through transformational change. She has launched numerous large-scale organisations and networks addressing global challenges including emerging technologies, geopolitics, economics and public policy. Most recently she was CEO of Project Liberty (2022-2024), a global foundation advancing the responsible development of the internet and AI. Prior to that she was VP of Global Issues at System, an AI start-up developing a systems-based approach to organise the world’s data and knowledge. Previously she spent 16 years at the World Economic Forum, where she was a member of the Executive Committee and held various roles, including Head of Europe and Eurasia, where she was advising leaders from business, government, and civil society building large-scale public private partnerships. Under her leadership she grew the Forum’s think tank (Global Agenda Councils) to a network of over 5,000 experts, globally developing insights for the Davos meetings, regional meetings and institutional projects.
She also oversaw the development of the Forum’s youth foundation (Young Global Leaders), a foundation dedicated to fostering youth leadership. Earlier in her career, she was Associate Vice President at Lazar & Company, a New York based investment bank, and held positions at Nestlé Switzerland.
Martina is a member of several non-profit boards, including the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) of the European Commission; the international advisory panel for the Future of Science and Technology of the European Parliament; SITRA, Finland’s innovation think tank; and Deusto University in Spain. She also serves as a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations and is a fellow at Yale University.
She speaks English, French and German fluently, and lives in London with her family.
Girish Menon
Girish Menon has worked in social development for over three decades. He started his career with the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme, an Indian NGO, and followed this with stints at ActionAid, Plan International and Department for International Development (DFID) India.
After growing up in India, and beginning his career in the not-for-profit sector there, Girish moved to London in 2005 to join WaterAid UK. As deputy CEO and Director of International Programmes, Girish transformed WaterAid’s programming across Africa and Asia.
He has since been the Chief Executive of ActionAid UK for over five years, the CEO at STiR Education and, most recently, the Interim CEO at UNICEF UK.
Girish is a keen blogger, active on social media and was named one of the Top 25 Social CEOs in 2018. Girish has also served on the TeachingExcellence & Student Outcomes (TEF) Panel for Social Sciences of the Office for Students and is a regular speaker at a number of events on a wide range of issues around international development, leadership, organisational culture, diversity and inclusion.
Dr Chikondi Mpokosa
Dr Chikondi Mpokosa is a social development scientist with over 26 years of experience in international development in progressively more leadership roles. Chikondi is currently the Founder and CEO of Youth Action for Sustainable Development and Lion Olive Green Company Ltd, and the recent former Executive Director of the Angelou Centre a Black and Minoritised feminist women empowerment organisation. She leads on the strategic and operational fronts of the organisation. Chikondi conveys a wealth of experience managing programmes across multi-countries and within a large variety of organisations in international development in a variety of programme areas, including gender, education, child rights, human rights, humanitarian, and capacity-building.
Originally from Malawi, Chikondi has gained international experience through her work in Vietnam, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, India, Ghana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Niger, Mozambique, Mali, Ethiopia, South Africa, Tanzania, Nigeria, and South Sudan. Chikondi served as a Trustee for the Forum for African Women Educationists (FAWE) for six years, is currently serving on the board of Hope and Homes for Children (HHC), the Global Girls Scholarship Foundation(GGSF, and the General Assembly Member of ActionAid Malawi.
She has worked with UNICEF in Zimbabwe, South Sudan and more recently Nigeria managing education programmes. She has also led global programmes for Opportunity International Malala Fund, Leonard Cheshire Disability International, VSO and Oxfam from the UK. She is passionate about setting strategies that better serve the needs of women and girls living in challenging circumstances in the countries. She combines global leadership of programmes with country and portfolio management.
Chikondi spent many years managing country programmes in Nigeria, Malawi, and Tanzania. Throughout her career, Chikondi has served in various consulting, management and program implementation roles that have focused on inclusion of marginalized and excluded children both boys and girls including children living with disabilities.
Chikondi holds an Ed. D, MAEGID, B. Ed. (Sci).
Ruchira Neotia
Indian-born and London-based, Ruchira began her career leading groundbreaking Marketing and Brand campaigns for global giants in big Tech and Finance including Microsoft, Apple and American Express. After a successful decade in corporate leadership roles, she transitioned into consultancy CMO roles, simultaneously deepening her expertise in wines and spirits. She is a seasoned NED and Corporate Presenter and has chaired 200+ people conferences.
Ruchira now maintains a second career as a trusted advisor to drinks brands and wine regions, bringing her unique combination of strategic insight, creativity and global market knowledge to elevate their presence. Her ability to blend strategic precision with creative innovation and magnetic flair has made her an influential figure in the global drinks and hospitality landscape, so much so that in 2025, Ruchira was ranked as the Top 100 Most Influential figures in the Drinks Industry in the UK.
She is the Founder of ‘Ruchira’s Table’, an exclusive, invite-only events platform that connects drinks brands with curated audiences to create new routes to market via a uniquely memorable drinks and dining experience.
Ruchira is a frequent judge for prestigious Global Drinks awards such as GSMC, LWC, LSC, CITC and IWC to name a few. She is a certified WSET Level 4 Diploma holder and has been featured in publications such as The Drinks Business, Spirits business and The Evening Standard to name a few.
Ramesh Parmar (Treasurer)
Ramesh is a Finance, Treasury and Change Management professional with over 25 years’ experience within Financial Services, Banking and Capital Markets, working across international and diverse teams.
He has had a successful leadership career with a proven track record running the Finance function, delivering complex transformational change and creating high performing teams that areinclusive and diverse in thought and perspective. Ramesh is a strategic thinker with an adaptive leadership style able to demonstrate sound judgment and decision making. For 12 years, he was part of the senior Finance leaders group at TSB, HSBC and LloydsBanking Group, working to apply strategic initiatives throughout teams.
Ramesh has developed a strong interest in how technology can make a difference to serve society through numerous industries such as FinTech, HealthTech, LifeSciences and the Not-for-Profit Charity sector to name a few.
He is an avid fitness enthusiast, participates in a number of sports, and has a keen interest in overseas travel where he enjoys exploring different cultures.
Zofia Sochanik
Zofia is a philanthropy and impact advisor with 20 years of experience within the nonprofit sector, in various roles within universities, medium and large privately funded UK organisations and several small international projects in Sub-Saharan Africa including Child’s i Foundation.
She began her consultancy Philanthropy Matters in 2014, with the aim to encourage private funders and charitable organisations to work more collaboratively together to create the most effective impact. Working with individuals and small businesses on their strategic impact-led giving, also consulting on charity fundraising, governance, budgeting, and reporting.
Since 2019, Zofia has been the Director, Membership and Development at Philanthropy Impact, a membership organisation with the mission to increase the flow of capital for good by enabling private clients and their families to match their purpose driven wealth strategies with their values, across the spectrum of capital. She is responsible for the growth of their corporate partner membership and creating a platform for discussion and learning around systemic issues and the innovations, solutions and partnerships by leading experts on a global stage.
Zofia was diagnosed with Complex PTSD due to childhood trauma in 2015 and for the last six years has been part of a South-West London amateur dramatics society, the Edmundian Players, to build her confidence as a speaker as part of her extensive healing journey.
