Hamlin Fistula UK Trustees meet four times a year to monitor programme funding, fundraising activities, strategic planning, and governance.

Honorary President

Malcolm S Hewitt OBE MA (Oxon), Honorary President

Malcolm has been a member of Hamlin Fistula UK for 16 years and has been Chairman since July 2011. Malcolm was also appointed to the board of Hamlin Fistula Ethiopia in November 2018. In his professional life he was the Headteacher of a large Secondary School in the West Midlands becoming National President of the Secondary Heads Association in 1993. He then went on to train and assess those wanting to become Headteachers. He was awarded the OBE in 2000 for services to education. He has served as a JP in the Birmingham District of the UK and also as Chairman of the Board of Visitors at an open prison for young offenders.

Trustees

Greg Morris, Chair

Greg joined the board of Hamlin Fistula UK in 2014 and became Chair in 2019. He has visited Ethiopia many times over the years. Before he retired, Greg was a senior officer in a local authority, having come from a background in teaching. He worked mostly in the areas of schools and children, leading the authority’s work to improve school leadership, teaching and standards of achievement. As well, he made a major contribution to improving the authority’s performance across all aspects of its work involving children.

Libby Grundy MBE

Libby has spent most of her career in the charitable sector. For ten years she was CEO of a national charity, the Council for Environmental Education, and for five years Director of the Food for Life Partnership, a Big Lottery funded programme to improve the health and nutrition of school children. She was, for four years, a trustee of Kids Run Free, a national charity promoting physical activity for children, and has been a governor of her local primary school since 2017.

Hewete Haileselassie

Hewete is Communications Director at Big Win Philanthropy. A charity that focuses on children and young people in Africa. She joined the board of Hamlin Fistula UK in August 2022. Prior to joining Big Win Philanthropy in 2023 Hewete spent 15 years at the BBC World Service where she held a variety of journalism roles. From working as a field producer across Africa to running entry-level trainee schemes for bilingual journalists. She developed career workshops that she then delivered to hundreds of staff in the UK and across Africa. Between 2018 and 2020 she was based in the Nairobi bureau as Training and Talent Manager for the region. She sat on the steering committee for BBC’s ‘Global Women in News’ group from 2014-2023 and was a Senior Journalist Team Manager on the 50:50 Equality Project. Hewete is passionate about diversity and inclusion and holds a degree in French and Spanish from King’s College London. Away from work she loves being by the sea or mature trees and has seven cats across two continents.

Sarah Hewitt-Clarkson

Sarah lives and works in Birmingham, UK. Mother of two daughters, headteacher of a large primary school in Birmingham, passionate about challenging stereotypes, justice, kindness, Shakespeare, family, friends, art. ‘Lord we know what we are but not what we may be’.

Alison Murray

Alison is Deputy Head of Midwifery at Liverpool Women’s Hospital. She is passionate about providing safe holistic midwifery care and continuing to develop knowledge and skills to meet changing needs and demands both locally and globally. Having visited Hamlin Midwifery College, she has been inspired by the dedication of undergraduate Midwives in providing Continuity or Care to their local communities to make a difference.

Emnet Yadeta

Emnet is a social worker based in in Birmingham and joined the board of Hamlin Fistula UK in May 2022. She is passionate about child protection and has over ten years’ experience including specialist work in Toronto, Canada supporting refugees and new immigrants to have equal access to public services. Her areas of research interest include children’s gender identity, modern slavery and trafficking, criminal exploitation, gender-based violence and FGM. Emnet has also participated in a longitudinal research project with the University of Toronto and Sick Kids Hospital to understand the mental health status of children from immigrant families.

Leadership

Helen Marriott, CEO

Helen has worked in the charity sector for over ten years. She is a fundraising specialist with experience from a range of national charities and most recently international maternal health charity Ammalife. She is passionate about connecting supporters and volunteers with the causes they care about. She is experienced in devising and implementing organisational and fundraising strategy and managing successful teams.

Julia Strong, Head of Philanthropy and Partnerships

Julia is a non-profit resource mobilisation and partnerships professional with 17 years’ experience in the charitable sector. She has worked across international markets and has field experience in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. She has worked and consulted for a wide range of international non-profit organisations (including UNRWA, Sightsavers, the Kenya Hospice Association, Design Museum and the Philharmonia Orchestra among others). She is passionate about working with charities to develop and implement strategies to build income and grow strong and sustainable relationships with donors. Julia holds a Masters degree in International Development from the University of Birmingham, a Bachelors degree in Music from the University of York and the UK Institute of Fundraising’s Certificate in Fundraising Management.