Gillian Anderson is an actress and writer, best known for her role in The X-Files. She has since starred in numerous films including The House of Mirth, The Last King of Scotland and Johnny English Reborn. Her recent TV appearances include the BBC series Great Expectations. In Gillian’s spare time she has been involved in supporting numerous charities including Artists For a New South Africa, Treatment Action Campaign, Buskaid and Neurofibromatosis, Inc. Gillian is a co-founder of SA-YES.

Reza Beyad was raised and educated in India.  He left India in 1977 and came to the UK to study for a postgraduate degree in Business Management.

Reza’s business interests include the ancestral tea business in the UK, which is a major supplier of bulk tea to many of the leading tea-packaging companies in Europe and the Middle East, and a business manufacturing Drilling Power Control Systems, which is the only manufacturer of its kind in the UK.

Amongst his many roles for charities and within the community, Reza is Chair of the Harrodian independent school in Barnes, and is on the Development Committee of the London based charity, Kids Company.

Lisa Bryer, co-founder of Cowboy Films, which she successfully ran for 20 years, was responsible for the production of numerous commercials and music videos, plus the OSCAR-winning film Wasp, three feature films: Goodbye Charlie Bright, The Hole and the OSCAR and BAFTA award-winning, The Last King of Scotland.

Lisa is a trustee of Action on Addiction, an addiction charity that provides treatment as well as research. She is also a trustee of the Westside Independent School, based in west London; a small school for 14-16 year olds who have been found to be disengaging from mainstream education and are at risk of exclusion.

Diana Gerald (Treasurer) has 20 years of experience in a range of business, public sector and not-for-profit settings. She specialises in organisational change and currently is the Assistant Chief Executive for the Girls’ Day School Trust – one of the UK’s leading educational charities. She is also a Trustee of Women’s Pioneer Housing Limited and Chair of Finance Committee for a large maintained sector primary school in Stanmore, North London.

David McCoy is a medical doctor who worked as a clinician in the UK for two and a half years before working in a rural government hospital in northern Kwazulu for a further two and half years. He was policy research fellow at the Child Health Unit of the University of Cape Town for 18 months, and then spent six years with the Health Systems Trust, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) established in South Africa to develop a research and evidence base to inform the transformation of the apartheid health care system.

David is currently a senior clinical associate at the Centre for International Health and Development at University College London.

Marit Mohn (Chair) qualified as a chartered engineer and worked in Canada, the UK and the USA. She studied law as a mature student and qualified as a solicitor, specialising in civil litigation and employment law. Marit is a founding member of a UK charity helping disadvantaged youth. She is also a trustee of the Mary Ward Legal Centre in London. She was previously chair of Women’s Pioneer Housing Ltd where she met Michelle.

John Pinkerton is Professor of Child and Family Social Work in the School of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work at Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland. He has researched and published widely in the areas of young people leaving state care, family support and the application of research to policy and practice. He was Chair of First Key (NI) an organisation promoting the interests of young people leaving care and is a founder member of INTRAC, an international network of researchers on youth transitions from state care. In addition to the UK he has lectured on the subject in Australia, Ireland, Taiwan and the US and his doctoral supervision in this area includes research in Ghana, Romania, and Ukraine. He is a member of the Board of the Children’s Institute, University of Cape Town and is a regular visitor to South Africa.

Andrew Planting (Chair of SA board) is co-founder and Executive Director of Market Makers, a specialist Venture Capital company. After leaving university, Andrew spent eight years working in the UK and USA for various management consulting companies. He then headed the European consulting division for SS&C, a US investment management firm. In 1998 he became Managing Director of Robert Walters South Africa, a UK-listed Resourcing Company and Intellimark South Africa. Andrew was a co-founder of the Dialogue Group, Africa’s largest call centre outsourcing company that was listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) in 2006, which at its peak had a market cap of R500 million rand with more than 5,000 staff under its management. During the last three years Andrew has been engaged in investments with 1TapCapital and more recently Market Makers.

Michelle Potter (Co-founding Executive Director) graduated from Roehampton University with a BA (Hons) in Education in 2007. Michelle wrote her dissertation on children in care in SA and the UK, for which she received the Froebel Guild Award in 2008.

After working for a number of years in the music industry, Michelle trained as a football coach and gained her FA Coaching Certificate in London. In 2005 she followed a dream to coach football in Africa and came to Cape Town to work with children who were living on the streets. Since this and subsequent trips to South Africa Michelle moved to Cape Town where she now lives and is working towards how best to support marginalised young people.

Malcolm Charles (Treasurer) graduated from Rhodes University with a Bachelor of Commerce degree in Accounting, Business Administration and Commercial Law. He started his career as the financial manager for UTi (a global freight forwarding company). He then joined Old Mutual as a currency and bond dealer before becoming a portfolio manager for a bond fund. Malcolm has held his current position for the last ten years as a portfolio manager at Investec Asset Management, where he is responsible for the various retail and institutional Fixed Income portfolios.

Mfundo Kevin Galada is currently a youth care worker at Beth Uriel Home for young men. Previously he was the Youth Programme/Projects Coordinator for the Desmond Tutu HIV Research Foundation and has a National Diploma in Sport Management. An enthusiastic rugby player he was involved in Invictus, Mandela Movie Project acting as a rugby player.

Leanne Gordon attended Birnam Business College where she studied Marketing & Accounting followed by Prue Leith School of Food & Wine.  Leanne went on to be co-founder and director of two companies before moving into a career in fashion as the Assistant Fashion Director of British Vogue and then the Fashion Director of British Tatler. After spending fifteen years living in London she now lives with her family in Cape Town.

Iain Low is professor of architecture at the University of Cape Town where he convenes postgraduate programmes in architecture. He was Fulbright scholar at the University of Pennsylvania and visiting scholar at the American Academy in Rome. As a practitioner he was Project Architect for the World Bank/GoL where he researched and designed schools for the Training for Self Reliance Project throughout Lesotho, and has designed an award-winning reinstallation of Iziko SA Museum’s San Rock Art in Cape Town. Currently his research area is ‘space and transformation’ and the spatialisation in the contemporary [post apartheid] city. He is published in a number of local and international journals, notably AD|Architectural Design, the Journal of South African Architecture and most recently a chapter in ‘Representation & Spatial Practices in Urban South Africa’ University of Johannesburg, [2009], ‘On Making’ [2010] and ‘The Handbook of Architectural Theory’ Sage, [2010]. He is editor of the Digest of SA Architecture and the Digest of African Architecture.

Andrew Planting (Chair) is co-founder and Executive Director of Market Makers, a specialist Venture Capital company. After leaving university, Andrew spent eight years working in the UK and USA for various management consulting companies. He then headed the European consulting division for SS&C, a US investment management firm. In 1998 he became Managing Director of Robert Walters South Africa, a UK-listed Resourcing Company and Intellimark South Africa. Andrew was a co-founder of the Dialogue Group, Africa’s largest call centre outsourcing company that was listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) in 2006, which at its peak had a market cap of R500 million rand with more than 5000 staff under its management. During the last three years Andrew has been engaged in investments with 1TapCapital and more recently Market Makers.

Rahla Xenopoulos has published short stories in various anthologies and magazines. In 2009 Random House published her first book, ‘A Memoir of Love And Madness’. Rahla is awaiting the publication of her second book, a murder, while writing the third; a novel. Rahla enjoys playing with her triplets, being a wife and arranging the occasional flower that comes her way.

Rahla began teaching street children drama at Process, Boys Town (Hillbrow) in 1988. In 1989 she began counselling at P.O.W.A (People Opposing Women Abuse) as well as at Waverly Crisis Centre.  Rahla studied drama in education at Market Theatre Laboratory and facilitated workshops in Soweto, Johannesburg and Khayelitsha. From 1992-1994 she taught at Woodmead School and then from 1996-1998 she taught at Stepping Stones. In 2000 Rahla moved to Cape Town and spent a year counselling and teaching street children in Sea Point.

Marit Mohn (Chair of UK board) qualified as a chartered engineer and worked in Canada, the UK and the USA. She studied law as a mature student and qualified as a solicitor, specialising in civil litigation and employment law. Marit is a founding member of a UK charity helping disadvantaged youth. She is also a trustee of the Mary Ward Legal Centre in London. She was previously chair of Women’s Pioneer Housing Ltd where she met Michelle.

Michelle Potter (Co-founding Executive Director) graduated from Roehampton University with a BA (Hons) in Education in 2007. Michelle wrote her dissertation on children in care in SA and the UK, for which she received the Froebel Guild Award in 2008.

After working for a number of years in the music industry, Michelle trained as a football coach and gained her FA Coaching Certificate in London. In 2005 she followed a dream to coach football in Africa and came to Cape Town to work with children who were living on the streets. Since this and subsequent trips to South Africa Michelle moved to Cape Town where she now lives and is working towards how best to support marginalised young people.