Our people

Lucy is a qualified psychotherapist, trained in integrative, systemic and family therapy. She is passionate about nurturing the well-being and potential of young people and bringing a new creativity, emotional intelligence and inspiration to the fields of education and youth work.

Olivia is a youth and community worker at heart, committed to supporting young people to achieve their potential. She has 20 year’s experience working in charities dedicated to youth and community development, with a particular emphasis on arts-related projects. Olivia started her career working with children and young people in disadvantaged urban areas in London and Manchester, later working in Latin America. Over the last decade, her career has been focused on development, including fundraising, partnerships and communications. Most recently, she has been Director of Development at Right to Succeed (RtS), a young, fast-growing organisation that works to transform young people’s outcomes in areas of high deprivation. Olivia brings her energy, leadership, strategic insight and many years of fundraising experience to her role as Executive Director.

Sola is strongly committed to inspiring and motivating young people to develop ‘Creative Confidence’ in fulfilment of their own potential. As an educator and community worker his professional experience includes many years Programme Leading and Management at Haringey Youth and Community Arts charity, plus Learning Mentoring and small group teaching, working with ‘challenging’ young people in in both primary and secondary schools: Sola draws on over a decade of international delivery as a Creative Facilitator, professional storyteller and cultural arts practitioner in his craft: to co-create impactful personal growth group experiences for the young people and adults that LIFEbeat serves.

Ana joined LIFEbeat as intern in 2015 and found the organisation to be the perfect fit for a combination of her personal and professional goals. She graduated from Seville University with a degree in Psychology. She has a passion for music and musical theatre and performs with amateur companies in her spare time.  Ana brings clarity; experience and a wonderful spirit to this work.

Kitty studied English at Edinburgh University and began her career as an arts journalist. In 2011 she became the Assistant Editor at IdeasTap.com, a youth-focused organisation helping young people to find pathways into the creative industries. She helped IdeasTap to form working partnerships with The Old Vic New Voices Program and The National Youth Theatre. Having fallen in love with youth-focused work, Kitty took the role of Head of Digital at Partners for Youth Empowerment, where she worked for 3 years helping to create an online network for partners around the world. At LIFEbeat Kitty takes the role of Partnerships and Outreach Manager, helping to grow the organisation’s connection with local and national youth-serving organisations.

Danny is a creative facilitator based in Bristol and is committed to empowering young people through the arts and in nurturing ecological resurgence. He has over 20 years experience as a theatre director and creating participatory arts projects, and has supported many organisations as a professional facilitator and trainer. He has worked with LIFEbeat for almost 10 years – initially as a summer camp volunteer and theatre facilitator. Since then has occupied a variety of roles including Programme Lead Facilitator, Camp Director and in developing new Programmes, Partnerships and Training. Danny has a Masters in Social Sculpture from Oxford Brookes, has run his own theatre company, and has been fostering community arts and regeneration a director of Coexist. He is passionate about LIFEbeat’s work in supporting young people to connect with their creativity, express themselves and take action in the world.

Regina was called to the English Bar in 2012. Regina has worked in law enforcement for a number of years. Regina was awarded the British Empire Medal in June 2015 in the Queens Birthday Honours for voluntary services for the London borough of Haringey, in particular for her outreach work during the London riots. Regina has developed her legal career, most recently holding financial institutions to account. Regina is committed to developing LIFEbeat and ensuring there is more wider awareness of the wonderful work undertaken at LIFEbeat.

Binit Shah is the director of digital learning at Wycombe Abbey School and teaches mathematics and computer science. He first joined LIFEbeat as a volunteer on camp in 2015 and volunteered on a further three camps. He is passionate about LIFEbeat and its transformative impact.

Charles was CEO of 3 quoted companies between 1997 and 2019. He Chairs several companies and is on the Board of Marlowe plc. He also Chairs the Oriel College Investment Advisory Committee.

Louise has over 15 years’ experience in fundraising, marketing and communications, sales, account management and management within the corporate, social enterprise and charitable sectors. Louise has been in executive and senior management positions within the charities MyBnk, Lessons for Life (now merged with Street Child) and Power2 before joining Diabetes UK in early 2021 to work on delivering excellent customer experience across the organisation. Louise has been aware of the great work LIFEbeat does throughout her career and is proud to join the community and the Board of Trustees. She is excited to share her expertise and help the team at LIFEbeat give more young people the skills and inspiration to overcome the challenges face and lead confident, healthy and purposeful lives.

Mark Cheng is founder of Chelwood Capital, an advisory firm which works with social enterprises seeking to access the capital markets. He is also the UK Director of Ashoka, the global network of leading social entrepreneurs. Mark is also a founding member of the Clearly Social Angels network in the UK, which provides early stage seed capital to social businesses.

Charles completed his military career as Defence Attaché in the British Embassy in Washington DC and Head of the British Defence Staff throughout the USA. Since retiring, he has worked as chairman of three companies and has combined a commitment to a variety of voluntary organisations with his role as a strategic adviser on political risk to a number of UK and US companies.