StartHere has an experienced team with a diverse range of skills and backgrounds. Staff operate in 3 main areas: Sales and Marketing, Editorial and IT.

The Sales and Marketing team incorporates a broad range of networking, marketing and PR skills gained across the private, public and charity sectors. The Editorial Department consists of two teams producing local as well as national content. Team members have wide-ranging research, writing and editing skills. The IT team incorporates extensive design, programming and support skills. The team develops the technical aspects of the product and provides IT support for the rest of the organisation.

We draw from the diverse skills available across all teams when allocating teams to client projects. A common characteristic amongst all staff is a strong sense of social justice, and a commitment to achieving StartHere’s aim - getting people to the help they need as quickly and efficiently as possible.

The charity is governed by a Trustee Board which meets four times a year. The Trustees have legal, financial and overall management responsibility for the charity.

Follow the links below for biographies of our Management team and for our Trustees.

Management team

• Sarah Hamilton-Fairley, co-founder and Chief Executive
• Deborah Stephens, Technical Director
• Simon Hills, Sales and Marketing Director
• Val Farmer, Head of Community Partnerships
• Rebecca Wood, Senior Editor
• Relinde Reuvekamp, Senior Information Officer

Trustees

• Richard Worsley, Chairman of Trustees
• Virginia Beardshaw
• Prof. David Ingram
• John McMonigall
• Sarah Jane Vernon

Management team biographies

Sarah Hamilton-Fairley, co-founder and Chief Executive
Sarah graduated from Oxford University with an English degree. Sarah honed her communication skills at J Walter Thompson and BBC Radio 4, where she worked as a researcher and presenter. In 1988, Sarah co-founded Whitewater, the successful design and communications agency specialising in the not-for-profit sector. Sarah brings a founder’s passion to StartHere and a clear vision of how the service should be developed to ensure that her mantra of keeping the citizen’s needs at the heart of the service is achieved. Her enthusiasm and drive has enabled her to become a highly effective networker at senior corporate and government levels. Sarah is a Trustee of the Multiple Births Foundation and a Governor of St Paul’s Girls’ School.

Deborah Stephens, Technical Director

Simon Hills, Sales and Marketing Director
Simon recently completed four years at the UK Centre for Economic and Environmental Development (UK CEED). His most recent role was Head of SustainIT, an initiative of UK CEED that promotes uses of ICT for the overall benefit of society. Simon led SustainIT's business development activity and sat on the Centre's strategy and operations boards. In 2002, Simon completed an M.Sc. in Business Strategy and Environmental Management at the University of Bradford, where his thesis explored the impacts of flexible and remote ways of working enabled by ICT. Before this he worked in the IT industry as a Project Manager and Technical Analyst after graduating in Human Geography from the University of Liverpool.

Val Farmer, Head of Community Partnerships
Val graduated from Strathclyde University with a business degree and started her career in HR. She gained a broad range of experience in both the private and local authority sectors in London before taking 18 months out to travel across Asia and Australia. Returning to Scotland Val moved to focus on adult training and education. In business development roles with the Scottish Qualifications Authority, Glasgow Development Agency and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (CoSLA) Val worked with employers to improve the access and uptake of training and qualifications. Val then moved to a development role with the British Council and Scottish Development International, to promote the Scottish education system to the Asia Pacific Region; specifically China, South Korea and India. Val joined StartHere in 2001 bringing with her a broad range of skills in HR, PR, and Business Development. Val has worked extensively with the military and justice sectors building strong partnerships with the key players in the government and third sector on a variety of information projects. Val oversees the HR function for StartHere and is also a trained group facilitator. She is currently working towards a MSc in Organizational Behaviour at Birkbeck.  

Trustee biographies

Richard Worsley, Chairman of Trustees
Richard was Group Personnel Director and then Director of Community Affairs at BT. Earlier jobs were with British Aerospace (Head of Personnel), the CBI (Director of Social Affairs) and the Engineering Employers Federation. More recently, he has directed the Carnegie UK Trust's Third Age Programme, for whom his book Age and Employment was published, and chaired the Steering Committee for the Better Government for Older People programme. Currently Richard is one of two Directors of the Tomorrow Project.

Virginia Beardshaw
Virginia is CEO of I CAN, the children's communication charity. Its special focus is children who find this hardest: children with a communication disability. Virginia became the first Director of Commissioning at Barnet Health Authority in 1993. In May 1999 she became Director of Modernisation for the NHS in London, where she led implementation of the NHS plan in the capital. She then joined the British Red Cross as Director of UK Services in 2002. Virginia was elected to the Governing Body of UCL Hospital’s Foundation Trust in 2004.

Prof. David Ingram
David is Director of the Centre for Health Informatics and Multiprofessional Education (CHIME) at University College London. After undergraduate Physics at Magdalen College Oxford, his career posts have been in industry, the National Health Service and University Medical Schools. Since 1990, he has been co-ordinating partner and partner in six major EU Health Informatics Framework Programme projects, focusing on health record architecture, implementation and standards, internationally. He is currently a principal investigator in the Medical Research Council e-Science Programme (Clinical e-Science Framework project, CLEF). He is active in research on representation of knowledge about inherited diseases.

John McMonigall
John joined Apax Partners, one of the world’s leading private equity investment groups, in 1990 and concentrates on telecommunications and computer services. He began his career in computer software and was responsible for successfully setting up a systems and software house within P-E Consulting Group. He ran the European operations of Sperry, involved in both civil and military navigation guidance and control systems. Following this, he became a director of STC Telecommunications, where he was responsible for the development and manufacturing operations, concerned mainly with supplying BT. In 1986, he joined BT and, as one of its managing directors, his responsibilities included management of the £1.2 billion customer premises equipment business as well as the customer systems integration group. John is also on the Board of Directors for Autonomy, Crane Telecommunications Ltd, Dialog Semiconductor, Promethean and Synetrix Holdings Ltd.

Sarah Jane Vernon
Sarah Jane was part of the initial team that set up StartHere in 1998. Her career has focused on marketing and PR in both the commercial and voluntary sectors. She was Director of Press and Public Relations at the children’s charity ChildLine for the six years following its launch. In 1993 she joined communications agency Whitewater (specialists in the voluntary sector), where in 1995 she focused on a project using information technology to pioneer new ways of providing information and help for people with disabilities and their carers. This worked expanded and developed into StartHere where she worked until the end of 2002, returning in 2005 as a Trustee.