The Charity Management Conference 2025 - Speakers

George joined DSC at the beginning of 2017 and, having previously led the sales and customer service teams, moved into training at the start of 2020.

He trains in Management & Leadership, Fundraising, Personal Development, Project Management and Wellbeing. He has extensive experience in helping organisations make positive changes to how they approach social change.

He is also qualified as a Mental Health First Aider, with additional time spent studying Psychosis. The favourite part of his role is knowing that the work DSC performs has a major impact on both the charities and individuals that we are able to serve.

Cathy has worked in the voluntary and charity sector in the UK and Ireland for 25 years. As learning and development specialist, her career has focused on supporting individuals and organisations in the sector to be the best they can be for their beneficiaries.

In her role at DSC, Cathy designs and delivers training for our public courses, events and in-house training customers. She also provides coaching and mentoring support to senior managers and CEOs.

Aside from specialising in management and leadership topics, Cathy is particularly interested in how to have the best relationships at work, as well as our own personal effectiveness in performance at work. She strongly advocates that collaboration is a happier, more creative and sustainable way of working and enjoys helping individuals and organisations find ways to do this more often.

Cathy was on the DSC Leadership Team for 13 years where she gained all sorts of insights into the financial and practical challenges that charities face in the modern world. Previous roles as trustee, volunteer, project manager and PA to a charity CEO, give her an experiential understanding of working at all levels within an organisation.

Eileen joined DSC in January 2018, and having worked within the commercial teams in charities and social enterprises brought a wealth of experience of generating income and delivering high quality services into the DSC Sales team.

Eileen’s many years’ experience as a trainer in both the commercial and 3rd sectors was then employed as she became a member of the Training team, designing, updating, producing, retailing and delivering courses and workshops.

Eileen enjoys being part of a team that is genuine, professional and totally committed to building sustainable charities with well trained, confident trustees, employees and volunteers.

Stuart leads the team behind DSC’s bespoke research, funding guides and Funds Online research. He is a member of DSC’s leadership team, and a Mental Health First Aider.

Stuart's work helps to inform policy and practice in the charity sector, and he won the 2021 FiMT Research Award for his work on armed forces charities, which is cited at government level. He has co-authored ten reports on the subject, including the definitive Sector Insight: Armed Forces Charities report (2020).

Stuart holds a BA (Hons) in Psychology and Sociology, an MSc in Applied Psychology, and a PGCE in Psychology. He is a qualified teacher and taught for five years before moving into applied research.

Janine Booth trains organisations about neurodiversity, equipping them to embrace the variation in human brains, remove barriers and challenge discrimination. As well as founding Red in the Spectrum, Janine is a writer and activist.

Debra has worked in the charitable and voluntary sector for nearly 40 years with brief forays into the private sector.

Amongst numerous other roles, she is Co-Chair of the Soldiering on Awards. She is a Trustee of In Kind Direct, one of the Prince's Foundation Charities, a governor of the Berkshire NHS Community Foundation Trust, a Commissioner on the Local News Commission of the Public Interest News Foundation, and just recently stood down as trustee of the Berkshire Community Foundation.

She is also an Africa Advocacy Foundation Ambassador for women and girls at risk of or affected by Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).

Debra has served as a trustee of several charities including being the co-founder of the Small Charities Coalition and was its first Chair. She served on the Charity Commission's SORP committee for over 7 years and was the Vice-Chair of Governors of Whiteknights primary school for 6 years.

She is a renowned public speaker with many years' experience of training and coaching and is an internationally published author of several books on management and leadership including It's Tough at the Top; The Pleasure and the Pain; It's Murder in Management and It's a Battle on the Board. Debra has a regular monthly column in Third Sector magazine and has appeared on Radio 4's The Moral Maze.

Debra is an alumna of Windsor Leadership having participated on the Strategic Leaders Consultation.