Meet the Steering Group
The Essex Alliance steering group and all members agree to the Terms of Reference.
Alison Wilson, Co-Chair
Alison Wilson is CEO of Mind in West Essex, who host the employment of our Project Lead and Administrator roles. Alison has worked in the voluntary sector for nearly 30 years and is passionate about developing ways of engaging with all sectors of the community in a meaningful and transparent way.
Martin Lord, Co-Chair
Martin Lord is Consortium Director for Citizens Advice Essex, the lead charity for the consortium of ten local Citizens Advice serving the greater Essex area.
Martin’s previous experience includes leadership within Local Citizens Advice, where he also spent his earlier career specialising in Housing, Welfare Benefits and Debt Advice.
He is a board member of Greatwell Homes, a Housing Association in the East Midlands, and provides freelance consultancy to charities and social enterprises, mainly around bid writing and impact evaluation.
Samantha Glover
Sam Glover has been working as Chief Executive Officer for Healthwatch Essex for 18 months. Healthwatch Essex is a Health and Social care charity, and our core mission is to gather lived experience and use this voice to influence health and social care across the county. Although I had been involved in the charity as a trustee, this role has been a steep learning curve.
Sam’s current CEO position is her first employment role in such a business and leadership role, having had a background in clinical care and policy design concerning clinical needs.
During her early carer initially in South East Essex and then at a county, regional and national level she has built up a wealth of experience and contacts. This has been underpinned by her academic career which has seen me achieve a BSc (Hons), MSc in Medicine and Health Care education, teaching diploma and UKPHR.
Sam has a good base knowledge from being a trustee, vice-chair and chair of a charity for nine years
Nic O'Brien
Nic O’Brien is CEO of Home-Start Essex. Nic has worked in the voluntary sector for 19 years.
Nic is a member of the Essex Community Foundations CEO Forum and is eager to work towards more transparency and collaboration across all the sectors within our community for the benefits of our residents.
Vicky Waldon
Vicky Waldon is Chief Commercial Officer at Provide CIC, a social enterprise delivering Health and Social Care services in Essex.
Vicky’s previous experience is in community development and commissioning health and social care services. She is passionate about the role the VCSE can play in supporting communities to thrive.
Tristan Easey
Tristan Easey is Deputy CEO at Community360, the CVS for Colchester and Braintree
District which works with more than 500 charities, voluntary and community groups across
Essex each year to assist them to continue to do their valuable work.
Tristan has experience of working in both the VCSE and education sector and is passionate
about strengths-based community development, enabling citizen action and supporting
thriving communities.
Ginny Idehen
Ginny Idehen is the CEO of Mid and North East Essex Mind, an independent local charity dedicated to working with local communities helping them to understand how to take care of their mental health and access the support they need.
She has worked as a leader in the charity and social enterprise sector for the last 10 years, notably working with Suffolk Mind, Ormiston Families and Combat 2 Coffee CiC before joining Mid and North East Essex Mind in 2023. During the last twenty years she has also held board level volunteer roles as a trustee for a homeless charity, a primary school governor, whilst serving as a director of a local chamber of commerce since 2012.
She is proud to work in the voluntary and social enterprise sector and is very keen to ensure the voices of the whole sector, large and small organisations, are represented in the important conversations taking place at a county and regional level.
Louise Voyce
Louise Voyce is a Relationship Manager at Active Essex and leads on their Strengthening Communities priority, key to her role is working alongside and supporting locally trusted organisations who are delivering amazing work with communities across Essex. She has been part of the Active Essex senior Management team for 7 years and in her current role she leads the work around Asset based community development, ensuring that communities have a voice and that services are responding directly to local needs and ambitions.
Previously to working for Active Essex, Louise spent 15 years working for VCS organisations and is passionate about the role that they have to play.
Andy Payne Worpole
Andy Payne Worpole is the Director of Policy and Programmes at the Essex Community Foundation. Andy has over 25 years of public service experience, working in the charitable, public and private sectors delivering metal health services, community engagement and service improvement. At Essex Community Foundation he is responsible for grantmaking, public policy and working with voluntary sector and partners to promote a thriving civil society in Essex. Andy is also a Trustee of NSUN a small national mental Health charity with a focus user led support and lived experience.