England committee

Committee Chair

John Mothersole has held senior local government posts in UK cities including London, most recently as Chief Executive of Sheffield City Council. Since standing down from that post in December 2019 after 11 years, John has taken on a series of non-executive roles which now include Chair of The Sheffield College, trustee of a community care charity and advisory roles with companies involved in regeneration and environment. He was also an assessor for the Grenfell Tower Public Inquiry, a role that concluded with the publication of the final report in September 2024. Prior to being selected as Chair of the National Lottery Community Fund England Committee John was a member of that committee.

John has been heavily involved in the policy agenda for UK cities through the Core Cities network, the Northern Powerhouse initiative and with Government in securing city and city region devolution deals and participating in trade missions.

Recently, John has been appointed as a trustee of the Historic Royal Palaces and is also now chair of the Nature Towns and Cities Panel on behalf of The National Trust, Natural England and The Heritage Lottery Fund.

His early career was in the arts, primarily in London and the North-East, and he sees a highlight of that part of his career being the reopening of the Roundhouse in London which enabled its subsequent redevelopment.

John lives in Sheffield although his roots are in the North-West having been a community worker in Blackburn.

Ray is an executive director of Oxford Hub, a community charity, and was previously CEO of Auticon, a social enterprise and IT consultancy employing autistic adults as consultants. Prior to joining Auticon, he was a legal director at Osborne Clarke, where he specialised in impact investing and social enterprise.

Ray chairs the Small Charity Advisory Panel at the NCVO, is a director of the Oxfordshire Social Enterprise Partnership and is a founding trustee of TREEZ, an environmental charity operating in Malawi. Ray has been recognised by the Social Entrepreneur Index as one of the top ten social entrepreneurs in the UK.

Matt Downie MBE has been Chief Executive of Crisis since January 2022. He is one of the country’s leading experts and advocates on ending homelessness, serving on advisory bodies for the UK, Welsh and Scottish Governments, as well as international committees. He was awarded an MBE in the 2019 Queen’s birthdays honours, for ‘Services to tackling homelessness’.

Matt was Crisis’ Director of Policy and External Affairs from July 2014, leading a number of significant initiatives in policy, research, best practice and service development in homelessness. This includes leading the campaign to achieve the Homelessness Reduction Act which came into force in 2018.

Prior to his work at Crisis Matt led award winning teams and successful campaigns at Action for Children and the National Autistic Society, and he began his career at Shelter.

Matt is also the Chair of London Youth Theatre, and the UK Board representative for FEANTSA, the European-wide body on homelessness.

Halima Khan has worked as a policymaker in national, regional and local government and at Nesta, the UK’s innovation foundation for social good. Halima now works independently with a focus on people-powered approaches to public service innovation, which incorporate the insights of citizens and frontline staff.

Previously, Halima was Executive Director for Communities and Skills at the Greater London Authority, where she was responsible for adult skills, social policy, civil society, children and young people, and public health during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Prior to joining City Hall, Halima was in the leadership team at Nesta where she led work on people powered health, and supported frontline staff in public services to rapidly experiment with new ways of working. Before that Halima was Deputy Director at the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit, Cabinet Office, providing policy advice to No.10 and Cabinet Office ministers on a range of domestic policy issues. Halima has also worked in local government at Camden Council, focusing on strategy, policy and research, including the Council's citizens' panel.

Halima holds non-executive roles at the Royal Society for Public Health and the Mayday Trust and is a member of the Public Policy Committee at the British Academy. In 2015, Halima was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Health Sciences by Anglia Ruskin University.

Daria is a senior executive with a background in supporting purpose-driven organizations through strategy, data, and transformational change. She has worked across the public, private, and social sectors and is currently a Director at the University of Arts London.

Prior to this, Daria worked as an independent consultant, supporting foundations, social investors, and social enterprises. She spent five years at Teach First as Executive Director of Strategy, Research, and Performance, where she led major strategy reviews and change programmes. Before this, Daria was a Director at Better Society Capital, where she established the Access Foundation and worked on integrating social investment into public service reform.

Daria has served in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit and authored policy reports at New Local, a network of local authorities focused on public service innovation. She also holds several non-executive roles including board positions at the Bell Foundation and GLF Schools (a Multi Academy Trust), and serves on the investment committee of a Big Issue Invest fund.

Kamran is founder and CEO of Impact Hub Bradford CIC, a locally rooted, globally connected social innovation hub and coworking space based in the historic area of Little Germany, Bradford. Impact Hub Bradford inspires, connects and supports changemakers, social entrepreneurs, businesses and start-ups to build solutions that create positive social impact. Impact Hub has worked alongside brands such as Red Bull, Channel 4, TEDx, PWC and successfully led a partnership to secure a £6.6 million social Investment fund for Bradford District which Kamran now chairs.

Kamran was appointed a non-executive Director of the Leeds Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP – Feb’ 2020) and of Bradford City of Culture 2025 Trust (Nov’ 2019). Kamran holds a Masters in International Politics, undergraduate degree in Youth and Community work and has over twenty years’ sector experience. Prior to setting up his own social enterprise, Kamran worked for Unltd, the Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs. Kamran is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Common Purpose Graduate and is trained in both the Art of Hosting and unconscious bias and intersectionality.

Karin Woodley CBE is Chief Executive of Cambridge House, a London-based charity tackling poverty, social inequity and injustice. Karin has over 35 years’ leadership experience in social action charities specialising in the development of social policy and practice, diversity and inclusion and the delivery of community empowerment services.

Awarded a CBE in the Queen’s 2021 Birthday Honours for services to social justice, and the Lifetime Achiever Award at the 2016 Excellence in Diversity Awards, Karin is currently Chair of the Race Equality Foundation, a trustee of the Felix Project, a non-executive director and audit and risk committee member of the Ministry of Justice’s Office of the Public Guardian, and a core member of the Better Way Network.

Previously, Karin held roles as the Chief Executive of the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust, the Tabernacle Centre for Arts and Learning and the Minorities Arts Advisory Service.

Past non-executive roles include parliamentary appointments to the Economic and Social Research Council and the Legal Services Board Consumer Panel, she was the UK representative on the Global Social Economy Forum, a member of the Wellcome Trust’s Understanding Patient Data Advisory Committee, Vice Chair of Locality and Community Southwark, the founding Chair of Kensington and Chelsea’s Race Equality Partnership, Chair of an MPS Independent Advisory Panel on Race and Chair of the Black Art Gallery.

Recent published articles include ‘Listening to each other’; ‘Radical Listening’; ‘Insights from a black veteran chief executive’; ‘Heart of the Community’ and ‘Diversity, Migration and Urban Multiculture’.

Millie has volunteered in a range of roles over the past 15 years. As a teenager, she started her career as a Youth Nature Officer with the RSPB and was fortunate enough to be recognised for her volunteering efforts by carrying the Olympic Torch ahead of the London 2012 Olympics.

With a passion for sport and youth leadership, Millie was a Young Ambassador throughout school, eventually progressing to sit on the National Young Ambassador Steering Group, providing direction for the national youth leadership programme. Throughout university, Millie continued to empower emerging young leaders as a Team Leader at the Youth Sport Trust and supported national talent and girls’ active camps. Leaning on her extensive experience, Millie is now a trustee at Achieve, Thrive, Flourish, an organisation that supports young people, local residents and stakeholders to collectively identify their strengths, aspirations and opportunities and become the drivers of change within the heart of their communities.

As well as volunteering, Millie has worked for national charity SportInspired, establishing their Young Leaders programme before leading the Communities Team at Basildon Borough Council where she trained as an Asset-based Community Development Guide. Millie now works as a Senior Voluntary and Community Development Officer at the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, leading on external funding and capacity building in the community.

Millie is excited to bring her experiences as a young leader and her passion for place-based community development to The National Lottery Community Fund.